Re: "Rising Odds Asteroid That Briefly Threatened Earth Will Hit Moon"

On Apr 18, 2025, The Horny Goat wrote
(in article<3kq50kti5kl74jv2mq0pjsv657co1t72cm@4ax.com>):

On Fri, 4 Apr 2025 17:23:21 -0400, Cryptoengineer
<petertrei@gmail.com>  wrote:

Note: I signed out while finding this, but it should be generally
available. If not, the point of the article is that it took only 10
minutes to create two canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon by tossing
rocks around.

>
Just to clarify. The Schrodinger Impact Basin, which the article
refers to, is 312 km across. This is 50% larger than the Cicxulub
Crater the ended the dinosaurs, which was crated by an impactor
10 km across.
>
The current asteroid, 2024 YR4, is about 60m across, and about
one five millionth the mass of the Chicxulub impactor. Its a city
killer, not something that would cause a mass extinction.
>
pt

>
Silly question perhaps, but could a standard ICBM be fired into space
and have a hope in hell to (when detonated) turn a collision into a
near miss?
>
(Am pretty sure I read an SF story where this was a theme)

A standard ICBM wouldn’t do; insufficient delta-vee to make it to the
target. Just one nuke wouldn’t be enough; multiple nukes, detonated at the
correct range and angle, could pull an Orion nuke-pulse-motor thing on the
inbound rock and change the trajectory. There would have to be special
rockets, several special rockets, with multiple warheads each. Big warheads,
multi-megaton range, if the intent is to shift a big rock moving at a high
velocity. And the timing would be critical; too far away, no effect or not
enough effect; too close, and the target breaks up into smaller but still
massive and dangerous chunks, some of which are gonna hit. Trivial it
ain’t.

There was a 1970s or 80s Analog story, ‘Industrial Accident’, involving a
slight problem with an inbound asteroid, redirected to be mined in Earth
orbit, except Something Goes Wrong and it ain’t headed for orbit no more.
IIRC the (Japanese) space mining company gets a few volunteers to hand-guide
nukes to divert it. The voluteers ride the nukes all the way in. Banzai!