Don't Forget To Look Up

TL;DR

This paper explores a feasible method to mitigate an existential threat from a 10 km bolide impact using nuclear-armed penetrators and heavy-lift launch vehicles within a 6-month warning window.

Contribution

It proposes a novel mitigation strategy combining bolide fragmentation with nuclear devices and modern launch systems to prevent catastrophic impacts.

Findings

Mitigation is possible within 6 months using current technology.

Nuclear penetrators can effectively fragment large bolides.

Coupling efficiency of nuclear energy is critical for success.

Abstract

We discuss a hypothetical existential threat from a 10 km diameter bolide discovered 6 months prior to impact with one case being a comet and the other being an asteroid. We show that an extension of our work on bolide fragmentation using an array of penetrators but modified with small nuclear explosive devices (NED) in the penetrators, combined with soon-to-be-realized heavy lift launch assets with positive $C_3$ such as NASA SLS or SpaceX Starship (with in-orbit refueling) is sufficient to mitigate this existential threat. A threat of this magnitude hitting the Earth at a closing speed of 40 km/s for the comet and 20 km/s for the asteroid would have an impact energy of roughly 65 Teratons TNT, or about ten thousand times larger than the current combined nuclear arsenal of the entire world. This is similar in energy to the KT extinction event that killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Such an event, if not mitigated, would be an existential threat to humanity. We show that mitigation is conceivable using existing technology, even with the short time scale of 6 months warning, but that the efficient coupling of the NED energy is critical.