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Comment by GalenErso | Hacker News Reader

Could a F-22 shoot it down? /s

The continuous-rod warhead in a Sidewinder will rip the hell out of an aircraft, which is made of tinfoil wrapped around complications. A rock from space, by contrast, is made out of rock wrapped around rock.

Assuming charitably that the missile could generate an intercept, you would probably get some sparks, maybe more or less depending on how much of the rock is actually nickel and iron. But basically, the rock is a rock. An AIR-2 Genie likely wouldn't bother it all that much beyond maybe a surface glazing and some neutron activation. The most a Sidewinder will do is expensively nothing.

This site truly is where humor goes to die.

I didn't think I was keeping that straight a face. But on the other hand, now I get to check "twit Cegłowski" off my bucket list, and that's worth a joke falling a little bit flat.

"Tinfoil wrapped around complications" is definitely going in my quotes file. Reads like James Mickens! (If that's what you were going for, well done. If not, go read his stuff immediately.)

I'd never dream so high!

I thought it was pretty funny.

There are bunker busters but most of them are conventional bombs, or cruise missiles (with a propeller).

If they can bust few (double digit?) meters of concrete, they could bust a rock. Assuming they dont miss and assuming they dont slip.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster

Obviously it would have to be some combination of an anti sat missile (so it can fly in space) and a bunker buster (so it can crush throigh rock).

My physics is a bit rusty. Would that help? There is a rock with huge amounts of kinetic energy and you hit it with a bunker buster, then what? You've then got the same amount of mass (mass being conserved) and the same amount of energy (energy being conserved) on more or less the same trajectory.

I'm not sure that counts as shooting it down. In the context of a celestial object usually "shoot it down" means "deflect it so it misses earth".

If you break it apart then you have more surface area to interact with the atmosphere.

Ignoring the sarcasm marker.

F15s could fire anti satelite missiles in early 1980s. Who knows what "toys" are available 40 years later.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT

But this isnt an orbiting satellite, it's an object moving at 20 km/s (quoting another post, I dont really know in what direction or relative to what) which is ~Mach 60. I don't know how that compares to satellites - is it close enough we'd expect an anti-satellite missile to work?

I think we might be able to put something in front of it; but at that speed I dont think anything we loft does not do more than begin the party early. All the energy it's going to release pretty much happens in the same path, we might just begin the breakup and distribution a second or two before the air otherwise would have.

Can't speak to the missiles, but objects in low earth orbit travel at around 7km/s relative to the earth.

The benefit of this sort of task is in both cases the target object doesn't move of its own accord, so presumably if you can predict the path of the object with enough precision then it would work. Clearly we can pinpoint a 1m satellite, but no idea on the error bars for a 1m meteoroid.

Depends on what kind of warhead you have on that missile. :)

A small nuke could definitely obliterate a 1-meter rock, if you don't mind contaminating a large part of Europe with radioactive dust.

This isn't fantasy, either. There were plenty of air-to-air and surface-to-air nuclear-tipped missiles. All of the ones mentioned on Wikipedia [0] have officially been decommissioned for 40+ years, a development due both to disarmament agreements and advances in targeting by conventional missiles. But I wouldn't be shocked to learn there are still some deployed.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nuclear_anti-aircra...

Some sort of a bunker buster perhaps? ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster ) Or a tungusten rod with no warhead at all.

Not sure if they arent much bigger than an anti sat missile though.

Does an anti-satellite missile work by catching up to a satellite or by intercepting it head on or at a tangent?

it's an ironic sarcasm marker

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