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You'd presumably get the nukes to the asteroid with conventional chemical rockets, although I suppose some sort of Project Orion propulsion system is not out of
by Kadin 9y ago
You'd presumably get the nukes to the asteroid with conventional chemical rockets, although I suppose some sort of Project Orion propulsion system is not out of the question. That's what you'd want to do once you got there; you'd basically be counting on nuclear weapons as an incredibly energy-dense form of rocket fuel.
There's nothing that comes close to the MJ/kg of a modern thermonuclear weapon.
- QAPereo 9y agoSadly we have nothing that comes close to getting a fleet of nuclear warheads far enough to intercept before it’s too close and we shotgun ourselves. Most likely forms of diversion involve years of planning and deployment, and that’s minus the hasty R&D we’d need to do. For some discussion of the specifics... https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7960/could-we-deal-with-an-asteroid-threat-given-current-technology https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7960/could-we-deal...