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threebillion6 t1_irxmq4k wrote

Reply to comment by jtr489 in NASA says DART mission succeeded in altering asteroid's trajectory by Gari_305

Heavier satellites, faster speeds, this is honestly great because we know a lot about the physics of it. The only thing is the actual density of the asteroid is the thing I was surprised about recently. I can't wait to see what comes out of this. Maybe we can redirect nukes to deflect dangerous asteroids instead of shoot them at each other? Are our icbms capable of that?

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Evil_Dolphin t1_irxqynb wrote

Warheads sure, but ICBM's are really only capable of planetary travel.

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kingdead42 t1_irxvkro wrote

You could even say they're really only designed for inter-continental travel.

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DontToewsMeBro2 t1_irz7brn wrote

I think just hitting it with a big object going fast would be more predictable than a warhead. Let’s send a shrink wrapped package of all garbage on earth at 55,000mph. It’d create a garbage planet, we can call it Oscar.

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threebillion6 t1_irzr08t wrote

But what if the first ball of garbage doesn't disintegrate and is sent on a collision course to Earth in a thousand years?

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FloofBagel t1_irzusce wrote

And some really fucking old scientist goes to a symposium with a invention he already invented last year and has to improvise and makes a telescope for smell instead of sight

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krumpdawg t1_iry1syy wrote

Probably use some kind of nuclear device just because of its energy density and the amount of energy required to shift an asteroids orbit.

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Bebop3141 t1_iryru6j wrote

You don’t want to blow up asteroids. Aside from the risk of reformation, there’s no guarantee that it will even break up solely into pieces small enough to not cause serious damage because it is hard to tell what asteroids are actually made of. Hence, the DART project, which tries to move the whole asteroid.

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olbettyboop t1_irys8jf wrote

You don’t try to blow it up. You use the force of the explosion to nudge it off course just like the DART program did. It’s on NASA’s interplanetary defense website.

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Replop t1_is01sjz wrote

There was a fun cold war movie about it .

While earth is threatened by an asteroid, Russian - USA discussions happens on cooperation to defend our planet. Rough quote:

"We all knows no one has nuclear weapons in orbit, as it is forbidden by treaty XXX

But in the hypothesis some nuclear weapons actually existed in orbit anyway... how good would they perform against an asteroid ?"

In the end, >!maybe 50 % of the nukes randomly failed before reaching the asteroid!<

Not sure of the exact movie, probably [Meteor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(film))

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