--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
This rock is 320 (m)eters in diameter, right, not (m)iles?
Per Schweickart letter's to NASA Administrator Griffin, "Based on current data, the asteroid (320-400 meter diameter) will pass approximately 7,000 km inside the geostationary orbit and will be an easily visible naked eye object to observers in Europe and Africa early that evening [on 4/13/2029]." http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=161 If it were miles, the title to this thread would have been "Should 2004MN4 - be named the 11th planet Xena - or just 'The End of the World?" and I'd have already quit my job for extended period of debauchery. -:)
Wouldn't it be just as easy (technically) to vaporize it completely than deflect it with certainty?
Finally, a use for all that Cold War hardware! Considering the track record of Star Wars tests, do you really want to trust DARPA? I mean, this asteriod isn't going to have homing beacon on it like the Star Wars mock-ICBM test targets - to make sure the test goes well. Opps, well, er --- maybe Schweickart does have a point. Maybe we do need a homing beacon on it. - Canopus56(Kurt) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com