Nuclear Bomb Could Save Civilisation

Source : http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/nuclear-bomb-could-save-civilisation-from-major-humanitydestroying-asteroid/story-fnjwlcze-1226828955288


TOTAL nuclear disarmament may actually put humanity in danger. Scientists have said nuclear bombs may be our only chance of surviving a meteor attack like the one which wiped out the dinosaurs.

A scientist from Iowa State University, Bong Wie, told the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts meeting nuclear bombs could be used to destroy asteroids and space rocks headed for earth, according to a report on Space.com.

Wie said he and his team are developing a concept spacecraft called Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle (HAIV). The idea is the HAIV would be blasted into space to meet the threat and blast a crater into the asteroid with a kinetic impactor.

The nuclear bomb, which would be a millisecond behind the HAIV would then detonate inside the crater, shattering it into millions of tiny pieces. Wie said the project could work with less than a week’s warning.

Wie said the scientific community got a wake-up call this time last year when a meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring more than 1,500 people. And he thinks it’s only a matter of time before another biggie is barrelling through space headed for Earth.

Wie said a 300 metre wide asteroid could be neutralised outside of the Earth’s gravitational pull a month before projected impact. The worst that could happen is a meteor shower or 100 Chelyabinsk-type events, which sounds bad but the alternative would be destruction 150,000 times worse than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

And the cost for each nuclear asteroid-killing mission? Only USD500 million. A small price to save civilisation. Mark Zuckerberg could fund it out of his pocket money.