[TML] Asteroid Deflection

[alan spik]

shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:
> 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.
>   

Maybe a tug could just push/pull it into a new orbit? Save all the 
destruction and scattering of debris.