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Isaac Ji Kuo
@isaackuo@spacey.space  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

@cstross That's assuming the dinos have nukes, of course. But there are a whole slew of advantages to nukes on this scale. They scale up REAL WELL due to the constant cost of the expensive fission primary and the cheapness of lithium deuteride.

And most of the "propellant" comes from the asteroid itself, as large swathes of the surface get vaporized with each nuke.

And you don't need to waste propellant matching velocities with the asteroid ...

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fediverse_user
@fediverse_user replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

@isaackuo @cstross FWIW, these guys argue a short-notice Chixculub class impactor could be pulverized with nukes, such that the majority misses earth. There's obviously a lot of uh… implementation details, but the basic argument that current tech could deliver the required amount of energy seems plausible

https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10663

arXiv.org

Don't Forget To Look Up

We discuss a hypothetical existential threat from a 10 km diameter bolide discovered 6 months prior to impact with one case being a comet and the other being an asteroid. We show that an extension of our work on bolide fragmentation using an array of penetrators but modified with small nuclear explosive devices (NED) in the penetrators, combined with soon-to-be-realized heavy lift launch assets with positive $C_3$ such as NASA SLS or SpaceX Starship (with in-orbit refueling) is sufficient to mitigate this existential threat. A threat of this magnitude hitting the Earth at a closing speed of 40 km/s for the comet and 20 km/s for the asteroid would have an impact energy of roughly 65 Teratons TNT, or about ten thousand times larger than the current combined nuclear arsenal of the entire world. This is similar in energy to the KT extinction event that killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Such an event, if not mitigated, would be an existential threat to humanity. We show that mitigation is conceivable using existing technology, even with the short time scale of 6 months warning, but that the efficient coupling of the NED energy is critical.
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