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I have a question. It may seem childish to some of you who post here regularly. What if something happened, i.e. a massive asteroid is heading towards Earth and we could not deflect it. (I know it's "Hollywoodish" but hey!) Say that we have 10 yrs until impact. Is there technology now that's readily available to put to use? I.E. nuclear - electric propulsion that's waiting to be built? I've seen various sites on the Internet on plasma propulsion and one that stays with me is the Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2). The site was from the University of Washington and the M2P2 is headed by Robert Winglee. Here is the link that I found:
http://www.washington.edu/newsroo....99.html
Until people would realize that nuclear energy does not always results in accidents waiting to happen and we get an administration that is very pro-nuclear and has even a modest interest in space exploration, I see our propulsion technology plodding along at a snail's pace.
I would like to hear comments to this.
One day...we will get to Mars and the rest of the galaxy!! Hopefully it will be by Nuclear power!!!
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I'm thinking if we came across a really big asteroid and we had some time to work we might be able to construct a giant pusher-plate in orbit to attach to the asteroid. After we attached the plate we could use nuclear charges to propel the asteroid into a different orbit. We'd basically turn the asteroid into a giant Orion type spacecraft. The technology to pull such a thing off shouldn't be to hard to conjure considering that we've been designing nuclear explosives for fifty years. Of course we'd have to cross our fingers and hope we don't blow the thing apart and cause a horrendous rain of death to fall onto the planet.
To achieve the impossible you must attempt the absurd
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The October 2002 issue of Scientific American has a mini-article about deflecting asteroids using x-rays, which cause the surface layer of the asteroid to vaporize and explode off the surface. They are testing the mechanism with a giant xray machine and tiny meteorite shards, down in New Mexico. The actual mechanism would use x-ray producing nuclear bombs.
-- RobS
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TJohn, I am a huge believer in M2P2, and I have been following Winglee for quite some time now. However, since its technology is largely untested, it may not work... although I personally believe the math is sound. M2P2 is an amazing concept, but maybe too young to deflect asteriods.
I saw something on Slashdot recently about inflating a balloon attached to a rocket to deflect asteriods. The problem with attaching a rocket directly to an asteriod is that pressure would be focused on one point, possibly breaking off a piece or tunneling through. A balloon of sorts would distribute pressure evenly, and decrease risk of damage to the asteriod.
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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