Incoming asteroid

[Devastator_Mech]

What about if there's life in the astroid?

[Terror]

perhaps, but other than bacteria i don't know what life could exist on an asteroid

[IxianMace]

Fiction can become reality faster than you might believe. By the time an asteroid does get close enough to threaten us, scientists might have invented a way to land on it and blow it up so that the two pieces that break apart miss the Earth.

[Devastator_Mech]

Landing on it isn't a sophisticated method at all. The asteriod's gravity would most likely not be strong enough to hold the spacecraft down, the chance of crashing is extremely high and it would become unstable once it lands. Such mission would be close to a pointless suicide mission for the astronauts.

As someone has mentioned earlier in the subject, using some kind of explosive to blow the asteriod off course is a much better method. And atomic is the best type since it does not require oxygen and produces out the most power.

You need to track the asteriod while its still far away from the earth, home the nuclear missile in at the rigt angle and the job is done.

[Sardauker-Kirov]

Every day there is a chance a huge asteroid or comet will crash into earth, and they are not sure if the comet will hit earth. But we will see in the next years, right now, we need to focus on the current problems today. ;D

[Terror]

Landing on it isn't a sophisticated method at all, because the asteriod does not have gravity, the spacecraft will become unstable once landed and the chance of crashing is extremely high. Such mission would be close to a pointless suicide mission for the astronauts.

As someone has mentioned earlier in the subject, using some kind of explosive to blow the asteriod off course is a much better method. And atomic is the best type since it does not require oxygen and produces out the most power.

You need to track the asteriod while its still far away from the earth, home the nuclear missile in at the rigt angle and the job is done.

??? asteroids have gravity, EVERYTHING has gravity. The greater the mass, the greater the gravity and believe me, a texas size asteroid has a gravity that we will feel. The moon also has less gravity than the earth because the mass is smaller. Even me and you create a gravity field but because we are so small it is no noticable

[IxianMace]

the asteriod does not have gravity,

Incorrect. Asteroids do have gravity, but the gravitational pull of an object is proportional to its mass. Every human on this planet has a gravitational pull. Why don't we all stick to one another then? The reason being is that the Earth has a mass that makes the mass of everything else on it so small and negligible. That is why we all stay attracted to the Earth, rather than to anything else, because the gravitational pull of the Earth is much larger than the smaller masses on it. The asteroid will exert a gravitational pull on the space shuttle if it comes close enough to it.

[Terror]

well thank you for pointing out what i did the post before ::)

[IxianMace]

well thank you for pointing out what i did the post before ::)

That post wasn't there when I looked at what Dev_Mech had posted. You just beat me to it. :D

[Devastator_Mech]

Yes, as you say, everything does infact have gravity.

(Sorry, its my mistake. I'll edit it) But the matter of fact is, the asteriod must be traveling at high speed and you think its gravity is strong enough to pull the spacecraft down? Thats most likely NOT to be the case.

[Terror]

heehee :) well at least we had the same conclusion :D

[Sardauker-Kirov]

And as for nukes; launching a nuclear warhead against a meteor ( If the gravity caused by the meteor won't squish us from miles away. ) Will cause horrific consequences to the enviroment of earth.

[Devastator_Mech]

What are you talking about? What do you mean by squish you/us? It would of been blown off course and it wouldn't even nick the earth's atmosphere.

And what about our environment? You mean radiation?

The warhead is gonna explode while its very far away from earth, so what even its close to earth, its outta space!! Even our sun produces radiation everyday !! :P

[Sardauker-Kirov]

Is it even possible that you can change the course of a highly massed meteor? And as for the radiation.... The radiation will destroy the atmosphere, it will increase heat and possibly turn the planet into a desert.

[Devastator_Mech]

Lets make this clear. Whatever is used to blow the asteriod off course, they're NOT going to fire the missile to the asteriod head-on. That will help almost nothing but slowing it down very little. What they're going to do is blow it from the side, NOT FRONT. And there's a huge chance that it'll work.

(Logically think about it and you'll get the point IF your smart)

And so what even you could land on it, blow it up what Inuclear bomb? As what you've said, it's going to release out radiation anyway, also, you won't know if the nuclear bomb would be powerful enough to blow it apart.

[Terror]

ofcourse it can be brought out of course, but you'll need something heave for that, like another asteroid..... or a planet :)

[Devastator_Mech]

Not at all, but power of the bomb or whatever needs to be powerful enough (after calculating the asteriod's speed, size, etcetc.....)