How Paintballs Could Force an Asteroid Off Course

[fogducker]

Damned fat fingers! SG of .56

 

[wannabepro]

Or use the logical method of dealing with asteroids...
Nuke the living hell out of 'em.

 

[wannabepro]

And for you people who say that it'll just break into smaller pieces.. They'll burn up in the atmosphere.

 

[AirstrikeKitten]

[citation][nom]wannabepro[/nom]And for you people who say that it'll just break into smaller pieces.. They'll burn up in the atmosphere.[/citation]
However, these parts may still be large enough to survive descent and cause large amounts of damage, such as the Tunguska event. (This was only 5-10 megatons) It is also said a rock 10m in diameter could cause an explosion as large as the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945

 

[f-14]

there's about 3,500-4,000 paintball players that attend oklahoma's d-day game i'm sure if you put them up in space they'd be able to cover that asteroid with 85 tons of paintballs in 15-30 minutes. that's 3 16# cases of 2,000 count paintballs per person that attends http://www.ddaypark.com/paintball/dday/

 

[f-14]

messing with asteroids, sounds like a great precursor to war with alien bugs except we are the bugs wiping out some buenos aires city of aliens.

would rather see a solution that send these asteroids into the sun.

i kind of hate to wipe them out as they might just be the free ride taxi system we need for space travel some day.

 

[f-14]

also whose to say changing their orbit in the solar system/universe won't put them close to another celestial body's gravity that changes it's orbit to crash into the earth next time it passes around?

 

[pixelpusher220]

[citation][nom]Cats_Paw[/nom]I got an idea, everyone post one idea to rock the asteroid of its course, lets see who comes out with a better idea. Here is mine:Launch into space some rockets that will not explode, but attach to the rock from one of the sides and then turn on to modify its Trajectory enought to avoid earth. As far as i know, in space the only forces to atract a comme is gravitation, so if for an asteroid to hit earth it must have a certain path, modifing it by just a bit (far enought thou) should send it far away enougth. Well we still have a 2012 comming, right? .[/citation]

The problem is most asteroids are tumbling in space, rotating on all 3 axes. Attaching something would relatively quickly wind it up and down to the surface. But, parking said rockets a few hundred feet above the surface with small thrusters to offset the gravitation (and not aimed at the surface) will allow the rocket to gravitationally attract the asteroid and move it off its current trajectory. Technical name is a Gravity Tractor.

 

[pixelpusher220]

You are forgetting about inertia. A rock the size of Earth has a lot of inertia and will take more than one of our tiny rockets to make a change in its path.

They aren't the size of earth, not even close. Apophis is roughly 270 meters in diameter.

 

[pixelpusher220]

Shooting 5 tonnes of Paint at an oblong object , in space, moving incredibly fast with some sort of device capable of doing so. Ok , so one has been holding the bong for far too long!

Remember that in space, speed is relative. The 'gun' shooting the asteroid will be relatively stationary compared to the asteroid.

Same as when the Shuttle docked with the Space Station. Both objects were moving extremely fast, just in the same direction and so they can dock nice and gently.

 

[adgjlsfhk]

I can't believe no one has thought of this yet. duct tape several tones of helium balloons to the asteroid. Once it enters the atmosphere, it will get pulled away from the earth.

 

[Zhou]

Tie a very gigantic balloon around it? Or make a bubble wrap in space that can cover Earth from incoming big ass rocks in space?

 

[j0um]

Someone's been playin' too many paintball games, hiding in the GRASS

 

[wl589]

First off computers weren't built in a garage and all these scientist come up with crazy stupid ideas so if they happen to be right they can take the credit. This reminds me of the idiotic theory that all of matter is a hologram of sorts and what we see isn't real. Yeah, that crap was on PBS.

 

[Guest]

I have a perfect idea: If we allow the asteroid to hit the Earth, it will definitely be pushed off course! The best part? It's effortless and free! There is also the chance that the asteroid will be entirely destroyed, so we never have to deal with it again!

I know; elegant solutions are almost always simple. Thank you, thank you.