From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 07:47:45 MDT
Spike wrote:
> If you think of a tricky way to change to velocity
> of an asteroid by hyper-accelerating small amounts
> of the material, the energy requirement goes way
> up. If you use less energy, you would use up more
> of the asteroid in reaction mass. It is a tradeoff,
> depending on how much energy is available and how
> much mass you decide to throw away.
>
### And then you also have to pay attention to the way your reaction mass is
imparting acceleration to the asteroid - since many large asteroids are
loose assemblages of smaller fragments, exerting a large pressure on a small
patch on the surface will only cause displacement of a fragment, and a lot
of the energy will be dissipated as heat by friction within the asteroid.
Instead of moving it, you will only heat it up. This is the reason why the
use of nuclear explosions to vaporize a superficial layer for reaction mass
will be much less effective than initially assumed, too.
Rafal
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