Paintballs Proposed as Defense Against Asteroid Attack

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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Do you ever wonder what those big-brained Think Tank types think up for the betterment of mankind: Paintballs, yes paintballs for the defense of the Earth against asteroids bent on destroying our planet. The strategy might just work if they can design and build a paintball gun the size of Australia. :D
 
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I know the guy who thought this is up was someone from MIT, and Korean on top of that! But holy shit this is stupid. First the amount of paint to cover say an asteroid 1 km wide, lets assume spherically shaped for ease of calculation, that's nearly 10 million square feet of surface area. To completely cover it, using regular paint (1 gallon covers roughly 400 sqft.) would require almost 26000 gallons of paint and that's assuming no places get re-painted (which is pretty large assumption), so nearly a quarter million pounds of paint to cover it. Assuming the albedo shift would even do much to the planet (which I'm doubting), you might as well just fire a quarter million pound bullet at it.
 
even with the change in reflectivity do they understand how impractical it would be to send up that many paintballs? A space spray gun would be a better idea and then after it is done send it on a collision course with the asteroid to alter the trajectory. And have they even given the thought that paint wouldn't survive the bombardment of solar radiation without decaying, or the fact that paint doesn't stick to rock very well(especially with no oxygen or atmosphere to let the liquid evaporate letting the paint dry). So many flaws in this idea.

who's to say the solar wind won't just blow the paint off the surface. paint splatter is a fairly random chance thing, do they know the exact surface composition of the asteroid? How will they develop a "paint" to stick to the surface without knowing what the surface is. plus won't newtons third law mean that a large part of said paint would just bounce back from the impact, with little to no gravity what's to keep the "paint" splatter hitting the asteroid instead of splattering off into little "paint" droplets in space essentially wasting billions of dollars and thousands of man hours for a glorified confetti cannon.

took my posts from another site, my knowledge of physics is dismal at best but I see more than a couple flaws in this idea.
 
randomdean100 said:
who's to say the solar wind won't just blow the paint off the surface. paint splatter is a fairly random chance thing, do they know the exact surface composition of the asteroid? How will they develop a "paint" to stick to the surface without knowing what the surface is.
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It's called a primer coat duh! Everyone knows you shouldn't just paint a bare surface without priming it first. But, before that's even considered, the surface isn't exactly smooth, so are they planning to first shoot some filler at it to fill all of its craters and make the surface more even so they can get an even coat of paint on it in one shot? Maybe we should get Martha Stewart involved to choose the proper color combination... after all, there are only certain colors that are acceptable for an earth collision.
 
Rubberized paint so the asteroid bounces harmlessly back into space...
 
what about placing nukes close to its path and detonating them as it passes by to slowly push it off course?
 
How do you accurately change the trajectory of an asteroid taking into account all future trajectories?

Unless it's an imminent threat the phrase "If it ain't broke don't fix" it comes to mind because a haphazard change could create an even bigger threat in the long run.
 
I've heard this idea before. Well, the paintball part is new, I guess, but changing the albedo of an incoming object is an old idea and, if done properly and with early detection, would work.

Asteroids a hundred meters across are dangerous... doesn't need to be a dinosaur killer for us to need to deflect it.
 
Imaulle said:
what about placing nukes close to its path and detonating them as it passes by to slowly push it off course?
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I don't recall the specifics, but if I remember correctly nukes in space are not too effective, the whole lack of a pressure wave thing due to no atmosphere.
 
Ahem, if I may be so bold, hitting it with paint balls is stupid, why not just fire a really large mylar sheet at it, so that it wraps around the sheet, becoming way more reflective and all that other B.S. he talked about with the albedo will work even greater!
 
Obvious the easiest way to avoid the asteroid is to build a rocket engine that can move the Earth :D Solve global warming that way too, two bird heck yeah.
 
Nightbird said:
Obvious the easiest way to avoid the asteroid is to build a rocket engine that can move the Earth :D Solve global warming that way too, two bird heck yeah.
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We should trial this idea on the moon.

Plus if we need to, we could fly the moon around like a shield...
 
Carbon_Rod said:
It's called a primer coat duh! Everyone knows you shouldn't just paint a bare surface without priming it first. But, before that's even considered, the surface isn't exactly smooth, so are they planning to first shoot some filler at it to fill all of its craters and make the surface more even so they can get an even coat of paint on it in one shot? Maybe we should get Martha Stewart involved to choose the proper color combination... after all, there are only certain colors that are acceptable for an earth collision.
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:rolleyes:

The whole thing this proposition hinges on is the paints ability to change how the solar wind moves the asteroid, it's kind of hard to do that if the paint won't stick for more than a week; seeing that solar wind isn't something that will have a drastically quick effect...
 
We call up Japan, we get every male available on the planet, and we create the worlds largest bukkake party in space!!!! Surely that should make it white enough to reflect enough light to do all that BS he talked about :D
 
randomdean100 said:
:rolleyes:

The whole thing this proposition hinges on is the paints ability to change how the solar wind moves the asteroid, it's kind of hard to do that if the paint won't stick for more than a week; seeing that solar wind isn't something that will have a drastically quick effect...
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Ok serious hour... it's not solar wind, the paint won't affect that at all. It's albedo the reflectivity of the surface, the idea is that a photon of light comes on hits the surface imparts a little bit of momentum on the surface then the reflected photon also imparts momentum too as it leaves so you get twice as much pressure from the light compared to if the surface just absorbed the light.
 
Can we turn moondust into paint? It's pretty reflective as it is.

How accurate can we build a railgun to be if it were to launch projectiles from the moon? Even if we can't fire five tons of moon paint by itself, a probe carrying the paint would need less propellant if didn't have to launch itself.
 
sfsuphysics said:
We call up Japan, we get every male available on the planet, and we create the worlds largest bukkake party in space!!!! Surely that should make it white enough to reflect enough light to do all that BS he talked about :D
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You need therapy, seriously.
 
Sly said:
Can we turn moondust into paint? It's pretty reflective as it is.
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It's quite dull actually. The moon's albedo is about the same as coal, about 11% of the sunlight that hits it gets reflected.

That's an interesting idea though, build a mass driver on the moon and use that to shoot the asteroids. I'd think it would make more sense to just skip the paint and shoot metal slugs at it though. Maybe paint would make sense if it was a conglomerate asteroid and they were worried about breaking it into multiple dangerous chunks.

My question is what is this 'paint' going to be exactly? I don't see how paint balls would work, they might freeze in transit or boil off as soon as they impact. Why not use clouds of white chalk instead?
 
Well there's the solution to the whole sticking thing, use a powder substance that's statically charged so that it adheres to the asteroid, even in the vacuum of space. The "paintball" idea is still applicable, it would make deployment less complicated and more reliable. The probe could fire multiple "warheads" filled with a bunch of them and create a dispersion pattern meeting the required parameters. The real downside is I get the feeling if we ever get done in by an asteroid, it won't be because we don't have a magic paintball probe, it'll be because we didn't see it until it was too late to use any method save a direct nuclear strike and that won't be enough.
 
Imaulle said:
what about placing nukes close to its path and detonating them as it passes by to slowly push it off course?
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Oh yeah, nuclear powered paint balls should definitely do the trick. :D
 
sfsuphysics said:
I don't recall the specifics, but if I remember correctly nukes in space are not too effective, the whole lack of a pressure wave thing due to no atmosphere.
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I won't bore you with the physics but nuclear weapons work very well in space. Some more exotic designed like nuclear shaped charges are well suited for asteroid deflection.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Ok serious hour... it's not solar wind, the paint won't affect that at all. It's albedo the reflectivity of the surface, the idea is that a photon of light comes on hits the surface imparts a little bit of momentum on the surface then the reflected photon also imparts momentum too as it leaves so you get twice as much pressure from the light compared to if the surface just absorbed the light.
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Yes? I was talking about the solar wind blowing the paint of or decaying it to such a degree that it is useless. You're explaining the theory of why this would work, I'm not saying changing the surface reflectivity won't work. I am saying that there could be a chance that the solar wind or radiation could make said paint useless. So while the theory may work in principle it may not work in practice.
 
Also isn't the definition of solar wind particles being expelled outwards from the sun? A photon is a particle, it doesn't matter if it is subatomic or not.
 
This also makes the asteroid now ready to receive energy from the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.
 
I'm glade people are working on this.

I'm not glade THESE people are working on this.

But what do I know about rock paint.
 
Have they actually done the calcs to say that even if you could paint an asteroid white, it would it do anything significant to the trajectory over a realistic period of time?
 
According to my quick calcs based on the solar radiation pressure at the orbital radius of the Earth, and object the size and mass of the moon could only by moved 1.2 meters in a year, if we knew 10 years in advance, that's 112 meters, even 1000 years we're only looking at 1200 kilometers of movement due to solar radiation. That calc is just for a stationary object, but is that really enough movement to get it out off trajectory even after you take into account a slightly messed up orbit?
 
randomdean100 said:
Yes? I was talking about the solar wind blowing the paint of or decaying it to such a degree that it is useless. You're explaining the theory of why this would work, I'm not saying changing the surface reflectivity won't work. I am saying that there could be a chance that the solar wind or radiation could make said paint useless. So while the theory may work in principle it may not work in practice.
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Gotcha, sorry your post was a bit ambiguous

it's kind of hard to do that if the paint won't stick for more than a week; seeing that solar wind isn't something that will have a drastically quick effect...
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Reading this I got that you said the paint won't stick, then the last line talking about "the solar wind won't have a quick effect" made me think you were referring to the solar wind as being the reason why it'd move more due to reflectivity of the paint
 
nsKb said:
I won't bore you with the physics but nuclear weapons work very well in space. Some more exotic designed like nuclear shaped charges are well suited for asteroid deflection.
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Oh please bore more. I enjoy learning something new.
 
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