From: Party of Citizens (citizens@vcn.bc.ca)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 16:57:55 MDT
NASA and USM are considering going out and moving smaller rocks in
the asteroid belt which may collide with earth. What is the biggest rock
you think could be moved around by modern rockets?
POC
On Thu, 22 May 2003, Lee Corbin wrote:
> POC writes
>
> > [Anders calculates]
> > > Pluto weights around 1.27e22 kg and has a velocity of 4.74 km/sec.
> > > So we need a comparable amount of kinetic energy to get it to move
> > > as we want. 0.5 mv^2 gives 1.43e27 J of energy. Since the
> > > expression "take it for a spin" assumes that it can be done in a
> > > short while, say an hour, we need 3.96e25 W of energy.
> >
> > Thank you for the calculation. Can you put that in conventional rocket
> > terms for us laymen?
>
> Well, for some interesting reason, such large energy
> expenditures always make more sense to me in megatons
> of you-know-what. (Ah, the legacies of growing up
> during the cold war.)
>
> One megaton equals 4x10^15 joules. So if we take Anders'
> 3.96 and divide by 3600, that comes out to approximately
> 10^22, so one might think of it as about one million 10
> megaton H-bombs (per second, I guess).
>
> Lee
>
>
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