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You will need rockets that are designed to escape earth. What will happen to ANY asteroid composed of anything, metal, rock, ice, rubble pile, cotton candy, or all those combined, when you explode a nuke at the correct distance from the asteroid? There will be an intense pulse of heat for a fraction of a second. What will that do? It will melt, blister, fuse, cause outgassing, and explode volatiles, amounting to thousands of tiny rockets pushing in the same direction. This will push the pile a tiny bit without breaking it up. If you have a few hundred of these explosions, to make sure you have enough, you can fine tune for maximum course change. This is way cheaper and faster to accomplish, than gravity tractors. We have thousands of nukes. We just need the technology to deliver them into the path of the asteroid.

The simplest defense would be to harvest/mine a potentially dangerous solar system asteroid long before it is on a straight path to Earth, using transport rockets that take off in such a way that they are slightly displaced to another orbit, just because rocket(s) started from it. Most sensible for some metallic/solid asteroids. Mining on the asteroid would also allow nuclear weapons (useless here on Earth) to be placed there, in the core, just in case they are urgently needed before the asteroid is fully depleted but on its way to Earth. The best time to blow up such an asteroid is when it is on the other side of the sun from Earth, 300 million kilometers away. Before blowing it up, matter could be extracted from it in this way: Of course, to begin with, what is needed is proper detection of all objects orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 200 million km. What is needed, then, is a cloud of drones/satellites to do this.. Then extend distance in the future to further areas of solar system. Not exclusively in accretion disk orbit, but also sphere around the Sun, to detect also non-solar objects..

Obviously, humanity would use the nukes that are available, which already exist, and are plenty powerful and numerous. Nobody will try to create a 100-megaton nuke for this project.

Yes, find a rubble pile out in the asteroid belt and experiment fusing them with nukes. That is far enough away. People will complain about launching such a rocket. Would there be any risk of it accidentally exploding and scattering radioactive material in the atmosphere? It would not be an accidental nuclear explosion, right?

There would not be a shock wave. It would be just an intense, short pulse of heat. ChatGPT says: "The distance of the explosion from the asteroid and the yield of the nuclear device would be crucial. For rock fusion to occur, the heat and energy must be sufficient to melt the surface material. If the explosion is too far or the yield is too low, the energy might dissipate without causing significant melting." "In theory, a nuclear explosion could cause surface melting and outgassing, potentially pushing a "rubble pile" asteroid. However, the practical implementation of such a strategy would require precise control over the explosion's distance and yield, careful consideration of the asteroid's composition and structure, and strategies to mitigate the risk of fragmentation. More research and testing would be necessary to evaluate the feasibility and safety of such an approach."

There are 3 things necessary to intercept an asteroid: find them early, find them early, and find them early. We don't know when, so we need to think of a method than can be put into action sooner than gravity tractors can. How far away CAN we send nukes to intercept? As far as you can send them. So again, you need to find them early so you have time. Also work on gravity tractors, in case we have hundreds of years to prepare, but they will take a lot longer to be ready for action, and we may not have that much time. If you break it apart far away, the pieces will fly apart, but I am wondering if a nuclear blast, at the correct distance, would melt and fuse loose material together, and it would not break apart a rubble pile.

Why would such a warhead be used as an example here? Who has 100 megaton warheads? Who is capable of delivering a 100 megaton warhead? Why is the orbit of the moon being used as an limit? If all we would get is a minor effect why bring this up at all? This example is nothing but fear mongering, if you wait until an object is within the orbit of the moon you are up the creek, such an object is just hours, possibly minutes from impact at that point, do the math! Why keep using these exaggerated examples instead of realistic scenarios? We need to plan ahead, get the infrastructure in pace before the threat looms over us but until that infrastructure is in place the easiest and fastest method should be used. Nuclear warheads delivered to the target via existing technology as far from us as possible would seem to be the best option we currently have. An asteroid impact is a serious event quite possibly apocalyptic anything other than our best efforts is suicide. Exaggerating the danger of nuclear technology does not serve us.

It's a Mortise Guage. https://www.harborfreight.com/6-inch-mortise-gauge-94645.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortise_gauge Was someone into carpentry or woodworking?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most, if not all, asteroids are spinning. A single nuclear pulse will last a fraction of a second, so the outgassing will last only seconds. So, I believe outgassing will push for only a second. Am I wrong? Gravity tractors are an indirect method while a series of nuclear explosions in its' path works directly, thus mission accomplished sooner. That is interesting having fuel reserves in space to somehow dock with the gravity tractor(s). That will take a lot more time than nukes, and we DON'T HAVE TIME.

No, the size tag didn't work when I tested it in The Sandbox. But I'll test it here: This is hopefully big This is hopefully small Ok, now we are getting somewhere: This is 1 This is 2 This is 3 This is 4 This is 5 This is 6 This is 7 This is 8 My mistake was evidently my choice of number, assuming it to follow the numbering in this forum's editor, rather than the numbering I've seen in another forum. Thank you for your assistance.

So you found your answer. It’s the size tag. size=number This text is very small This text is big

Fact Check: The Battle of Choisin Reservoir (장진호 전투) began on 27 November 1950 during the Korean war when a Chinese force of 120,000 men under the command of General Song Shilun (宋时轮) surprised a UN force of just 30,000 men under the command of Major General Oliver P.Smith - (N.B. UN = ‘United Nations’ *not* American. British Marines and two Regiments of the British 3rd and 7th Army were present, as well as American Marines). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chosin_Reservoir Over the next 17 days, the UN force managed to break out of their encirclement and successfully withdrew to the port of Hungnam. Both sides suffered heavy casualties from battlefield action, and from the freezing weather with temperatures as low as -36F. The UN forces suffered around 13,000 casualties (c.1100 killed) while the Chinese are thought to have suffered almost 60,000 casualties (around 29,000 batttle casualties). For which reason the battle is usually evaluated as a ‘Pyrrhic Victory’ for the Chinese - i.e. one in which the losses substantially outweighed any possible military gains.

Also puzzled as to why these particular metrics should be somehow the measure of a nation? You can keep your giant fungible junk excreting economy and Martian pissing contests and bullet trains. To many Americans like me, these are of far less importance than how we aspire to grow each person's character and freedom for learning and creative exploration - for all our citizens. There's a reason when you search the phrase "innovation hubs" on a search engine that a disproportionate number are located in the U.S.

From nothing, you can only grow, gaining experience as you go.. without detection the rest is irrelevant.. They are useless if they warn days or weeks before a close flyby of an asteroid hundreds of meters in size. IOW, disallowing for any sensible reaction (which requires years of preparation, or in extremity months) Now you start with nothing. Then you build one, launch, place in orbit, then you build a second, launch, place in orbit, then you build a third, place in orbit.. then you repeat it over and over and over.. Endless work. Some will have problems sooner or later and need to be replaced. "Cloud" is "a dynamically allocated number of resources to meet current demand."

What would be the values of: v=? do-red=? do-yellow=? for angle Beta=0 degrees