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From: "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Earth-grazing asteroids as a military resource
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 13:43:27 +0100
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On 2025-03-10 15:28, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On 10/03/2025 11:52 pm, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> On 2025-03-06 17:44, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>> On 6/03/2025 10:54 pm, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>>> On 2025-03-06 04:06, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>> On 6/03/2025 1:45 pm, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>>>>> On 2025-03-06 03:05, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>>>> On 6/03/2025 8:28 am, Dave Platt wrote:
>>>>>>>> In article <vq8jtq$299g5$1@dont-email.me>,
>>>>>>>> Bill Sloman  <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>>> Do you really expect that any nation can do such a thing, and 
>>>>>>>> not have it
>>>>>>>> detected and traced back to the nation in question?  Outer space is
>>>>>>>> a lot more "visible" than something like the Manhattan Project was.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But there is a lot of it, and most of the action would be 
>>>>>>> happening a long way away from the earth - more than 93 million 
>>>>>>> miles, on average.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Russell's teapot :-p  :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> Not exactly. My claim was simply that observation would be 
>>>>> difficult - not impossible - in the same way that it isn't 
>>>>> impossible to intercept an intercontinetal ballasitc missile in 
>>>>> mid-flight, but that the practical difficulties mean that nobody is 
>>>>> trying to do it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Reagan's "Star Wars" proposal pretended that it was practical.
>>>>
>>>> The thing is, it is impossible to prove that there are no objects 
>>>> out there in an intercept orbit with earth.
>>>>
>>>> If you find one, you have proved it exists, but you can not prove 
>>>> the negative.
>>>
>>> And you'd be mad to try. Meteorites hit the earth every day, so there 
>>> are clearly lots of small objects out there with intercept orbits 
>>> with earth.
>>
>> Obviously I refer to objects of a dangerous size.
> 
> And that means that you don't know what you are talking about.
> 
> There's a whole distribution of space junk up there. The bigger they 
> are, the more damage they can do when they hit the surface of the earth.
> 
> The historical record - in terms of meteor craters big enough to have 
> survived for a few million years - demonstrates that big earth grazing 
> asteroids are pretty rare. I imagine that somebody has worked out what 
> the distribution is, at least roughly.

There is evidence of dangerous "objects" hitting the earth and causing 
destruction in the "historic" age.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

We were just fortunate that it hit a non populated area, otherwise it 
could have destroyed a city. The explosion was between 3 and 50 megatons.

> 
> https://www.researchgate.net/ 
> publication/278734323_The_Compositional_Structure_of_the_Asteroid_Belt/ 
> figures?lo=1
> 
> There doesn't seem to be any reason to imagine that the distribution 
> isn't smooth and monotonic.
> 
> A really small meteor - one only just big enough to make it the surface 
> of the earth - could still kill you if it hit your head.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
> 
> may have killed three people, but it did knock down a lot of trees.
> 
> It seems to have been a stony asteroid, rather than a lump of nickel- 
> iron, and seems to have come apart at an altitude of of between five and 
> ten kilometres.
> 


-- 
Cheers, Carlos.