4 ms·

LEO may not even be safe, would it? Afaik a large part of the damage was the heating of the atmosphere from enormous amounts of secondary impacts due to the deb

LEO may not even be safe, would it? Afaik a large part of the damage was the heating of the atmosphere from enormous amounts of secondary impacts due to the debris - many of these small rocks probably flung up into LEO, though it would be interesting to know how risky a stay in LEO would be during such an impact. If you want a SciFi story touching many such topics I highly recommend "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson.

perihelions 4y ago
Parameters for 300 km range (200 km STS altitude + downrange) https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=300&distanceUnits=1&diam=17500&diameterUnits=1&pdens=2700&pdens_select=0&vel=20&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&tdens=1000&wdepth=100&wdepthUnits=1 https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?d... Thermal Radiation: Time for maximum radiation: 11.5 seconds after impact Visible fireball radius: 223 km ( = 138 miles ) The fireball appears 169 times larger than the sun Thermal Exposure: 7.72 x 10^9 Joules/m^2 Duration of Irradiation: 49.7 minutes Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 2590 (The physics aren't the same, but just for the sake of comparison: Chicxulub's 4e8 megatons-TNT of energy, at 300 km, is 1/r^2 equivalent to a 4 megaton nuke, at 30 meters).
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >(The physics aren't the same, but just for the sake of comparison: Chicxulub's 4e8 megatons-TNT of energy, at 300 km, is 1/r^2 equivalent to a 4 megaton nuke, at 30 meters). Altitude 300mi is not the same as linear distance to blast 300mi At 300mi up you could be over a different continent and get a good view and you would probably want to be so that you get a better view from the side.
Someone 4y ago
It would help that Mars has a less dense atmosphere than earth (about 1%), so there’s less stuff to heat. On the other hand ejected material would face less resistance from the atmosphere and thus reach larger heights (even ignoring Mars’ lower gravity)

perihelions 4y ago

Parameters for 300 km range (200 km STS altitude + downrange) https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=300&distanceUnits=1&diam=17500&diameterUnits=1&pdens=2700&pdens_select=0&vel=20&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&tdens=1000&wdepth=100&wdepthUnits=1 https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?d... Thermal Radiation: Time for maximum radiation: 11.5 seconds after impact Visible fireball radius: 223 km ( = 138 miles ) The fireball appears 169 times larger than the sun Thermal Exposure: 7.72 x 10^9 Joules/m^2 Duration of Irradiation: 49.7 minutes Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 2590 (The physics aren't the same, but just for the sake of comparison: Chicxulub's 4e8 megatons-TNT of energy, at 300 km, is 1/r^2 equivalent to a 4 megaton nuke, at 30 meters).

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>(The physics aren't the same, but just for the sake of comparison: Chicxulub's 4e8 megatons-TNT of energy, at 300 km, is 1/r^2 equivalent to a 4 megaton nuke, at 30 meters). Altitude 300mi is not the same as linear distance to blast 300mi At 300mi up you could be over a different continent and get a good view and you would probably want to be so that you get a better view from the side.

Someone 4y ago

It would help that Mars has a less dense atmosphere than earth (about 1%), so there’s less stuff to heat. On the other hand ejected material would face less resistance from the atmosphere and thus reach larger heights (even ignoring Mars’ lower gravity)