What ways are there, even theoretically...

What ways are there, even theoretically, to stop a kinetic bomb travelling at relativistic speeds from impacting it's target? (Assuming you are at that target)

Assuming the object is about the size of a 757, could we launch large spacecraft past it to knock it off it's trajectory via gravitational interference?

How far away can we intercept it?

rip

Currently we have no reasonable way to even detect such an object in time to take any counter measures.

fire your own relativistic projectile at it. would only need to reach minute fractions of c to wipe it out, given its target is moving also at fraction of c

targeting is the issue. how do you detect something moving at near c?

also splash damage from billions of projectiles moving towards you at x/c might be a problem

Assume it's fired from 10 light years away and is traveling at 10% the speed of light (information passed to us by le good Aliens or something)

Yeah, might prevent utter annihilation but the resulting cloud of depris would turn earth into a firery hell

Fire another relativistic projectile at it for a redirect rather than destroy it

How would we even detect something traveling at 1/10 of c?

Would the re-routing projectile need to be traveling near the same speed to push it off course?

Not necessarily

>10% the speed of light

You don't. You can't even fire another projectile at it and hope to live through the aftermath even if you hit it perfectly. You wouldn't even be able to veer it off course.

Is it guided or unguided?

throw a very heavy projectile at it, or put something in its trajectory.


p=mv roughly, so we need to match that. Either through a projectile with: similar mass/speed OR lower mass/higher speed OR higher mass/lower speed

We can't really do relativistic speeds much yet. Furthermore, it would take E=mv^2 energy, which increases much more with increasing speed. So the advantage is to using a very heavy projectile, with a lower velocity.

Conclusion: start bombarding it with small rocks.

I mean a lot of small rocks.

Unguided, aimed to meet your planets orbital path

So it's basically an unstoppable object/cloud of death traveling through space?

Then given it has a 100 years transit time and we know its coming, we could very slightly alter the orbit of the earth

ah yes, a simple process

Fairly yes. Putting a few asteroids on close flyby trajectories would probably be enough

moving the earth would have 100% success rate. just push it a couple of miles forward over however many decades before death hits, slow it down so were not gonna fly off anywhere , just reposition us slightly further forward in our orbit then match with the velocity we should be at.

how you'd accompllish this i dont know but anything you do to try to physically stop the RKV would be suicide

Or even better burn them up in the atmosphere

Why'd it be so hard to target something going at 1/10c? I mean a LADAR would be able to detect it since the projectile isnt traveling at c? And the speed could be determined by redshift of the reflected beam

this scenario is very simple,just move the target

point a laser at it

If we attached massive rockets to the north pole, we could move the earth out of the way.

Kek

>Relativistic Kill Vehicle on way to deatroy Earth
>Mankind bands together, global summits are held in every major country
>scientists flown in from all over to solve the crisis
>political leaders finally moving forward and cooperating since mankind's inception
>team of scientists finally devise solution
>Kinetic bomb coming closer every day
>Time has come for the people of Earth to execute their plan
>scientists and military ignite enourmous engines fixed to Earth's poles
>Earth moves and kinetic bomb barely misses
>someone didnt carry the 1 and Earth orbits into the Sun

Aliens lol at us through their crystal balls

>someone didnt carry the 1 and Earth orbits into the Sun
The sun is by far the hardest object in the solar system to get to

Really? But you have no problem with Earth being moved by rockets on the poles?

You only have to move the earths orbit a tiny tiny bit

To crash the earth into the sun you would need to slow down the entire planet by 25ish kilometres a second. To dodge the relativisic missile you would only need to change its velocity by a fraction of a metre per second

How would you even launch something like this to begin with? What technology are these aliens even using?

the earth moves through space in a (reletive) lateral motion also it wobbels around its own axis so by firing planet moving rocket's from a polar cap you'd add an up/down (relative) motion cousing massive enviromental tectonic and magnetic problems rendering ''saving'' the planet mute also the atmosphere would absorb all trust the rockets would put out

just move the sun and the earth will move with it, problem solved

No, according to the other poster you can't strap rockets to the Sun's poles, it'll mess up its tectonics or something. Thats the only reason

no the earth wobbles but the sun doesnt, so you can strap rockets to the sun and apply a directional force

>you can strap rockets to the sun and apply directional force

Oh come on YOU CAN NOT

>to stop a kinetic bomb travelling at relativistic speeds from impacting it's target?
Make it hit something sufficiently hard and heavy a while before its intended target and watch it splash out into a cloud of dust and vapour.

