[TML] Solution to the near-c rock question

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 1 Feb 2008 at 2:38, Jerry W Barrington wrote:

> 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.

You want a miss by a lot more than 2600 km.

Also giving a body big enough to worry about 1 m/s of delta-v isn't 
something we can pull ooff with current tech.

For that matter, it'd take us years to build something that *could* 
intercept it "a month out". Much less do so while carrying something 
that would give the required delta-v.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com