Originally posted by carolm:
Clark, obviously, is infinitely more accurate and probably much more powerful than an ASGARD rocket.
Accurate because he has much higher delta-V (no fuel constraints). More powerful? Well, maybe, but if someone had advised him how to deal with the thing
properly, there would have been no need... for most of that episode!
See part 2 of
Imbalance for details.
So Nightfall was 17 miles wide or whatever and they were sending *A* rocket towards it.
*If* it had hit its target as intended, would it have succeeded in destroying the meteor?
Wouldn't it take multiple rockets? I can't imagine ONE rocket having enough explosive capability to destroy it [maybe nuclear? but I don't remember them saying it was and that seems as dangerous as shooting nukes in Independence Day].
Several points here, and they all have to be taken with the caveat that we have to forget about the overwhelming hand of the writer, who was going for dramatic effect, not logic.
So, why just the one missile? Several possibilities: how many suitable missiles did the military have at the time, or how many could they construct before Nightfall (or its fragments) hit? More may well be better, but if you don't have more, you have to make do. Similarly, what was needed in the way of C&C,
i.e., targeting? Could whatever system they were using cope with multiple missiles, even if they were aimed at the same target? It should be considered that it is quite possible that using ASGARD to attack an asteroid might well have been a desperate piece of improvisation, using existing hardware for a mission that it was not designed for. Such things have been done, and succeeded, but that doesn't guarantee that
this lash-up will work, or that it will produce anything as capable as a specifically-designed system. We don't really know what ASGARD was supposed to be capable of.
As for the warhead... well, if anyone was stupid enough
not to put a nuke on the thing, they should have been tied to the nose of the missile and told to do the job themself! In an end-of-the-world situation like that, you use the biggest, most destructive weapon you have because if you
don't, you are unlikely to survive to regret it.
<Cue GRAMS: Tom Lehrer, "We Will All Go Together When We Go">More to the point, a large nuke is the only known weapon that has a chance of affecting something the size of Nightfall, and even then it's not guaranteed to do a perfect job. Remember that when Clark hit the asteroid (like a twit), it broke up, but the fragments were still large enough to wreak havoc on the Earth. So mere kinetic energy (usually the biggest damage-causer of any collision on space -- satellites, anyone?) may not be enough; so if you have a single shot, you make it the most powerful one in your arsenal. After all, it's not as though you're going to regret the waste of using a bajillion-ton nuke when a mere zillion-ton warhead would have done the job... you now know.
What if the meteor had been bigger? Twenty-seven miles? Thirty-seven miles?
How long is a piece of string? Without some numbers, it's impossible to say, except that the mass of the asteroid would be greater by at least the ratio of the sizes, and probably more (anything up to the ratio of the lengths cubed; it depends on the shape of the thing), so it will be even harder to destroy. Personally, I wouldn't care: if something that big is heading for me, I'll use whatever I have that can do the job. Remember Rule 37: "There is no overkill; there is only 'Cease Fire' and 'I need to reload'." When dealing with megaton or gigaton asteroids, that is doubly apposite.
Phil
