[ExI] Planetary defense (PDC2011 summary)

[Mr Jones]

I just watched a program on this the other day, fascinating stuff.  Another
idea they mentioned (providing we had enough time), was parking a craft near
the object, to alter it's velocity (by a relatively minuscule amount) thus
changing it's trajectory to a 'safe' one.
I hope the nuke option truly is the LAST option.

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> and they are in orbits that are safe for at least the next century.


Provided no currently unknown variables don't lead to altered trajectory?
 Certainly some object we don't know about could come by and change things?

Mark Boslough showed that some of them might produce pretty destructive
> airbursts.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event gave us a taste.

with 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 PJ) the most
likely[7]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#cite_note-shoe-6>—roughly
> equal to the United States' Castle Bravo<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo> thermonuclear
> bomb tested on March 1, 1954, about 1,000 times more powerful than the
> atomic bomb <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy> dropped on Hiroshima<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki>,
> Japan, and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba>,
> the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.
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