Timeline for Can we destroy an asteroid by spinning it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
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| Jan 30, 2018 at 12:44 | history | edited | PearsonArtPhoto♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 30, 2018 at 12:42 | comment | added | PearsonArtPhoto♦ | While that is true, the vaporized dust would still remain in the upper atmosphere, which if received in the massive amounts from a destroyed asteroid could cause issues. Small amounts aren't an issue, 60 tons of dust hits Earth every day. A large amount, however, could cause some fairly serious issues. | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 11:00 | vote | accept | Nikolai Frolov | ||
| Jan 30, 2018 at 10:56 | comment | added | Hobbes | "If all of that dust hit the atmosphere, it would probably stay up there": um, no. That dust hits the atmosphere at tens of km/s and will burn up. Meteor showers consist of dust-sized particles burning up. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 20:28 | comment | added | Vectorjohn | I don't think you can spin it even slowly and carefully. Once it's spinning enough not to hold together, you have a spinning collection of rocks but they're still gravitationally bound. The individual pieces are themselves spinning so the laser thing won't work anymore and you can't spin it any faster. So they'll coalesce right back into an asteroid. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 19:23 | history | edited | PearsonArtPhoto♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 29, 2018 at 19:16 | comment | added | John Dvorak | "This could cause a massive cooling event, similar to a volcanic winter" - plus the cloud would be radioactive, thanks to our efforts. | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 18:36 | history | edited | PearsonArtPhoto♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 29, 2018 at 18:20 | comment | added | Nikolai Frolov | I know all well how fracturing an asteroid is not a solution but consider we are talking about 50-200 years timeframe to deal with extinction-size asteroid (5 - 30km), and we will probably use something like ion thrusters or lasers evaporating the surface of the asteroid creating thrust, so really slow acceleration. I'm talking about an alternative to the gravity tractor and similar technologies | |
| Jan 29, 2018 at 16:05 | history | answered | PearsonArtPhoto♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |