From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Wed Mar 17 2004 - 13:07:38 MST
From this months Scientific American letters to the editor:
SOLAR SOLUTIONS
“The Asteroid Tugboat,” by Russell L.
Schweickart, Edward T. Lu, Piet Hut and
Clark R. Chapman, discussed using larg-
er launch vehicles and possibly nuclear
push mechanisms to deflect threatening
asteroids into unthreatening orbits. These
ideas unnerved my sense of simplicity. Af-
ter reading Philip Yam’s story about so-
lar sails [“Light Sails to Orbit,” News
Scan], I wonder if painting the asteroid sil-
ver would turn the whole spinning nugget
into a “solar sail” opposed to the sun and
if this method would alter the orbit.
Would the solar wind be enough to push
such a painted asteroid away?
David T. Hanawalt
via e-mail
-----------------------------------------------
Exsqueeze me, but some of the near-earth passing asteroids are the size
of Manhattan.
It might be a tad difficult to get that much silver paint into the
shuttle's cargo bay.
Walter
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love" --Kupferberg-- --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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