British plan to tackle asteroids

**The News Bot** · 31-08-2009, 11:35 AM

A team of British scientists are developing plans for a spacecraft that could stop large asteroids from hitting the Earth
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py3m4n · 31-08-2009, 7:33 PM

Didn't a couple of Americans already do this back in 1979 for a company called Atari?i

namuk · 31-08-2009, 8:02 PM

Well if that fails we no who to call .. Bruce Willis Busters ..

Pecker · 01-09-2009, 4:49 PM

The most worrying thing is that, at 15 years flight time away, the calculations as to whether or not it'll hit the earth would need to be precise to bafflingly small fractions of a degree.

They'd only have to get it a little wrong and they could make matters worse!

Steve W

namuk · 01-09-2009, 6:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pecker

The most worrying thing is that, at 15 years flight time away, the calculations as to whether or not it'll hit the earth would need to be precise to bafflingly small fractions of a degree.

They'd only have to get it a little wrong and they could make matters worse!

Steve W

This is why the British are inventing the Tomtom version for space.

BISHI · 01-09-2009, 8:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pecker

The most worrying thing is that, at 15 years flight time away, the calculations as to whether or not it'll hit the earth would need to be precise to bafflingly small fractions of a degree.

They'd only have to get it a little wrong and they could make matters worse!

Steve W

If they could predict the trajectory of the voyager probes with the computing power of a Sinclair ZX81 thirty years ago then I wouldn't think an asteroid with 15 years warning should present a problem with todays processing power.