"Steve wrote:
"A 10 meter astroid would be similar ... our best defence against a larger extinction event astroid."

Steve, before taking the controls of Asteroid videogames, you need to dig up an old Spirograph toy. They are really fun. There you can learn all you want about deflecting *astroids* with Spirograph and make all kinds of orbits and deflect them more or less with a pen. For real, you can draw the most awesome astroids with a spirograph set.

Or if you are technical, and too old for toys, this ought to clear it up:
http://online.redwoods.cc.ca.us/instruct/dhicketh/math50c/projectfall99/specialplanecurve/astroid.htm

Over a few years on the list you've always written *astroid*. Your calculations for unablated, unfragemented meteoroid sizes more if you decide to fix that. Yeah, its just a typo, and some people in this world can't even spell their own name. Just a shameless plug for Spirograph:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/150653856668

Kindest wishes
Doug


-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Dunklee <steve.dunk...@yahoo.com>
To: Bernd V. Pauli <bernd.pa...@paulinet.de>; meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com; Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_w...@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Tue, Aug 30, 2011 2:54 pm
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit


Greetings all:
A 10 meter astroid would be similar in size to the original size of the Ash Creek meteorite, or about the size but not mass of the International Space Station. Its most valuable use would be as a projectile to to deflect an 100 meter or larger NEO. If capture failed and it hit the earth it would most likely
cause no more damage than the headlines preaching doom!
Being able to capture it and use it to deflect a larger NEO would be our
best defence against a larger extinction event astroid.
Cheers
Steve Dunklee


--- On Mon, 8/29/11, Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_w...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_w...@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth
Orbit
To: "Bernd V. Pauli" <bernd.pa...@paulinet.de>,
meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Date: Monday, August 29, 2011, 11:01 PM
Hi, Bernd, List,

A mere 10-meter spherical asteroid? (To a physicist,
everything is spherical at the first approximation...)
That's 523.6 cu. meters. At a rock density of 2 to 3
metric tons per cu. meter, that's somewhere between
1047.2 and 1570.8 metric tons.

As a disaster, it's on a par with dropping a grand piano
on a cartoon coyote. It would be a slow approach and
MIGHT drop 10 kilos of meteorites, but probably not
unless it grazed the atmosphere at the correct angle.
However, a 10-meter asteroid is a tiny playground.

What if it were a 100-meter asteroid, ten times bigger,
and lots of surface (and about 1,000,000 tons). If you
accidentally dropped that object on the Earth, you'd
have a 250-meter crater and 0.2 MegaTon blast.

Too big to play with.

A 33-meter asteroid? Airbursts at 14 kilometers and
splatters a lot of fast fragments, but no craters. From
this I conclude that the 10-meter asteroid grab is a
Modest Proposal.

Unless, of course, it's an iron...


Sterling K. Webb

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bernd V. Pauli" <bernd.pa...@paulinet.de>
To: <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 4:51 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In
Earth Orbit


> "Interesting idea. What could possibly go wrong?"
>
> What if the nudge is a little bit too strong?
> What if the Moon interferes?
>
> What if this NEO is thus sent hurtling toward planet
Earth?
>
> - utter devestation
> - millions of people killed
> - wildfires
> - tsunamis
> - earthquakes
> - tons and tons of material ejected into the
atmosphere
> - etc., etc.
>
> Bernd
>
>
> ______________________________________________
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