Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark ASU/ASGARD Rocket Question - you know, the questionable science stuff...

So I was recently pondering ASU and I was wondering something...

Clark, obviously, is infinitely more accurate and probably much more powerful than an ASGARD rocket.

So Nightfall was 17 miles wide or whatever and they were sending *A* rocket towards it.

*If* it had hit it's target as intended, would it have succeeded in destroying the meteor?

Wouldn't it take multiple rockets? I can't imagine ONE rocket having enough explosive capability to destroy it [maybe nuclear? but I don't remember them saying it was and that seems as dangerous as shooting nukes in Independence Day].

What if the meteor had been bigger? Twenty-seven miles? Thirty-seven miles?

I know nothing about this kind of stuff.

Anyone else?

Carol

Accurate because he has much higher delta-V (no fuel constraints). More powerful? Well, maybe, but if someone had advised him how to deal with the thing properly, there would have been no need... for most of that episode! See part 2 of Imbalance for details.

Several points here, and they all have to be taken with the caveat that we have to forget about the overwhelming hand of the writer, who was going for dramatic effect, not logic.

So, why just the one missile? Several possibilities: how many suitable missiles did the military have at the time, or how many could they construct before Nightfall (or its fragments) hit? More may well be better, but if you don't have more, you have to make do. Similarly, what was needed in the way of C&C, i.e., targeting? Could whatever system they were using cope with multiple missiles, even if they were aimed at the same target? It should be considered that it is quite possible that using ASGARD to attack an asteroid might well have been a desperate piece of improvisation, using existing hardware for a mission that it was not designed for. Such things have been done, and succeeded, but that doesn't guarantee that this lash-up will work, or that it will produce anything as capable as a specifically-designed system. We don't really know what ASGARD was supposed to be capable of.

As for the warhead... well, if anyone was stupid enough not to put a nuke on the thing, they should have been tied to the nose of the missile and told to do the job themself! In an end-of-the-world situation like that, you use the biggest, most destructive weapon you have because if you don't, you are unlikely to survive to regret it. <Cue GRAMS: Tom Lehrer, "We Will All Go Together When We Go">

More to the point, a large nuke is the only known weapon that has a chance of affecting something the size of Nightfall, and even then it's not guaranteed to do a perfect job. Remember that when Clark hit the asteroid (like a twit), it broke up, but the fragments were still large enough to wreak havoc on the Earth. So mere kinetic energy (usually the biggest damage-causer of any collision on space -- satellites, anyone?) may not be enough; so if you have a single shot, you make it the most powerful one in your arsenal. After all, it's not as though you're going to regret the waste of using a bajillion-ton nuke when a mere zillion-ton warhead would have done the job... you now know.

How long is a piece of string? Without some numbers, it's impossible to say, except that the mass of the asteroid would be greater by at least the ratio of the sizes, and probably more (anything up to the ratio of the lengths cubed; it depends on the shape of the thing), so it will be even harder to destroy. Personally, I wouldn't care: if something that big is heading for me, I'll use whatever I have that can do the job. Remember Rule 37: "There is no overkill; there is only 'Cease Fire' and 'I need to reload'." When dealing with megaton or gigaton asteroids, that is doubly apposite.

Phil

Hehe.

Thanks, Phil. What I'd really like to see is Chapter 62 of Imbalance [which would imply that 61 had been posted and...] . But I digress.

So if they were prepared for such an eventuality, they might send multiple nuclear tipped warheads? [And in Independence Day they were shooting from an airplane directly over Houston iirc. No one had a problem with it when they took it to the mother ship hiding behind the moon...]

/plot bunny has emerged/

That said... ASGARD didn't work with the smaller fragment.

I did do a bit of research today and it seems the rock that destroyed the dinosaurs is believed to be about 6 miles across?! Is that right? So roughly half the size of Nightfall? Or did I read the article wrong? I had kids asking questions at the same time...

What if there was no Superman [and no Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck] to stop it? What would the best course of action be?

