When the topic of asteroid deflection has been brought up, people have generally talked about explosions (i.e. nuclear explosions) as a means to deflect them from a collision trajectory, the deflection ideally being performed as early as possible before the forecasted impact.
Could magnets be used to deflect asteroids without having to explode things, and do so in a practical way? (A 100 m asteroid’s gravitational field is pretty small, and I’m thinking at a very large magnetic field could be nontrivial compared to the gravitational field, and therefore deflect the asteroid’s path.)
Does anyone have good figures on the composition of the average bit of cosmic debris? I mean, before everything but the nickle-iron is burned off on atmospheric entry.
You could use a Z-pinch to shatter the asteroid. All you need to do is build an enormous copper coil in space in the path of the asteroid. When it flies through the coil, shoot a few jillion mega-joules of electricity through the coil and the asteroid will be broken up into pieces no bigger than a Chihuahua’s head.
You firmly attach some electromagnets onto the surface of the meteoroid. You then use the electromagnets to deflect the charged particles in the solar wind. By doing this carefully, you can change the orbit of the meteoroid.
Richards is part of the Fantastic Four, not the Avengers; and Stark’s the kind of guy who’d just do something straightforward like build a huge energy cannon to blow it up or mount rockets on the thing to deflect it. He’s more of a super science guy than a mad science guy. Richard’s a good choice though.
That would require a system with moving parts, and be both more complicated and less reliable than a purely electromagnetic system. It would also have a much higher net thrust, which might be needed if we detected the object too late. But for an early detection, a magnetic deflector is more practical.
Let’s not be so dismissive of this idea. My understanding is that getting a grip on an asteroid is no simple task, and (without actually running any numbers) this approach seems feasible.
Using gravity to deflect asteroids has been discussed in the past. This magnetic approach could achieve the same pull using a much less massive probe, which means lower cost to get it there in the first place.
I’d think in terms of a conducting coil, not a permanent magnet. With a good combination of shielding the Sun and radiating heat into space, you might be able to get your coil down to superconducting temperatures passively, saving energy. You’d still need a propulsion source, but you need that for a lot of ideas. Benefits are that you don’t need to land on the asteroid (no small feat), and you can control the amount of pull if necessary, either varying the current, or rotating the coil orientation.
I’m thinking of a birds-and-stones approach… build a huge, ground-based laser system capable of vaporizing the asteroids and also use it to launch or otherwise accelerate interplanetary probes. And, if it doesn’t work, at least we have a huge, ground-based laser system, and those are always cool.