[meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit

From: Matthias Bärmann <majbaermann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:27:10 +0200
Message-ID: <C30BDA8A8EC84A439E2F8E76F5043E9E_at_thinkcentre>

Hi Sterling, list -

what concerns your 33 m. Asteroid scenario: the Tunguska event, following
actual insights, could have been caused by a stony asteroid (or comet) of
low density, diameter 30 - 50 m. That is same weight division. No crater,
indeed. But a bit more than "a lot of fast fragments". When I try to imagine
the fail of such an experiment over a megacity such as NY, I'd prefer much
hurrican Irene ...

Best regards,
Matthias


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Bernd V. Pauli" <bernd.pauli at paulinet.de>;
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 1:01 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit


> 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.pauli at paulinet.de>
> To: <meteorite-list at 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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Received on Mon 29 Aug 2011 07:27:10 PM PDT