Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

kodiakbear · 2004-12-06 14:24:48

Ok first let me say I am not a evil :angry: scientist this is just a idea for discusion.

If an asteroid was headed to earth we would need to slow it down or alter its direction. Before we can do that for real we are going to need to do it in a test.

So how about using one of the moons of Mars which are really just asteroids that are going to fall to Mars some day as a test bed for the technology. After studying the asteroid and learning all we want to know about it we use the asteroid device to slow one of the moons, and send it crashing into an area we want to study on Mars this newly formed crater would make an great site for study and possibly a great site for the first manned landing. We get to study a asteroid, a new technology, study a asteroid impact in real time, the after effects of a impact and a freshly expossed site on Mars.

So what do you think.

John Creighton · 2004-12-06 14:29:35

I think it is better to study the avoidiance of asteroids then the effects of there impact. Crashing phobes into mars would mean the loss of a potentail future refuling site.

SpaceNut · 2004-12-06 14:31:57

A more useful item to redirect might be a comet or two to the surface of mars for there water that they contain. But yes a theoretical challenge to design heavy lift with fuel left over for pushing it from its normal course, most likely nuclear in nature.

kodiakbear · 2004-12-06 15:22:21

I like the idea of sending a comet to Mars but I think by the time we will be able to send a comet to Mars we will already (hopefully) have people on Mars and they would not like to die just to have more fresh water. As the effects of a comet would make Mars a hellish place for a long time.

Grypd · 2004-12-06 18:13:14

It is actually easier for us to reach NEO asteroids than the Martian moons or even the Moon. As these do in fact pose a threat it makes more sense to actually investigate these as they have what we would call the most dangerous kind amongst there numbers the stony irons etc. We should visit these as it is thought they pose our greatest threat (the next being comets) and see what it would take to move them.

Heh we could always use one if there is a comet on its way to hit us as the first intergalactic white pool ball and so knocking the threat away. (Then again doing it would be so hard and a such a technical nightmare that there is no chance)

Austin Stanley · 2004-12-06 19:12:14

As cool as Nadia's crashing phobos (or was it deminos?) into Mars was in the KSR trio, it's a cataclysmic waste of wonderfuly positioned resources. Plus, I wouldn't be so certian that it would be a harmless experiment. The KE of such an impact is huge, not only is there the danager of the heat and shock from the explosion (generaly a closerange phenomonon), but it will also throw tons of rock and dirt all about the planet, which could potentialy damage any one on the planet. It would be cool though, and a neat chance to study such an impact. But if that is what you realy want to do, it would probably be better to use something in orbit around the sun, who's orbit crosses that of mars, be it a comet, asteroid or whatever. Changing the orbit of many of these to intersect that of Mars often takes supprisingly small amounts of energy.

As for the means of actualy changing the orbit of an asteriod, Zubrin and many-others have disregarded the use of nuclear weapons in favor gigantic engines or various types (NTR and Mass drivers mainly), which would get there fuel from the asteroid. I think this approach is incorrect. These huge engines will require burns of extream length, hundreads if not thousands of hours, causing reliablity problems. There is also the issue of gathering the massive amounts of fuel that would be necessary to power these engines. Even if you get it "for free" on the asteroid/comet mining and processing hundreads of tons of material is no simple task. You also have to worry about the direction your engines are facing, especialy since you will be changing the center of gravity of the rock as you throw huge chunks of away as propulsion. This requires extra engines to ensure stability. These and a many other little problems make such a method incredibly complicated, and unreliable. Human presence will almost certianly be required and many, many tons of equipment will have to delivered in addition to the multi-ton engines themselves.

In contrast using nuclear weapons is simple and effective, nearly fool proof. You send out a prob with a large nuclear weapon out to the asteroid, manuver it into close proximity/land it and then detonate the device. The specific impulse isn't the greatest, but the program is simple and reliable. After the detonation, you calaculate the new orbit (easily done from Earth), and if necessary detonate additional devices. Most likely multiple weapons will be launched in a series arriving every 2-3 months untill the asteroid is signifigantly diverted. Best of all little to know new technology need be developed. We are certianly capable of building a probe designed to close in with an asteriod, and a nuclear weapon to arm it with. Such a device should be well within our launch capacity as well. Indeed, ifi we were to detect a asteroid threat tommorow, such a program would probably be our only hope.

GCNRevenger · 2004-12-06 19:23:01

*nodnod* I think that people underestimate how much power a Delta-IV full of nuclear bombs has.

Grypd · 2004-12-07 04:56:06

What we have found is that not all asteroids are the same. Some are a collection of smaller bodies being held together by local forces and having a wek crust .Now if we use a nuclear weapon to attempt to shift it would likely have little effect, except one, the roque asteroid would break up and act like a gigantic sawnoff shotgun doing more damage to the Earth than a single strike on its own would do.

GraemeSkinner · 2004-12-07 05:00:32

But if the thrust is applied slowly, rather than in one big blast the chances of it breaking up are less, so changing its orbit can be done over time.

Graeme

Austin Stanley · 2004-12-07 16:29:16

I disagree. If the asteriod in question is a so called "rubble pile" then a nuclear weapon because an even better solution. Shatering the asteriod into many small peices is an ideal outcome. Many of the peices will be thrown much farther than the entire asteriod would have been, perhaps causing them to miss the earth entirely. Many of the other peices will be fragments to small to cause signifigant damage after re-entery. Any remaining large fragments may be a problem, but these can be targeted by follow up bombs. But even for these fragments the situation has been improved greatly, as they are much smaller and there path has already been diverted somewhat.

The whole nuclear weapon scheem has another thing going for it. It could actualy work! I find it very hard to belive that we are going to be capable of landing very large engines capable of extracting fuel from an asteriod and then burining it for hundreads to thousands of hours. Simply to much can go wrong with such a plan. And delivering such huge amounts of cargo to a destination in the outer solarsystem is very difficult as well.

RobS · 2004-12-07 18:34:58

If we want to divert an asteroid I'd start diverting to Venus/Venus orbit and leaving Mars alone. It's already got millions of cubic miles of water locked up in its crust.

Both Phobos and Deimos are so big and in high circular orbits that I doubt anyone would find it practical crashing them into Mars even if they wanted to. You'd need a delta-v of over half a kilometer per second to put them into an elliptical orbit that reached the upper atmosphere of Mars.

-- RobS

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#1 2004-12-06 14:24:48

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#2 2004-12-06 14:29:35

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#3 2004-12-06 14:31:57

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#4 2004-12-06 15:22:21

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#5 2004-12-06 18:13:14

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#6 2004-12-06 19:12:14

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#7 2004-12-06 19:23:01

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#8 2004-12-07 04:56:06

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#9 2004-12-07 05:00:32

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#10 2004-12-07 16:29:16

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

#11 2004-12-07 18:34:58

Re: Effects of impacts on Mars as Landing Site - or: Mad Science 101

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