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Asteroid, clean energy, and asteroid again!
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Indeurr
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:30 pm    Post subject: Asteroid, clean energy, and asteroid again! Reply with quote

Asteroid, clean energy, and asteroid again!




Average yield of the LGM-118 Peacekeeper was 300 Kilotons. The Minuteman 3 does possess capability of space flight: altitude of 700 miles or 1,120 kilometres, its top speed is 98.5% of velocity needed to break free from the Earth's gravity (boosting it should be a minor and quick--to--solve problem).

Using The Peacekeeper and similar foreign warheads as well as Minuteman 3's rocket engines and similar foreign engines could help as destroy any asteroid racing towards Earth, if the asteroid is noticed when it would be too late to change its path.

How?

Instead of firing one weapon of 1000 megatons, we could fire hundreds of smaller nuclear devices set to explode at the same place and time.



Here, however, even on Earth, all the nuclear devices currently in Humanity’s possession most likely would not add--up to 1000 megatons.

It would take 3333.3 nuclear devices such as the Peacekeeper (carrying 10 warheads each) to make--up the number of 1000 megatons.



On the other hand, if engines propelling those rockets were transferred to the program aiming at building huge and long--term nuclear reactor in space to provide a substantial portion of the energy for the USA, Russia, and China (each with own space reactor), it would make the idea of the space reactor build next to the International Space Station feasible.



As to the method of deflecting an asteroid, I do propose Space Rams.

Space Rams would be remotely operated space ships placed into orbit around Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. Space Rams' engines and trajectory would allow for them to keep on slowly, but near perpetually accelerating.



In the case of likely impact and when the warning does come too late, a swarm of space rams would be aimed at the object with a hope that their cumulative momentum would be enough to push it off the collision trajectory.



In the mean time, Space Rams, using near--inexhaustible engines, would keep on collecting scientific data.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 6:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great ideas, but with our economy today, those are the last thing on the list that the government would fund. We already have $23.7 trillion dollars to pay up which is over 1.5 times more than our GDP, $14.2 trillion. Also, the European Union although not a country, has a GDP of $18.3 trillion. All of these stats are from the 2008 International Monetary Fund.

There is another idea to deflecting asteroids though. You can focus solar energy with a large solar-like sail in space. That creates thrust from the materials that is being vaporized aka "The Yarkovsky Effect". The orbital momentum is changed by rotating particles (basically thermal photons which are the particles of light) due to the emission and absorption of solar radiation. The process takes a few years, but we already have computers that can detect asteroids with plenty of time ahead. They use parallax to find the distance. My astronomy teacher was a big nerd.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do understand your objections, but I did read a book by a Russian author (15 years ago) about paradoxes of space travel; a lot of space missions were based on his calculations.
Space Rams would serve dual purpose:
-1) they would collect scientific data on ... periodical basis (it would be nice to compare changes);
-2) they would keep on gaining speed by using gravity of Jupiter and possibly Saturn to get faster.
Their engines need not be to be expensive or large; they must keep on speeding up.
The idea is not how large, but how fast. Even a small object with a lot of velocity can possess a very high momentum.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If they decide to reduce the number of the nukes world wide, again, then there, likely, would be a lot of availible rocket--engines to carry out for nearly free the parts of the giant--long--term nuclear reactors into the space!
Adavantages?
The reactors may be ... unsave, since they would be in space as long as the enrgey output would be high!
It would be easy to use hyperactive conduits, since they require extreme cold, and even the near--space is very close to the absolute zero!

The reactors would end their lives burning in the Sun; and the left--over radioactive debris would be used to build cores of the Moon 2 and Moon 3 placed in the Lagrangian--point orbits as well as to re--start the magnetic--defense field of Mars by creating, deep underneeth the surface of Mars, artificial hot spots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_science#Earth.27s_electromagnetic_field

----
nota bene:
The Sci Fi shows and movies and writers do get it wrong; since an Earth--made space war cruiser would have to be huge as well as it would be in space (very very cold), there would be no problem, even with modern tech, to provide it with a defensive force field capability!
Most Sci Fi directors and authors wrongly assume that Earth--style armoured plating would have been the only defence and that force fields would not be availible on the very 1st Earth--made space war cruiser.

The conduits for the forcefield as well as the generators most likely would be placed either on the outside of the armour of the space war cruiser, or beneath a thiner external armour. If the force field were to be penetrated, the conduits would provide additional protection (just like engine in Merkava provides additional protection for the crew).

nota bene:
Venus, in spite of the hostile environment, would provide a near--perpetual energy for any base--it would have to be a military base designated to allow Humanity to survive any major disaster hidden underneath the thick clouds of Venus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_field
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Time Machine may seem to be just a fantasy! However, the Moon is an offshoot of a collision between Earth and another planet, and the Moon is made of much lighter material. Therefore, there should be a clear and enforced prohibition against the creation of the subterrenian habitats on the Moon! Any digs deeper then 100 feet should be forbidden!

You could call it paranoia, but without the Moon, we would have not existed, cannot survive, and for a long time into the future, we will not be capable of survival as a species without the Moon!

The Moon while being very dense, possess an unusually small core.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Internal_structure


"(...) depletion of metallic iron in the Moon."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Formation
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's only a theory. No one really knows where the moon came from. Maybe that's why we have oceans because some asteroid hit us and took off a chunk of Earth's crust. Or maybe the moon was just a result of left over particles within the accretion disk from which our solar system was formed. It doesn't help us survive. It's just an object trapped in by Earth's gravity causing it to orbit around us due to centrifugal force.

