Re: Nuclear Warfare in Space

> Can you say "Dinosaur killer"? For that matter since the asteroid is only
> going to hit at 10-15 km/sec and the impact energy depends on the *square*
> of the velocity, maybe throwing a smaller asteroid at a higher speed would
> be better. 6 G for a few days will give a velocity in the *thousands* of
> km/sec! (5e3 km/sec day 1, 10e3 day 2, etc...) At these speeds, who needs
> a warhead? Anything short of anti-matter won't even affect the outcome!

I've thought along similar lines as well. Find a small asteroid (say, a few
100's of tonnes). Attach a power plant, manoeuvre drive and control system to
it. Move it out of orbit, to a suitable distance, and let it head for the
target world for 4 weeks at 1G (keep the drives cheap, simple and expendable).
Resulting velocity = 10 x 4 x 7 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 0.24e8 m/sec. I'll let
someone else add in any relativistic calculations. But the gear needed could be
stuffed into an empty 50 tonne weapon bay on a cruiser.

> If anyone is interested, I'll dig out the figures from an old article
> on giant meteor strikes and convert the data to ship impacts on planets.

Yes, dig them out, and let's zap Capital! :-)

 "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]