From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 11:55:58 MDT
On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ### All of the above might be right and it would illustrate my point -
> moving asteroids about is more complicated than initially thought. Instead
> of one large nuke giving a big boost, you need to fiddle with tens of
> thousands of small ones, or play with carbon fiber networks.
Well, if its a dirty iceball or a loosely compacted asteroid
it represents a much smaller threat. As soon as atmospheric
entry puts any stress on it its going to fragment which makes
it much less dangerous. So we could withstand a strike of a
much larger (and therefore rarer) body of these types.
The worst thing is something which is compact enough to hold
itself together (e.g. iron-nickel asteroids) that will make
it through the atmosphere largely intact. If I recall, the
nickel mines in Sudbury/Ontario(?) are actually harvesting
the remnants of such a body.
Robert
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