Oh and we already collect data from asteroids-physical data. Shoemaker is an example. Also, them momentum thing about sending space craft into deep space to bring back data is not new either. Look at voyager, it's alrady passed the heloisheath and it's 10.095 billion miles away from the sun. It's the furthest man-made object from Earth. Which also holds the Golden Record which contains sounds and images as well as our location just in case some extraterrestial life forms find us. We also have a satellite containing human DNA from that astronomer in a wheel chair that suffers from a nervous disease, another guy, and a Latina actress.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Angelo Z wrote:
It doesn't help us survive. It's just an object trapped in by Earth's gravity causing it to orbit around us due to centrifugal force.


The moon is the reason why we have gravity, the reason why we have oceans and basically one of the biggest reasons for life on earth. If we didnt have the moon, there would be no gravity and no water, no oceans, no life. The moon revolves around the earth in such a way, that it creates gravity. I completly forgot how, but its the summer so i dont have to use my brain Very Happy
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ssteve235 wrote:
Angelo Z wrote:
It doesn't help us survive. It's just an object trapped in by Earth's gravity causing it to orbit around us due to centrifugal force.


The moon is the reason why we have gravity, the reason why we have oceans and basically one of the biggest reasons for life on earth. If we didnt have the moon, there would be no gravity and no water, no oceans, no life. The moon revolves around the earth in such a way, that it creates gravity. I completly forgot how, but its the summer so i dont have to use my brain Very Happy


No, the Earth has its own gravity. Every object has its own gravity. The moon's gravity is much weaker than the Earth's so that's why the moon orbits around the Earth because Earth's gravity "pulls" on the moon. You may wonder why the moon won't just crash into us. The answer like I said before is centrifugal motion. Since the moon is moving at a high speed in one direction, then it will continue to do so without being pulled into the Earth. That's why when you throw a ball forwards, it doesn't fall directly to the ground, instead it falls on the ground in a curved path as it descends. If we put Jupiter next to us, we would start orbiting around it because the mass of jupiter is much greater than that of Earth's. We have our own gravity too. It's just that our mass is so small that nothing that's visible orbits around us. Atoms and electrons orbit around us as well as other undiscovered subatomic particles, but we can't see them.

The sun has its own gravity. That's why our planet as well as the other 7 planets (pluto is no longer classified as a planet) orbits around the sun. After the sun, our solar system orbits around the center of the Milky Way. Our whole solar system moves at 250 km/ sec and it takes 220 million years for our solar system to complete one, full orbit around the center of the Milky Way.

The reason we have oceans and life, is because our planet is located at the right distance away from the Sun. Too close to the sun, and we end up like Mercury, too far away, and we end up like Neptune except that Neptune is a gas giant and Earth is not so instead Earth would just be a cold rock. Another reason for oceans is that we have a magnetic field. Mars for example has water trapped under its ice caps but it lost its magnetic field long ago. The cause for our magnetic field is because of the rotation of iron and nickel within Earth's core, causes magnetic field. That partially applies to motors except that a motor generates electric current and not a magnetic field. It already has magnets but the spinning of a copper coil generates electricity. Earth will lose it's magnetic field because our planet is progressively cooling down.

There is one more reason for life. First, I already said that we have to be at the right distance away from the Sun. However, life is composed of several elements and those elements come from somewhere. Our sun was formed from a supernova-which means that stars may or may not explode depending on its mass. It's the supernova itself that causes the many different combinations to yield certain elements particularly the heaviest ones such as iron. Our Sun is what gave us life and what will take it away. That goes into another story. According to the HR diagram, our Sun is a main sequence star with approximately 6000 Kelvins and a luminosity close to 1. It's a yellow giant meaning that our Sun isn't that big of a star, but smaller stars live the longest. Our Sun has several types of fuel that it burns in order to radiate heat. It's now burning Hydrogen and after all of the Hydrogen is burned, it will start burning Helium and then Oxygen. There are other elements which I forgot. Anyways, once it's at it's last type of fuel, the Sun will start to expand because Helium fusion radiates even more heat. It's the expansion of the Sun itself that will kill us. It turns into a red giant and it will grow up to Mars's orbit. That means that every planet up to Mars will be engulfed by the plasma (the type of matter that the Sun is made of) and it will basically turn us to cinders. Fortunately, that won't happen for another 7 billion years which is slightly more than half the age of the Universe! 13.73 billion years.

Of course there are a lot more questions to be answered such as, where did the matter that makes up our Sun come from? That basically goes back all the way to asking how and where did all of the matter within our Universe come from? That's where the Big Bang theory comes in as well as others.

I learned all of this from my astronomy class last year. Believe me, if you ever think about taking astronomy, there is a lot of math involved too. There are formulas for star luminostiy, parallax computations, etc. If you've ever taken physics, I highly doubt that they didn't make you memorize Newton's laws. In astronomy, you need to memorize Kepler's laws of planetary motion for example.
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 5:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Moon by keeping the tilt of the Earth more or less stable allows for more or less stable climate: without the Moon the differences in temperature even within moderate climate zones would be too big for life as we know it to exist.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability#Orbit_and_rotation

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_and_Moon
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit_and_relationship_to_Earth

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indeurr wrote:
The Moon by keeping the tilt of the Earth more or less stable allows for more or less stable climate: without the Moon the differences in temperature even within moderate climate zones would be too big for life as we know it to exist.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability#Orbit_and_rotation

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_and_Moon
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit_and_relationship_to_Earth


Yes, but humans are intelligent enough to know what to do. If the Earth tilted all the way, then North America and Asia would become the new ice caps so that means that Antarctica will be like North America as it is today. Humans can just move if they want to. Plant life will probably die, but the change in tilt will cause other continents/islands to to become "green". The Earth's tilt also changes throughout the year, this should not be confused with the mistake that most people make: the distance away from the Sun.

One more thing, the tides would be more stable without the Moon because nothing will be pulling on the large bodies of water anymore.
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