Thursday, November 10, 2005

But I still want to see a "Kaboom"

From New Scientist, some NASA people think the easiest way to deflect an incoming asteroid is just to park a big spaceship near it and let gentle gravity do its work:

'For a 200-metre-wide asteroid, the spacecraft would need to weigh about 20 tonnes and lurk 50 metres from its target for about a year to change its velocity enough to knock it off course.

"This is hands down the best idea I have seen," says Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "This will work, but you need to put a large enough spacecraft out there at the right time."

Not even half the fun of an atomic explosion.

No comments: