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From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: "Rising Odds Asteroid That Briefly Threatened Earth Will Hit
 Moon"
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 13:17:25 -0400 (EDT)
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)
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Dimensional Traveler  <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>On 4/18/2025 5:14 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:
>> 
>> Silly question perhaps, but could a standard ICBM be fired into space
>> and have a hope in hell to (when detonated) turn a collision into a
>> near miss?
>> 
>> (Am pretty sure I read an SF story where this was a theme)
>
>No, not really.  ICBMs are not made to reach escape velocity to start.

You don't need to reach escape velocity, you just need to keep plugging
along.  You can certainly make it into orbit with an Atlas or a Titan
as many satellites have done in the past, but of course the payload to
orbit is much smaller than if you just needed to get as far as Moscow.

So the question then becomes "can you get a big enough bomb out far
enough?"

I think the only ICBMs we have left today in the US are Minuteman IIIs.
These are solids, and I think the reason why they got kept when the 
others didn't was that the time to launch for solids is very short and
the whole point of the ICBM is to bomb the other guy first. The solids
used on the Minuteman were adapted for use on the Conestoga rockets which
were capable of getting up to geosynchronous orbit.  So could you do
that with an unmodified Minuteman?  I don't know but it would be an 
interesting premise to build a novel around.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."