Re:Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid
by chaosmachine on Thursday December 31, 2009 @01:11PM
(#1024668)
I wonder how large an impact would be required to alter the earth's rate of rotation. I think we could all use a slightly longer day ;)
Re:Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid
by rbanffy on Thursday December 31, 2009 @01:45PM
(#1024734)
You could do that with a lot of smaller impacts. Also, it would be advisable to hit all major plates equally, to reduce the risk of major quakes on fault lines. If we were going to try to do it in one impact, we'd better evacuate the planet before too.
And have no plans to return in less than a couple hundred years.
It could, however, excavate quite a crater that could become a very large water reservoir.
But I would prefer to do such major construction projects with nukes - the delivery time and positioning are much more controllable. Also, we have a whole lot of them sitting around and the freedom to use larger formats (they wouldn't have to ride on planes or missiles) could yield much cleaner ones too.
I suppose governments won't like the idea of civilians operating gigaton+ nukes, but that's something to be resolved between politicians and lobbyists.