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Can we destroy an asteroid with a high powered laser?






Maybe it is evil and will approach earth and just hover there until Leeloo and Korben Dallas come to the rescue.
 
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned Gravity Tractors. Asteroids have different densities and different structural and elemental make ups. So do planets, Kepler just found a planet that has a density about the same as styrofoam. Trying to blow up a rubble pile asteroid would cause more issues then it solves. Trying to push one with a blast or attached rockets would have similar results.
 
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A gravity tractor almost falls in the same category as Tractor beam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Gravity is far too weak to do use it, the tiny force gravity has can always safely be aplied directly to the asteroid. Unless it's a huge ball of cotton candy and you're pushing with a needle, but that scenario hardly sound threadning or realistic.
 
Bluefan said:
A gravity tractor almost falls in the same category as Tractor beam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Gravity is far too weak to do use it, the tiny force gravity has can always safely be aplied directly to the asteroid. Unless it's a huge ball of cotton candy and you're pushing with a needle, but that scenario hardly sound threadning or realistic.
Click to expand...

If the Asteroid is discovered soon enough, the Gravity Tractor is a Real solution that would work. It is possible. You have to remember, Gravity is the reason it's moving to begin with from the sun's gravity (or another Mass in Space). And it would only take a Slight Alteration Of the Asteroid's Course to make it miss the earth. (As long as it's discovered soon enough) It is a viable solution.

All these solution depend on us seeing it soon enough ( not just this one) because they all mostly take us launching something from earth and then to reach the object at a soon enough point that we can change it's path in some way. So they all will take the (have to see it in time) Idea. Other wise we have no way to Stop it from "Man's Means", if we don't see it soon enough.
 
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It's a real solution, but a useless solution. The example on the wikipedia site metions pulling a 100m large, 1 million metric tons asteriod with a 19200kg spacecraft for 10 years. That a quite a heavy spacecraft for a very long time. All that just to push with 0.032 newton. On earth that's equivalent to the gravitational force of 3 gram of material, less than a single sheet of paper. You need quite a weird asteroid if it can't take being pushed so litte.
You only need one day of pushing with the force you lift a heavy bag.
 
It's not just density of asteroids but also structure that you have to account for. Instead of cotton candy picture a asteroid made of mostly iron, but not just one solid piece of iron. Instead picture billions of small pieces of iron flying threw space, being held together by their own gravity. I think it may be very difficult to land and stabilize a booster on this type of asteroid. If you did succeed you could still only apply a small amount of force because to much may cause the asteroid to break up compounding your problems.
 
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