[ExI] Asteroid on track for possible Mars hit

[Gary Miller]

Ben said: >> Breaking an asteroid up into small pieces, all still coming in
at many km/sec, would dump an enormous amount of heat into the atmosphere,
very quickly. I suppose you could say the sky would explode. >>

Since the blast would convert some of the mass to plasma, wouldn't that
energy and the blast tend to accelerate the mass off in all directions?

A portion of the mass would still be headed towards us and the small pieces
would probably be visible for tracking as a cloud.

Additional warheads could target this cloud and convert additional mass to
plasma and send more off course away from the Earth's gravity well.

Of course the second shot launch shortly after the first shot so that before
the cloud dispersed too much and was spread out too far it was hit again
repeating the process.

Each time this was repeated the larger portions of the remaining mass should
be accelerated off course.

And remember the Tunguska meteorite exploded in the atmosphere anyway
releasing 100% of it's mass and energy!

And the explosion was so large that no meteor fragments were ever found.

If it's mass had been reduced, and a portion accelerated out of our gravity
well, and the remaining fragments spread over a much larger area of Earth's
gravity well, then most of the fragments would have burned up upon reentry
creating nothing more than a colorful light show, right?