Oh, one last note. So one of the reasons you do Fermi estimates is when you think about a problem in detail, you realize that there are showstopper problems you didn’t think of unrelated to the basic challenge.
For redirecting asteroids, you’ve got a much bigger problem than “which nukes, how big, which rockets, how many, which asteroid, how far”. You can probably work all that out and you can probably come up with a plan that will work…BUT…
The problem is that when an asteroid is 10 years from impact, you don’t actually know if it’s going to impact. You’d be spending a very large amount of money to prevent a disaster that only has a modest probability of happening.
And the second problem is that when your predictions have such wide uncertainty bands, if you go and attempt to redirect the asteroid, you might send an asteroid that was going to miss onto a collision course with the planet…
These risks would create a lot of debating, a lot of uncertainty paralysis. Of course, once you wait for the predictions to tighten up, it’s too late.
I’ve been studying this problem based on SamuelA’s learned predictions and found a suitable simulator for this exercise here.
What I’ve discovered is that the asteroids themselves really don’t present too much of a problem, but the little flying saucers that get smaller and faster each wave are really tough. More research needed, but I think he may be on to something.
By the way my attitude is, that by the time you started plugging in assumed values, I’d be asking the technical basis for those assumptions and values. Just like I did with my “good work on the asteroid one.” I’d want to know what warhead you used, which is still a question you have yet to answer. I would obviously trust the results of a computer simulation–it’s a machine after all. I would question/validate the data going into that simulation first, and then look at the data coming out.
You are attempting a redirect. The Fermi problem is not used as a scientific basis at my employer. Great for mapping out problems for further study, but it is not a well accepted method of engineering. Actual engineering is a well accepted method of engineering.
I’ll say it: do some math (you know you love it). Or tell me what warhead you used in your “Fermi estimate.”
Which is why I think about a problem and deal with those showstoppers before I bring them to a colleague/post them on an Internet message board.
YOU set up the hypothesis that it would in your OP in the asteroid thread. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot now! Are you backing away from your own stated problem?
To simplify, here’s your circular argument (in paraphrase): “SoaT incorrectly solved an asteroid problem. I know how it’s done.” (Multiple pages in that thread about it being done). (This thread). “It’s too expensive to try to do with certainty.”
But you’ve indicated that you could " year+ building a computer simulation of the asteroid." As I’ve pointed out, and will forcefully state now, once you narrow down the uncertainty bands with data from a technically sound source/basis, your cone of uncertainty shrinks, and you can tweak the data going into the simulation to either move the cone or shrink it to give you a course of action.
I’m sensing uncertainty paralysis in you since answers don’t seem to be going your way.
Ignored.
Tripler
For the rest of y’all, you aren’t ignored. At least not for now
By the way, none of ya’ll have shown up in any threads in GQ or IMHO that I read. You’re all mouthbreathing wastes of space. Even Tripler. This board is much better without you on it.
Of all the people that have posted in this thread, I don’t think there is one proctologist, and yet I am fairly confident that we can all find the asshole here.
Perhaps he’s an ostrich, thinking that if he can’t see us we don’t exist. I might favor that interpretation except he’s shown that he doesn’t quite understand how the ignore function works.
I see he’s posted 110 times in this thread. 110 effing times in a thread 480 posts long.
Just think, if someone with a the slightest clue devoted half that much effort to inventing time travel, we’d all be able to fast forward past this speedbump called SamuelA.