We're going to ignore the logic [for the moment at least] about pushing it out of the way v. ramming it as hard as Clark can. If he did just nudge it out of the way, I can't see him getting the amnesia [which was kind of the point of the ep to an extent] unless he ran out of oxygen, then maybe...

Okay - off to more pressing things... like spaghetti...

Carol

Um, parts 61 and 62 were posted far too long ago... but I take the point.
Quite likely; the question is, could one of those warheads, necessarily smaller than the biggest weapon that a single missile could carry, do the job on its own? If yes, then the MIRV approach is a good one because it makes the targeting problem easier; if not, then it's a waste of effort because what is needed is the biggest bang on target. It's the equivalent of using a shotgun or a sniper rifle on a fast-moving animal with thick skin: if the shotgun can kill it, it's a better choice because there's more chance of some of the shot hitting; if not, you use the most powerful bullet you have because you need to put the beast down.

So the optimum solution for Nightfall is to launch as many warheads as you have that can destroy the asteroid if only a single one goes off. In the case of ASGARD, they seem to have only got off a single shot, which missed, so the warhead(s) became irrelevant.
That's the figure I found and I have no reason to doubt it. So yes, Nightfall was almost 3 times larger, with a mass of anything up to 27 times that of the "Dinosaur Killer". To say that Superman literally saved the world is in no way hyperbole.
Bend over and kiss your backside goodbye! Have a look at the Ground Zero site. DC once said that Metropolis was in Delaware, so try centring the boom on that state and use the "Asteroid Impact" option -- always remembering that this simulates the effect of a 6-mile asteroid, and that Nightfall could have been 25 times heavier...
That's what I meant about if he'd been advised properly, most of the episode would have been moot; certainly the B-plot, which was the real meat of the episode, would have gone altogether. OTOH, it would have given me more faith in the supposed "scientists" of L&C's world, most of whom seemed to be complete twits or completely mad, Dr Klein notwithstanding.

Phil

Er, well, you got my point! For some reason I was thinking only 60 had been posted.

/has had plot bunny circulating for more than 24 hours now/

So, in theory, lots of nuclear tipped missiles is the best plan, hoping that enough hit to destroy the object in question.

And yeah ASGARD seemed to be some kind of half planned hail Mary type thing.

I have seen fics where part of the point of having Clark ram it was to get rid of Superman - if hitting the asteroid doesn't do it, maybe the kryptonite laced return air tank will... Forget whose fic that was though...

Thanks, Phil!
Carol

I wanna read that fic...

I think that's Curiosity... The Continuing Saga by ML Thompson

Thank you very much.

Tonight the History Channel will be airing another one of its, What if an asteroid hits Earth, shows.

Tank (who is 'amazed' that none of the defensive scenarios that scientists suggest include someone slamming into the rock at extreme speed)

Hey guys when they finally sent the Askgard rocket and it missed Superman had already hit it and the remaining rock was 3 miles across(just verified this on the DVD). They don't say what the payload of the devise was so we don't really have enough information to speculate as to if it would have been successful if it had it. So it might have had a chance at making the remaining rock a bunch of rubble. That would have lessed the harm to earth substantially.

Reducing to rubble is similar to getting hit with grapeshot instead of a solid cannonball. Only difference is how many pieces you end up in.

Not quite. It's more like using grapeshot or cannonballs against the side of a ship-of-the-line: the grapeshot doesn't penetrate, the cannonball may. The "ship" in this case is the Earth's atmosphere: reduce the big chunks to small pieces and they'll burn up on entry into the atmosphere just like most meteors do -- and satellites, for that matter. It takes a sizeable chunk of whatever to reach the ground, though what makes it all the way down will be considerably smaller than what originally hit the atmosphere.

True, although all the energy still ends up going somewhere. If you reduced a 10 kilometer rock to sand you still end up with 54 million megatons of energy being dumped into the atmosphere. That will set everything in line of sight on fire and the blast will still knock down building for hundreds of miles.