I was watching the movie Armageddon and it made me think of a few things. We would probably not need to send a crew to blow the asteroid in two, I think we could still send a warhead with enough power to blow it out of our orbit if we had enough time. This is just for my own interest but i do not know enough physics to do this. So i decided to ask the experts.
I want to know the best type of nuclear warhead to use to deflect this asteroid, What is the explosive power needed and how much time NASA will need to launch this warhead.
I made a little research on a few items we may need to figure this out so hopefully i got all the information. It would also be nice on the process you take to figure this out. I think it would a great conversation starter.
I think the asteroid was made of iron, so lets say this asteroid will be iron so the density of iron is 7500.0 $kg/m^3$, 10,000 $m$ in diameter and a velocity of 20,000 $m/s$
The largest nuclear warhead ever created clocks in at about 50,000 megatons, so how far would the asteroid need to be for NASA to have enough time to deflect the asteroid?
If the launch speed is 11 $km/s$, how long would it take for the warhead to reach the asteroid?
And so based on the velocity of the warhead, and the asteroid, and assuming NASA can launch the warhead as soon as the asteroid is detected, how far away from the warhead impact point can the asteroid be when detected and still be deflected and not crash into the earth?
I'm excited to share what I find from you guys with the physicists I know and see what they have to say. :)
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