[TML] Asteroid Deflection

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 14 Jul 2008 at 12:55, Rob Davenport wrote:

> 1)  What about jump drives (in the far future obviously)? Could one or 
> more be attached to an incoming rock (a non-near-C type rock probably) and 
> just jump it (or as much of it as possible) somewhere else? Never mind 
> about a misjump, in fact that'd probably be preferred. (Induced misjump?).

If the rock is big enough to be dangerous, it's *way* bigger than 
most ships. 

Ok, I take that back. Something the size of a house made the 
Barringer crater. So ship sized rocks are dangerous. But it's a hell 
of a lot easier to deflect them than to fit them with a jump drive.

And the dinosaur killers are kilometer sized. That's going to be hard 
to find a drive for.

"Civilized" systems will have done a sky survey and know where 
potential problems are *years* before they get close. And on that 
scale, a fewq nukes exploded near the proper side of the rock will 
cause it to eject enough mass (the x-rays from the nuke get absorbed 
mostly a ways *under the surface, causing the surface materials to 
get blasted out at a ffair speed). And the ejected mass wikll change 
the orbit.


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