Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark ASU and the science behind Nightfall

I wasn't sure whether this should be here, Fanfic Challenge or Off-topic, so feel free to move if needed.

I just read about Asteroid 2005 YU55. It was nowhere near the size of the asteroid portrayed during "All Shook Up", but how would the scientist's thoughts on how to save Earth from a killer asteroid stack up against the larger asteroid?


I know that there are many wonderful ASU rewrites that deal with Superman changing the trajectory (MLT's Curiosity ... The Continuing Saga being among them) or otherwise coming up with different options to deal with Nightfall (like Bob's When the Sky Falls ), but I wondered if the science of 1993 provided any true viable options other than ramming by Superman or the Asgard Rocket option used in the show.

Thoughts?


B

Hi BJ:
I also took a crack at the Nightfall Asteroid in my
"Nighttime in the Daytime" where a second chunk of a bigger asteroid did fall through the Earth's atmosphere. I haven't gotten it to the Archive yet, but it is here.
TOC
I've been checking my story against the news and it holds up pretty well. I looked at mirror bees and used the same asteroid photo.

Artemis

This is very interesting. Both techniques used in ASU were mentioned (Superman not included, of course) in the article. Glad to see that script writers did their homework. Guess that's why it was such a popular episode.

Glad to know that the asteroid wasn't planning on hitting us, especially since I didn't read the article until a day too late. I guess, this is a case where ignorance isn't always bliss.

What? We're about to be destroyed by Nightfall, hmmm? I guess, I shouldn't have stopped reading the newspaper and watching the news.

I am a little surprised that two things weren’t mentioned in the article. First, an asteroid could be “deflected” by speeding it up to pass Earth’s path earlier. Avoiding a collision is just making sure that two things aren’t arriving in the same place at the same time. Depending on where the asteroid is found relative to Earth and how much time there is to act this might be a good option.

The second thing missing also answers your question. Chemical rockets weren’t mentioned. Other than smashing the thing, all of the methods they discuss rely on low level but continuous energy being delivered to the asteroid to make the course correction over time. For a space probe low energy propulsion systems can’t be beat, but applying the same methods to move a large object in a limited amount of time isn’t necessarily as good. (How many mirror bees would it take to deliver the 3.1 million pounds of thrust of one shuttle SRB?)

In 1993 we no longer had a Saturn V to call on but we had both the Shuttle main and booster solid rocket engines as well as commercial rockets, such as the Ariane series, in production that could’ve been commandeered. A chemical rocket delivered to an asteroid and then fired would make a course correction much quicker than any of the methods they discuss. Delivering the energy to the asteroid quickly would give an earlier course correction. Earlier course correction means less course correction is needed since there is more time for the course deviation to add up. I would also think that chemical rockets would be able to deflect an asteroid closer to Earth than the other methods for similar reasons.

While nukes are not the best approach the idea is not to blow the asteroid up. You use the blast to push the asteroid. The ideal detonation is at a distance where the x-rays from the explosion will vaporize a thin layer on one side turning most of the energy into a push in the direction away from the blast.