How To Prevent A Meteor From Hitting The Earth How many different ways can we protect ourselves from a meteor or asteroid from hitting the earth? This has been a question which has been asked many times over the years. It is something we have to consider, because we have reached the stage in our technology where we realize the danger these objects cause. They say ignorance is bliss, and if we think that is true, we have lost our ignorance in this area. We discovered the earth is hit by about 48 tons of meteors large enough to reach the ground every day. So far, we are talking about small stuff, not like the meteor or asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs. It is true the big objects heading this way are much rarer, but there is always the chance of being hit and it would not take something that big as compared to the size of the earth to destroy us because it could kick up debris which would blot out the sun and in a couple of years that would be the end as opposed to one so big it would explode the planet. One of the problems is we still do not have 100% ability to watch every object, and every once in a while, we find one which is almost upon us. Recently NASA conducted the DART test. This test was composed of a rocket which was hopefully able to hit a meteor which was orbiting a bigger one to see if we could change its orbit. The idea was to detect a meteor headed this way and change its course enough so it would not hit the earth. The test was connected on a body which was moving away from us so there was no chance of mistakenly changing the course so it might hit us. NASA has announced the test was so successful it exceeded expectations. This means we can change the orbit of some meteors, at least up to a certain size. Over the years many different proposals for getting objects to miss us which were on a collision course with the earth have been proposed. Some of which might be viable. One of the more complicated ones I remember was a proposal which sort of reminded me of the movie Armageddon. This was not because it used a powerful explosive, but because at the time it seemed it would need people onboard a rocket to carry out the scheme. The idea was to place powerful rocket motors on the body, ignite them and rocket the objects onto a new course. It didn’t seem to gather too much approval. Today we might be able to do something like this and not have to use astronauts, if we could develop robotics to carry out the mission. There is a movie made in China I believe which was fiction. It proposed an answer to the problem and that was move the earth. Gee, why didn’t we think of that? Just kidding, if it was possible that might be the most dangerous thing we could do. Can you imagine a miscalculation causing the earth to float out into space or into the sun? One idea which had been put forward was to used nukes to blast the meteor to pieces. It didn’t take long for scientists to jump on this idea and put it down. It was felt the blast would create problems for us even if it did blow the meteor into pieces because the earth would be subject to a shotgun effect. All the pieces would hit us causing tremendous destruction and probably much loss of life. This idea was deemed to be unworkable. Another idea which was put forward was to aim powerful lasers at the object if we could somehow have lasers powerful enough to do that which would cause the object to send out a vaporized stream which would then cause the object to be pushed into a different path. To do this we would have to have spacecraft equipped with powerful lasers which could get close enough to the object to affect this. If we are going to go to all this trouble it would be much easier just to ram the object as we have already done. The ion engine is a type of rocket engine that progressively builds up thrust. One scientist proposed aiming an ion engine at a meteor and allowing the thrust to build up and slowly push the meteor out of the way. I see no mention on how one would keep the engine in place or why it would not just be placed on the meteor to do that job. Another way which was proposed was to use solar energy to deflect meteors. This idea is similar to the effect the lasers would have on a body. The idea would be to create a vapor trail which in turn would slowly push on the object changing its direction. One would need either some sort of mirror to deflect the sunlight into a small beam or a magnifying lens of some type. It was estimated if we did this it would take about one year for a satisfactory deflection. As we become more advanced in our technology it might allow us to tow a meteor slightly to make it miss us by an allowable distance. Actually, this could turn out to be the best method in the future. Maybe another method might be pushing it out to a slightly more beneficial orbit for us. As spacecraft increase in power and speed this could become more feasible. Another method we might gain in the future is the ability to completely vaporize a meteor. There has been a lot of talk lately about experimenting on the glue which holds things together. The idea behind the disruptor used by Klingons in Star Trek was to disrupt the material holding something or someone together. I don’t like the idea of these studies because I know it will become a terrible weapon if discovered, but if we put that aside for now, it might be what we need to protect the planet from collisions. One idea was to paint the object with a highly reflective material. The idea behind this was the reflection from the sun would push the object into a new orbit. Another idea called for attaching a tether to the object which had a heavy weight on the other end which would alter is course. Some ideas are just too out there and others require too much complexity to be workable. The best solutions are the simplest ones.
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