Land on a comet?

Question

There are a couple of films I've watched recently where astronauts land on a comet/asteroid to detonate nukes to prevent a fatal collision with the earth. I was wondering about the science of that -

1) Is it possible to build a ship fast enough to catch up with one of these rocks?
2) How would you realistically land it even if you could build one fast enough?
3) Wouldn't you get sucked off the surface immediately after you landed? Or does the asteroid/comet have its own atmosphere that shields you from the wind you would expect to be generated as the rock hurtles through space?

Stupid question I know but I'd be interested to hear the answer!

Answer 1

1) Armageddon was the best stab at it, but no. It's theoretically possible to build a fast enough ship, & slingshot it around the Moon, but there wouldn't be enough time to drill into the asteroid.

2) Landing on the asteroid is the easy part. All you have to do is match position & velocity.

3) There's no appreciable wind in space, even at those velocities. In any case, it would be a simple matter to anchor. If necessary you could even go EVA and "land" your ship like the old-time dirigibles once you got relative velocities low enough and you had something to tie down to.

The debris hazards in Armageddon were much overplayed. Debris accompanying an asteroid will be moving at almost exactly the same velocity.

Answer 2

Both those two movies are phony.

They've already landed on an asteroid and smashed into a comet, so preseumably given enough time they could find a way to bring humans. It would be a long cramped ride. Costing many many billions of dollars.

The astronauts going on the Moon were already in the solar wind, that's mostly for stuff like ions. gases and microscopic specs of dust. That's what comet tails are made of. Almost nothing.

Landing on comets is not safe either. What if something erupts?

There's volatile stuff trapped inside which can vaporize and burst up from the heat.

And any little grain of speck traveling at many kilometers per second could go straight through your spacesuit and kill you.

So, maybe, I dunno.

And as for Armegeddon, asteroids are more like the moon, inert, but small, and with really low gravity, so they might need a way to keep them on, like upward pointing jets or something.

Answer 3

1) Yes it is and it has been done already. We have landed a small craft on one of the asteroids.
2) You match velocity and rotation so you become motionless relative to each other. That's how they did it .
3) as out there is an almost absolute vacuum there is no friction and therefore no "wind". Asteroids are too small and their gravitational field so weak that they can not hold an atmosphere to their surface.
As to using nukes to destroy or divert the path of an asteroid on collision course with earth. well that is just one scenario. There are all sorts of things we could do if we have 20 years warning.

Answer 4

I don't know about 1) or 2) but there wouldn't be any wind if there wasn't any atmosphere. Comets don't have atmosphere, so there wouldn't be any wind. The comet hurtles through space - ie through a complete vacuum - there would be no wind and they wouldn't get sucked off

Answer 5

NASA probe Deep effect no longer ordinary-landed on a comet in July 2005. 2 problems along with your concept: a million. Comets do no longer quite bypass plenty speedier than our deep area craft. Voyager a million is going approximately 38,000 mph ideal now. 2. Comets do no longer shuttle far out into the Universe. as far as all of us understand, all of those we've ever considered orbit the sunlight. they could bypass many hundreds of cases farther away than the orbit of the Earth, yet it quite is nevertheless nowhere close to the area of even the closest megastar to our sunlight.

Answer 6

1. it is possible to buiold a ship fast enough to catch up
2. matching velocitiy and moving sideways
3. Sucked off by what. There is no turbulence in space, there is no wind

Answer 7

u watch too much tv