UPIFri, 19 Oct 2012 15:58 UTC
Fantasy vs Reality: no, Bruce Willis can't save the day, and neither can your government.
Existing Russian rocket carriers could be redesigned to produce a rocket capable of destroying an asteroid, Energia chief Vitaly Lopota told the Russian state newspaper
Rossiyskaya Gazeta Friday.
"There are three large asteroids, including Apophis, whose orbits cross the Earth's orbit and which could hit the Earth in the next several decades," he said.
Astronomers say Apophis, discovered in 2004, could approach Earth as close as 24,000 miles -- one-tenth the distance between Earth and the moon -- in 2029.
A 70-ton rocket would be needed to change the orbit of an asteroid of Apophis' size by "towing" it away from Earth or destroying it with a thermonuclear blast, Lopota said.
Energia was prepared to construct such a rocket within three to five years, he said.
Comment: Not gonna happen...
Can Bruce Willis save us from asteroid 'Armageddon'? No, and neither can your government
Could it actually happen? Definitely not, say physics graduate students at the University of Leicester in England. [...]
Ben Hall, Gregory Brown, Ashley Back and Stuart Turner devised a formula to calculate how much energy would be needed to split an asteroid of the size depicted in the film. They reported in two related papers in the University of Leicester Journal of Special Physical Topics that it would require 800 trillion terajoules of energy to split the asteroid in two with both pieces clearing the planet. Unfortunately, the largest nuclear bomb known, a Russian monster known as Big Ivan, yields only 418,000 joules. Hence, they said, the project would require a bomb a billion times as powerful to save the Earth.
Moreover, the asteroid would have to be split at a distance of about 8 billion miles from Earth. That is, coincidentally, about the maximum distance at which such an asteroid could be detected, leaving no time for the group to assemble and travel to the body -- much less to have time for meaningful encounters with Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler along the way.
8 billion miles from Earth? Even with today's technology they can only spot extinction level event-sized asteroids the day before they whizz by...
13 June 2012:
Huge Asteroid to Fly by Earth Thursday28 January 2012:
Bus-sized asteroid shaves Earth with one day's notice
Big Ivan (or Tsar Bomba) was proof of the theory that there is no upper limit to the H-bomb yield, other than how much fuel can be supplied. They had a target of 100 megatons, but chose 50 instead because of load limits on the aircraft. Who's to say that an effort to deflect (rather than split) might be sucessful?
At least SOMEBODY on this planet has their brains engaged on the cosmic threat front.
Better to try than to watch helplessly as your civilization is barbecued and blasted to bits.
I say hats off to the Russians for the effort.
It certainly ain't going to be the WEST to the rescue.