[TML] Solution to the near-c rock question

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 1/31/08 7:12 AM, "shadow at shadowgard.com" <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:

> On 29 Jan 2008 at 17:35, Leon Wu wrote:
> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: tml-bounces at travellercentral.com
>>> [mailto:tml-bounces at travellercentral.com] On Behalf Of Tom Naro
>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:33 PM
>>> To: The Traveller Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [TML] Solution to the near-c rock question
>>> 
>>> John Kwon jtkwon at jtkgroup.com wrote:
>>>> How to handle flying space rocks (asteroids) in Traveller, using
>>>> science postulated by US TV shows.  See?  not as dangerous
>>> as you once believed...
>>> 
>>> Laughed - until I fell off of my chair!
>> 
>> I think John forgot this one (though to be fair it came from a movie):
>> 
>> Send up a bunch of plucky miners to drill into the asteroid and nuke it
>> from within all to the dulcet tones of Aerosmith.
> 
> And the pieces follow the same orbit more or less. Doesn't really
> help all that much.
> 
> Only workable solutions involve interceptimng *years* before impact
> so you can alter the orbit into a miss.

Starting a month out, a 1 m/s shove gives you almost 2600 km.  Obviously,
longer lead-time give better results with less delta-V needed, but I don't
think you need years.  Depends on your tech, of course.