The primary constrain with deflecting meteoroids seems to be time. If NASA had a 10-year warning, then there's no doubt in my mind that we would find a solution with current technology. IDK if it's sufficient, but We already have a system to track meteoroids. So what should our Earth Meteoroid Deflection System be? I'll be calling it the "E.M.D.S." for brevity, but please tell me if there's already a term for this.
NASA's already tested meteoroid redirection with
DART. So I think it makes the most sense to assume we'll use a
DART-like system. Does anyone know what the mass of the system should be?
I think the E.M.D.S. should be a fleet of spacecraft instead of one large one because if there's a small meteoroid, then we only send some of them and we get multiple shots. But it would need political shielding because it looks a lot like an
ASAT system.
Making it an international program should do the trick. If you need permission from NASA and Roscosmos, then how could it even be used as a weapon? And hopefully we'd split the cost. We could even have dissimilar redundancy by having each space agency build a redundant system.
Where should they idle? Keeping them in space would make a response quicker, but it would also increase the burden of operations. If an E.M.D.S. spacecraft has issues in space, then fixing it will be much harder, take longer, and require more compromises. And if we can't fix it, then we have to deorbit it and launch a new one. But if we go with a fleet, then at least Earth would still be protected during this time.
If we keep the spacecraft on the ground, then it would take longer to respond, but issues are easy to deal with. Just make a few extra spacecraft and swap out the broken one. It might limit the amount of spacecrafts in the fleet, though.
It should be noted that the
U.S.S.F. has an initiative called "Tactically Responsive Space"(TacRS), and it had a demonstration mission called "
VICTUS NOX". They launched a spacecraft with only 24-hour notice.
Firefly also wants to incorporate what they've learned from
VICTUS NOX into normal operations for their current, and future, launch vehicles. But, IIRC, they won't have a fleet of launch vehicles ready at all times. They'll have only one launch vehicle prepared.
He added the companies would incorporate a similar level of responsiveness to MLV operations that Firefly is doing with Alpha. “It may not be 24 hours per se, but we’re going to bring the same responsive timeline mentality to the launch operations.”
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SpaceNews
Does anyone know how powerful and accurate a laser-based system, like
@Questioner suggested, would need to be? Have we achieved anything like it before? If we have, then it would be a reusable solution, and it could be repurposed.
@Questioner mentions beaming energy down to Earth, but if you don't believe in space-based solar, then it could be used to propel solar sails.