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There may well be topics in the forum archive that are about asteroid dangers to Earth or Mars.
There were only two topics that contained the word "defense" and neither was about the danger of asteroids.
In another topic, Void just offered an idea that is interesting in it's own right.
However, I thought immediately of the asteroid deflection problem.
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This new topic is inspired by another of many visions of Void:
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 44#p217644
It occurred to me that an asteroid that is headed for Earth might be given a spin (controlled of course) so that the components of the asteroid would be accelerated in desirable directions, as an alternative to the default collision with Earth.
Some clever engineering would be required, but the total amount of energy required might be comparable to what might be mustered for other approaches to the problem.
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Apache Internal Server error objected to the text below:
In the post cited above, Void shows us how an asteroid might be spun up to send objects to other locations in the Solar System, using a tether similar to (but longer than) the one David used to give Goliath a headache.
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The latest issue of Analog just arrived, and it contains an article about asteroid intercept that includes developments that may be new to one or two NewMars members.
Happily, the article is published in full at the analog web site...
https://www.analogsf.com/current-issue/ … nate-view/
I will quote a bit of the article in hopes it will inspire a NewMars member to open the link.
THE ALTERNATE VIEW
Defending Against Killer Asteroids
by John G. CramerOn Thursday, July 13, 2023, a sizable undetected asteroid (subsequently named “2023 NT1”) was headed for the Earth from the direction of the Sun and just missed a collision. It passed within ~100,000 kilometers, about three times further out than the orbits of geosynchronous satellites. Because the Sun is an astronomical blind spot, this very close encounter with near-Earth asteroid 2023 NT1 wasn’t discovered and tracked until two days after the near miss.
The asteroid is estimated to have a diameter of ~34 meters, a mass of ~52 kilotonnes, and a speed of 11.27 km/s. (Note: a metric tonne is 1,000 kg or 2,204.62 lb.) If asteroid 2023 NT1 had impacted the Earth’s surface, it would have liberated energy equivalent to ~1.5 megatonnes of TNT, about 100 times the energy as released by the Hiroshima bomb, and it could have caused very significant local damage.
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This post is about the ice injection asteroid mining concept originated by our Alaskan correspondent in the Knowledge forum.
There are several innovations to be attempted here, and I have some uncertainty about how well everything is going to work.
The link below is to a Google Document that is rendered in PDF format.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-z0UvZ … sp=sharing
If the link works, the file contains a conversation with Gemini in which two individuals participate.
The opening sequence was guided by the Alaskan, and I picked up the thread and carried it to a conclusion (of sorts)
The concluding sequence covers the use of the Moon as a suitable test environment for the Injected Ice harvesting method.
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