RTRD Plan Review
Looking at past plans of asteroid deflection
Introduction
MIT Graduate: Sung Wook Paek's Plan
Nuclear weapons!
A plan devised by the ADCR ( asteroid deflection research center) is in development right now in which they created the hypervelocity asteroid intercept vehicle (HAIV). The HAIV will be instrumental in deflecting NEO's in collision course with earth. The plan uses a hypervelocity kinetic impactor combined with a subsurface nuclear explosion. The proposed HAIV system involves the kinetic impactor colliding with the asteroid to provide enough kinetic energy to create a crater. The following nuclear interceptor will soon after collide with the asteroid in the same crater and detonate a subsurface explosion in order to disrupt the course of the NEO. However, the plan is ineffective at the moment because of the insufficient launch devices. In order for HAIV to work, the impact velocity must be in the range of 10-30 km in respect to the target NEO.