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jleader
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08-29-2002 04:41 PM ET (US)
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Geeze, what a lot of fuss and laughter about a basically sound idea. The Yahoo article doesn't actually say how the airbags are to be used, but the New Scientist article they reference, at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992730 makes things a little clearer. The idea is to use the airbag as a cushion between the near-earth object and ordinary rocket thrusters. If you give the object a little nudge early enough, and it doesn't disintegrate, you can alter its course enough to avoid the Earth. The 49'th post on Yahoo's message board points to Burchard's actual proposal at http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc081902.html Don't judge someone insane based on what you read on Yahoo! |
| davegroff
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08-29-2002 03:04 PM ET (US)
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Its completely insane. There were some very funny suggestions on the Yahoo discussion associated with the article. My fave was "how about a giant detour sign, pointed towards the sun?"
Another guy worried that if the airbag got punctured, it would zip around the solar system, deflating like a baloon.
Personally, I think a giant ACME spring on the impact site will take care of the problem.
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| Stefan Jones
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08-29-2002 02:16 PM ET (US)
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Rather than bag, use the fabric in the form of a sail. Just a small course change, early enough on, would do the trick.
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| Amo
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08-29-2002 01:32 PM ET (US)
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It's insane. It's all about action and reaction. Kinetic energy. Mass and velocity. High-school physics stuff.
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| Eli the Bearded
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08-29-2002 01:30 PM ET (US)
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I doubt it would work, too. An airbag coupled with a propulsion device,
so that the airbag acts as a giant cushion to safely push the comet,
that has potential and helps avoid the possibility of the object breaking
up and parts staying on a collision course when moving a comet.
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| interiot
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08-29-2002 01:04 PM ET (US)
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Would this even work? It seems like airbags would behave differently in space than what he's thinking of. The only way to deflect a rock in space is to push off of it with some other mass. He explicitely states that they'd try to get the mass of the airbag to be as low as possible, and just use air to deflect the rock. Having a mile-wide airbag would work on earth because it would push against the atmosphere, but that wouldn't happen in space. In my humble opinion, the asteroid would just catch on the airbag and push it along, with very little change in course.
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