🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct26.221945.13810@gn.ecn.purdue.edu> mechalas@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (John P. Mechalas) writes:
>
>I saw a lot of stuff on this, too.  And it brings up an interesting point.
>There have been a lot of scientists in recent years discussing the 
>possibilities of comets and/or meteors striking the Earth.
>   My question:  How hard would it be to deflect an incoming object with, 
>say, a nuclear explosive?  This theory is one I have heard postulated many
>times, and have wondered how easy or hard such a task would be.  The
>orbit mechanics aspects could be worked out, I am sure...given enough time.
>Plus, the greater the distance, the smaller an orbital perturbation would be
>needed to alter the orbit.  But how much warning would we have in such an
>instance?
>

  I'm a software designer, dammit, not an engineer :-) so I don't have
  an answer on how much force would be required to deflect or destroy an
  incoming comet.  The force required would obviously depend on the objects
  mass and velocity.

  David Langford's WAR IN 2080 (an interesting speculation on the shape
  of war in the future) deals with the use of asteroids (and other hunks
  of rock floating around in space) as weopons.  At high enough velocities
  , an asteroid of sufficient size would be almost impossible to stop
  without some form of mind boggling technology (such as a device that
  soaks up inertia).  Even if you blew the incoming object apart, many of
  the remaining chunks would probably still hit the Earth.

  The nastiest variant on this idea that he describes is the 'Relativistic
  Missile'.  This is an object (not necessarily of all that great mass)
  which has been accelerated to near relativistic speeds (something on the
  order of .7c) and aimed at whichever planet you don't like.  Given the
  enormous velocity of the object it would be hard to detect and difficult
  to track, making it almost impossible to stop.  When it hit the planet
  the energy released would be enormous.

    ********    ***      **    **   *******   ********  "Quantum Mechanics:
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