3 ms·

can this be weaponised to direct asteroids to a particular place on earth? just asking for a friend.

• JulianMorrison 11y ago
  My guess is no. Reason: steering towards is a smaller target than steering away. If you can only point a laser from over here, it's hard to steer an asteroid any way except "thataway" (normal to the most visible surface).
  • viggity 11y ago
    unless the asteroid was closer to the sun than the earth, then you could push it so it hit earth 6 months from when you pushed it.
• ChuckMcM 11y ago
  The available thrust directions are limited given that the laser is presumably in orbit or perhaps at a Lagrange point. Of course once you have a multi-mega (or giga) watt laser in orbit you can pretty much dictate terms to anyone else who wants to use space. After all one person's 'space junk' is another persons 'operating surveillance satellite' :-) I'm a much bigger fan of the idea of using drone space craft with an ion engine which has essentially a gooey blob/harpoon on the front of it, that you attach to/spear the desired object, and then turn on your ion engine to provide enough delta-v to put it where it won't hurt anyone.
• ceejayoz 11y ago
  Probably, but it'd require nation-state level of resources to build and get the system into orbit, plus months/years of lasering. It'd become pretty quickly apparent what you're doing and your satellite would fairly rapidly become an expanding cloud of debris.