Movies have both thrilled and terrified us with the mysteries of outer space since French director Georges Méliès first took audiences with him in A Journey to the Moon. all the way back to 1902. Hollywood’s enduring fascination with Earthbound asteroids has really increased the cosmic threats to the point that we all look up at the skies nervously at times.
Although evidence suggests that chances of a Asteroid impacts on Earth are negligible, no one wants to share the fate of dinosaurs. However, with NASA’s recent DART mission declared a resounding success, should we ever find ourselves on a collision course with an asteroid chances of survival seem to have improved.
DART’s goal, however, was not to rip the asteroid apart or throw it off course in the traditional sense. Instead, the kinetic impact of DART (that’s science, because we fell into it) was supposed to accelerate the asteroid and test if we could use a similar approach to make a menacing asteroid miss Earth by getting to the rendezvous too soon come.
With DART surpassing its parameters of success by a multiple, where are Hollywood’s more bombastic depictions of planetary defense? Space.com spoke to Joe Cuhaj, author of Space Oddities: Forgotten Stories of Mankind’s Exploration of Space to find out if the Hollywood method, so often explosive and always entertaining, would actually protect us if it were Earth’s first line of defense.
We’ve already talked about how to nuke an asteroid on fire (which again consists of changing its speed instead of blowing it up), but today we’re taking a look at how well Hollywood’s most famous plans would have gone.
For more space travel and entertainment related articles, check out our guides to the The best space movies and The best science fiction films any times.
space fracker
Looking at the scientific principles behind some of the The best asteroid movies, There’s really only one starting point, and that’s 1998’s “Armageddon.” We’re all familiar with it. When a malicious asteroid threatens Earth, drilling experts launch into Earth orbit and land on it of the asteroid, drill through its surface to reach the exposed core before using a nuclear weapon to destroy it. This seems very complicated compared to the elegant simplicity of DART, but what does Cuhaj think?
“First of all, we need to be able to fly deeper into space to even try something like this,” says the author. “We’re just about to get people back to the moon, which would mean the asteroid would be pretty close to hitting the planet when the astronauts arrive on site to drill and deploy the device.” machinery possibly could do that, but again, there’s this nuclear weapon and it’s shattering the asteroid into a million pieces that they’re sending who knows where.”
Plan B?
Also released in 1998, “Deep Impact” would continue Hollywood’s obsession with using nuclear weapons to save the earth. Like “Armageddon,” Scientists wanted to drill into the core of the asteroid, but when this move fails, the crew of the spacecraft Messiah fly into the asteroid, detonate the rest of their nuclear payload and blast the asteroid into smaller pieces that burn up harmlessly in Earth’s atmosphere.
Cuhaj is quick to point out the similarity of this approach to NASA’s proposed use of kinetic impactors: “ramming the spacecraft into the asteroid without nuclear weapons would be similar to DART and realistically possible in that sense… except that one crew is lost.” , of course,” Cuhaj argues.
But with the planet-threatening space rock in “Deep Impact” The plot is far too close to be blown off course, allowing Hollywood to once again bring its beloved nuclear payload to bear. While US films have long enjoyed the fascination of direct nuclear hits on asteroids, Experts have suggested that the correct approach would be to actually detonate bombs before impact, creating an explosive force that pushes the asteroid forward and causes it to avoid Earth.
Make the sky explode
Let’s travel back to the 1950s for our next case, and with nuclear superpowers in full swing, it’s no surprise that nuclear weapons are once again being touted as the savior of the earth. In 1958’s The Day The Sky Exploded, Earth faces destruction from a wayward asteroid cluster. Scientists successfully counter this by arming every nuclear warhead on Earth and firing all of these ICBMs together at the target. Would that work? Would an avalanche of nuclear missiles differ from the action of DART?
In short, yes, and probably not in an entirely good way. “NASA used to believe that nuclear weapons would be ’10 to 100 times more effective’ at deflecting an asteroid hurtling toward Earth,” explains Cuhaj, “but then there are potentially thousands (millions?) chunks scattered in space still racing towards us DART was a non-nuclear kinetic Impact that knocked an asteroid out of its orbit. Some material will still have broken off from the asteroid, and NASA is currently checking how much was released after September’s DART impact.
All that debris has to go somewhere, and even if it weren’t big enough to hit the Earth’s surface, it could still wipe out many of our satellites. Not exactly a fitting ending for them James Webb Space Telescope or International Space Station.
Empty the silos
While we don’t yet know exactly what type of debris DART might have created, it certainly wouldn’t produce the same amount of dangerous fragments that could hamper future space travel or perhaps even continue to threaten Earth. And that’s why the strategy of “Meteor” is from 1979 probably wouldn’t work either. In this Sean Connery film, both the US and Russia have nuclear missile systems already positioned in space and pointed at each other. To destroy the incoming asteroid, simply re-point the nukes, aim them at the asteroid, and fire. While in real life there is a space treaty banning such facilities, would launching nuclear weapons at an asteroid from space affect our chances of survival?
Probably not, as Cuhaj points out that “again there’s this problem of breaking the asteroid into pieces and letting the fragments continue their merry way toward a possible collision with Earth.” The author also adds that “Earth-orbiting nuclear weapons never sounded like a great idea, hence the treaty.”
With DART looking like a success while nuclear solutions seem a little problematic, what are the chances of Hollywood making another asteroid movie next time? Kinetic impactor technology might be effective in the real world, but movie directors, they Do Love a good blast so don’t be surprised next time you tune in to a new asteroid movie there’s still some kind of bomb at the center of everything.
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