[Alpha_Monkey]

I'd imagine actually intercepting the thing would be relatively easy, landing too (unless it's rotating on more than one axis). Once there they could probably attach some kinda thruster.

However. The amount of thrust needed to significantly alter its flight path would probably be...a lot. And the amount of fuel to provide that thrust would probably be prohibitive. Probably.



Anyway, assuming this thing did hit (land, sea....the moon) what kinda damage are we talking about?
If anyone feels like quoting Billy Bob Thornton.....um, don't?

[an0n]

They should nuke it just to see if they can.

Just totally cluster-**** it with everything they've got. Sure, it'd rape all our electronics, but it'd make a pretty show....

[Ashrak]

They should nuke it just to see if they can.

Just totally cluster-**** it with everything they've got. Sure, it'd rape all our electronics, but it'd make a pretty show....

10k 1000 megaton nukes in close earth orbit == ****ing lightshow maaaan




nut a comet as raw materials? it is a bloddy snowball, nothing but ice there afaik.

[Mefustae]

We'll just land on it, drill several holes deep inside it, and lo- no, wait, that's been done. How about we open a giant hyperspace wind- no, that's been done too. Why don't we mount laserbeams on three different aircraft and have them focus their firepo- dang it! Oh, I give up. Extinction ftw.

[Dysko]

Ashrak's idea is good. Just launch the nukes at 11:59 PM of next sunday and... Happy New Year!

[Ace]

Even if NASA does nothing, or their plan fails, you gotta believe the Russians have a nice, fat nuke ready and waiting to greet it./i]

You do realise that when there's a nuclear detonation that destroys Apophis and the Russians admit to doing it to save the Earth it's just a cover to hide the fact that it slammed into one of the several thousand geosynch nuclear armed satellites up there from the Cold War that would make Thatcher and Reagan piss their pants.

...and by having a press release about the plan to divert threatening asteroids some 20 years before hand it'll seem legit.

Of course since the nukes are aging there's the chance nothing will happen, but all bases must be covered.

Ace sits back as he only has a few months to live as Polonium powder is surely but slowly added to his food, water, and keyboard.

[neo_hermes]

why don't we just repeat the bruce willis film except we instead send a bunch of the drunkest folks we can find...we'll have to look in ireland...or australia..

[Nuke]

well if i wanted to turn an astroid into a space craft. id land a robotic probe or perhaps even a manned spacecraft on it and attach banks of ion thrusters. youd also need a way to steer, a reaction control system, this may be based on chemical or ion trusters. or you could use inertia wheels or gyros like the hubble, those wouldnt use fuel but power. if we want it manned we would need to burro into it and hollow out a control center, depending on the integrety of the material, if its pourous youd need to seal the interior probibly coat it with plastics to prevent pressure loss, life support equipment, computers, fuel tanks, a bar could then all be installed.

operation would be kinda akward for an astronaught. the asteroid might have a funky center of gravity youd need to use asymetrical thrust to compensate. thruster re-orientations (turns) could take days, and you still have to overcome gravitational torque effects (and considering the size of the rock could take considerable energy to merely compensate for this, let alone manuver). it might be more aeffective to have ion thruster arrays pointing in all directions to provide thrust along multiple axes. the rock's rcs thrusters would attempt to maintain a solid stellar alignment, you have engines pointing everywhere, so a compuiter would calculate the position of every engine, toe position of cg and create a burn solution to create thrust along any vector, witout rotating the engines. sorta like the way a borg cube manuvers.

an astroid of considerable size and composition could even yeilt enough space to have massive zero g factories within them. not only could mining operations be undertaken on the asteroid, but the astroid could also bea mobile factory which would find asteroids of value, intercept them, mine them, antd process ore onboard. it would probibly work best in gather/process cycles, after mining a considerable haul of ore, you would reposition closer to the sun to power factory equipment. other than industrial production, they could also have a section for agricultural development comets and ice dwarves could be mined of water. bacteria could be introduced to steryl space dust to render soil. after suffietient material was gathered from deep space, the ship could get in close to the sun for growing season. sence you can maniver closer or further from the sun you can percisly control growing conditions and produce considerable crop yeild. you could turn a rock like eros into a trhiving spaceborn metropolis, completely self-suffieteint in every way, cept maybe after awhile everyone would be mutated and wierd.

[karajorma]

Am I the only one thinking that all the SG-1 fans are pissed off that it's not called Anubis instead?

Or that it's not been hollowed out and filled with naquadah

[Shade]

Well, we don't know about that last part yet. There may yet be hope

[Nuke]

can i go up and fly it into the earth

[Mobius]

Am I the only one thinking that all the SG-1 fans are pissed off that it's not called Anubis instead?

Call the asteroid Ulysses so you satisfy Ace Combat Fans. Also,build something like Stonehenge to destroy it.

[Harbinger of DOOM]

Quick, get Bruce Willis and Ben Afleck on the phone! And Robert Duval too. Maybe if we sacrfice them to the gods, they will be appeased and spare our wretched planet.

screw them we need O'Neil, Carter, Jackson, and Teal'c, I mean how many times have they killed him already.

[perihelion]

@ Nuke.

[thinking...]  You know, that might actually work.  You'd need a whole lot of noble gas for the ion thrusters, though.  At first, I was thinking that the specific impulse of those things would be so small that it couldn't work, but thing is, you can keep them running for years on end so long as you can keep them supplied with reaction mass.  Over those times scales, the change in momentum might be enough after all.  I wonder if there's anything on Apophis itself that could be used in that capacity?  Can ion thrusters be run of something other than xenon, neon, or other noble gases?

Not so sure about gyros, though.  I mean, yeah, you could, I guess, but ye gads, those things would have to be spinning fast to make a dent on the spin of something that big.  I think you'd be better off using ion (or other electric) drives for torque to stabilize the thing first, and then use gyros to keep it stable.  Even in microgravity vacuum, there are material limits to how much RPM our bearings can handle!

[WeatherOp]

Here is how we do it...


We pump all kinds of mess into the atmosphere, making Global Warming so insanely strong it creates a Super Hurricane that blow it back into space. Ofcourse the only drawback is the we die in the process, but dang wouldn't it look cool.

[Flipside]

I vote for an orbital ping-pong bat with a 25km diameter

And maybe some guy down in NASA with an Atari 2600 Paddle controller

[karajorma]

Well, we don't know about that last part yet. There may yet be hope

If it is then nuking it would be a REALLY bad idea.

[achtung]

Just beam-free-all that Deimos the CIA has hidden in orbit.

[starfox]

Am I the only one thinking that all the SG-1 fans are pissed off that it's not called Anubis instead?

Or that it's not been hollowed out and filled with naquadah

Exactly, what I had in mind...words "Apophis" and "Asteroid" just matched.

[neoterran]

Nuking large objects in space is useless. All it would do is turn a giant bullet into a giant scattershot shotgun blast. Same effect on earth.