The Whole Planet Almost DIED!

Yah, the entry angle is actually kinda tight and is/was referred to as the reentry corridor; in this article from Air Force Mag in 1961, note the narrow corridor height. You may also recall the Jules Bergman example from the Apollo 13 movie where he noted that the corridor was equivalent to the width of a sheet of paper placed against a basketball...so yes, in many cases the rock will skip off the atmosphere. :eek:

The main aerodynamic objective on the Apollo and all escape-speed reentry vehicles is to develop the maximum possible lift with little regard for drag. Maximum lift occurs at very high angles of attack for all vehicles at hypersonic speeds. Therefore, the Apollo will reenter the atmosphere with its nose up at a thirty-degree angle of attack or greater. Its drag as well as lift will be very high so that its lift/drag ratio is low. For this reason, escape-speed reentry vehicles are often called high-lift high-drag configurations.

High lift is necessary on the Apollo to widen its reentry corridor and to relieve the requirements on its guidance system. The dramatic effect of lift in widening the corridor and increasing the safety of moon vehicles returning to earth is best illustrated by first considering the ballistic vehicle which cannot develop lift.

The ballistic vehicle returning to the earth from the moon must fly down a corridor only eight miles high just above the atmosphere, if the maximum decelera+tion load is limited to ten Gs. If the vehicle comes in slightly above the corridor, it will travel past the earth and begin to orbit out through the Van Allen radiation belts. If it comes in below the corridor, the reentry angle will be too steep and the vehicle will go into dense air too quickly where the deceleration will reach overload proportions very quickly.

The only method of widening the corridor for the pure-drag vehicle is to increase the deceleration load. If this limit is raised to twenty Gs for a very short period, just about the most the pilot can take, the safe corridor becomes twenty-two miles high. The guidance tolerances of this corridor are almost the same as those required to send an ICBM nose cone 5,500 miles and have it hit within one mile of its target. In other words, the ballistic reentry vehicle is marginal for the trip to the moon.
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From: http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1961/August 1961/0861space.aspx
 
Just want to comment that the main thing between size, mass, impact speed, and all of that fun jaz is size of the object as it hits the earth. 100ft sure could do a lot of damage. But unless it was only made up of iron the chances of the full 100ft of asteroid hitting the earth would be slim to none.
 
A number of countries die, or one, if it lands on america/russia/china/canada and more metal for the rest of us,

But I think a 100 ft asteroid would cover a lot of the earth is dust or something... maybe a number of tidal waves too.
 
R4CK3R said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the things velocity has something to do with it as well. A very fast moving 100ft wide object could do some damage given the speed of impact.
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Possibly the same as the Tunguska blast, we'll see how the 1300 foot asteroid in November does.
 
Steve said:
Did you feel that "swoosh" earlier? That was that asteroid, discovered just last week, whizzing by the Earth. Scientist say that it was only 100ft wide but they probably just didn't want to scare us, you know it was a planet killer. ;)
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"The asteroid was discovered on June 22, 2011, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) pair of robotic telescopes in New Mexico, and according to rough estimates, the asteroid's length is between 10 and 45 meters (30 and 150 ft).[5]"

"Emily Baldwin of Astronomy Now said that there was no threat of collision, and should the asteroid enter Earth's atmosphere, it would "mostly burn up in a brilliant fireball, possibly scattering a few meteorites", causing no likely harm to life or property on the ground.[5]"
 
webmastir said:
Luckily, I was able to use my super powers to hold it back.
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Darn you, you thwarted my evil plan!

But just you wait, this was simply a demonstration of my wicked power.

MWAHAHAHAHA...

Laugh with me, Jocko!

F-Gutierrez-09.jpg


:p
 
I saw a thick streak of white light las night. Don't know what it was though as I've seen flashing lights also in tragectory paths of passing satelites.
 
The sad fact is that it seems all the near misses came out of nowhere. I doubt we'd realize something was going to his us until it was ... hitting us.
 
No.... Didn't you read? They knew a whole week it existed! Seemed a bit misinformed about the trajectory but that's okay. We'll probably have time to send millions of nukes against it and do pretty much nothing to a planet killer.
 
Serpent said:
No.... Didn't you read? They knew a whole week it existed! Seemed a bit misinformed about the trajectory but that's okay. We'll probably have time to send millions of nukes against it and do pretty much nothing to a planet killer.
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Do you watch many movies ?
 
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