3 ms·
This is definitely one of the possible approaches, which is being studied too. As other commenters mentioned, this would be much harder technically and much mor
by IlliOnato 3y ago
This is definitely one of the possible approaches, which is being studied too. As other commenters mentioned, this would be much harder technically and much more expensive than "nuking", but in some particular scenarios (I think when an asteroid is very loose and easy to break into large parts) this approach has some advantages.
Of all the approaches I've read about the coolest in my mind is to paint a large part of the asteroid surface with high-albedo paint, thus using Yarkovsky effect to alter the orbit. This however requires a lot of paint!
- adolph 3y agoCould a similar effect be had by painting half asteroid surface with a lower-than-surface-albedo material like vanta-black? Not certain which would be harder....
- IlliOnato 3y agoI guess if an asteroid is has high albedo already, a dark paint would be better for this purpose then dark. What you want is to make sure that some parts reflect much more light than other parts. However, I don't think you need vanta-black for this. You hit diminishing returns on a thing like this; so something like common soot would do just fine. Most asteroids are rather dark, though.