California Professors Unveil Proposal To Attack Asteroids With Lasers 161
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday's twin events with invading rocks from outer space — the close encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14, and the killer meteorite over Russia that was more than close — have brought the topic of defending mankind against killer asteroids back into the news. The Economist summarizes some of the ideas that have been bandied about, in a story that suggests Paul Simon's seventies hit "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover": Just push it aside, Clyde. Show it the nuke, Luke. Gravity tug, Doug. The new proposal is an earth orbiting, solar-powered array of laser guns called DE-STAR (Directed Energy Solar Targeting of AsteRoids) from two California-based professors, physicist Philip Lubin (UCSB) and industrial statistician Gary Hughes (Cal Polytechnic State). Lubin and Hughes say their system could be developed and deployed in a range of sizes depending on the size of the target: DE-STAR 2, about the size of the International Space Station (100 meters) could nudge comets and asteroids from their orbits, while DE-STAR 4 (100 times larger than ISS) could evaporate an asteroid 500 meters in diameter (10 times larger than 2012 DA14) in a year. Of course, this assumes that the critters could be spotted early enough for the lasers to do their work."
Actually there were three events (Score:2, Informative)
There was also a meteor that was seen from San Francisco [go.com]
Re:Why lasers instead of mirrors? (Score:4, Informative)
For the DESTAR and similar applications, there is a better method of storage than those mentioned in previous post: storage as kinetic energy in a high speed flywheel.
Flywheel energy density is much higher than batteries, especially in space where friction losses can be minimized and there is no need for a failure containment vessel, so long as the thing is kept oriented in a safe direction (do not build space station modules that cross the plane of flywheel rotation). Energy can be withdrawn very efficiently, at a much higher rate than batteries support, and with much more control than is possible with capacitor storage. Final construction can be done in orbit, making this probably the easiest system to deploy on a large scale.