You can't detect it, because it's going too close to the speed of light dummy.

With current technology, correct. If you could move a planet in front of it to block it, that would work, but may also ruin space travel for millennia.

Should we start developing relativistic kill vehicle technology as a form of interstellar mutually assured destruction? It would give as a deterrent against the aliums just like there was with nuclear weapons during the cold war.

all speeds are relativistic

A relativistic speed is a speed which is a significant proportion of the speed of light.

yeah just adjust the orbit of our home planet around the heat source that keeps us alive

Yes, a very tiny bit. Just like how our orbit gets adjusted literally every time an asteroid does a flyby

Just build Sun-proof rockets.

if a lens is built in space, then using the energy from the sun (or a laser, not Veeky Forums enough to know what's more feasible) it could disintegrate the projectile, or slow it down enough to have it miss the earth

spot it early and really far away

calculate its trajectory.

send your own relativistic vehicle to intercept.

let them impact and deflect the weapon away. making it someone else's problem in a few thousand years.

Without sufficiently advanced instrumentation we would basically be ants trying to operate a ballistic missile

There is way too much reddit in this thread

fuck off

>Stop having fun!

>fun
the thread is a cesspool of retards pretending to know science

fuck off

I vote we just wait and see, chances are relatively high that it breaks up after impacting the Oord cloud, and then we can still hope to have a few planetary bodies between it and us to absorb the shrapnel.

Nope, you'll just get rained with 1000s of objects instead of 1.

Something planned like that will more than likely have a proper course through everything.

So now this object is directed by a foreign force who wants it to collide with Earth with maximum effect?
We have no chance then, this is like asking how a monkey in a barrel with no tools could stop a hunter with a M240.
As presumably these aliens then equiped their rocket with a course adjustment algorithm and likely some form of shield, making all the previous sugestions, and all possible ones with current technology useless.
Good one mate, waste of a thread then desu.

>p=mv
>E=mv^2
>at relativistic speeds
c'mon

From the OP "kinetic bomb".

This implies intent.

>kinetic kill vehicle
>actual physical kill vehicle

you guys do know, energy comes, in many forms, if you need energy to kill an incoming projectile, there are much better options than a physical rod

>bomb implies intent
Yes, to blow something up, not nessasarily the thing it happens to be moving towards, it could be a stray or a leftover, rather than a guided system.

Well, I don't think you'll get a better answer than: but really, you don't even need a relativistic projectile to severely fuck up a slug moving that fast. Just putting up a really, really big rock would be enough.

>but the resulting cloud of depris would turn earth into a firery hell
Moving that fast most projectiles would immediately vaporize at an absurdly high altitude, but anything in orbit would be fucked. Or maybe not, it's hard to say what happens when you fire a cloud of baseballs made of tungsten at 10% c at Earth's gravity well, depending on the distance of intercept and the materials of the projectiles it might very well result in a big spray that hits nothing.

>Without sufficiently advanced instrumentation we would basically be ants trying to operate a ballistic missile
kek

What happens if you relativistic kinetic bomb the sun?

Nothing

Well because the sun is made of light, it counteracts the RKV's kinetic energy and turns it into sunlight energy

Source: im a solar scientist

>What ways are there, even theoretically, to stop a kinetic bomb travelling at relativistic speeds from impacting it's target?
"Theoretically," whatever means your enemy used to accelerate that kinetic bomb to relativistic speeds could probably be used in turn to intercept and stop it.

REALISTICALLY, though, there is no way to get a "kinetic bomb" to relativistic speeds, either now or for the forseeable future. Now fuck off and go wank to your stupid scifi.

I would make a black hole in it's path, is this the kind of solution you're asking?

The mass can explode before impact, making it impossible to sidestep.

Build wall.

I used to do this shit every day in my back yard

10% of the speed of light is still low.

but you wouldn't know that because you clearly don't know any math.

>What ways are there, even theoretically, to stop a kinetic bomb travelling at relativistic speeds from impacting it's target?
Throw giant balloons at it.

The interaction between a relativistic projectile and any matter at all is going to be incredibly energetic. The energy involved will be far more than sufficient to fragment the projectile. These fragments will be significantly less dangerous, and if interception occurs sufficiently far away many will miss the earth entirely.

Given the velocity of the interceptor is virtually insignificant, the probability of a successful interception can be raised by making the interceptor as large as possible. With a film weighing 10g/m2 and hydrogen holding it up at 3Pa, a balloon 500m across would weigh about 8 tonnes.

Due to the ~1500m^2 cross-section of the balloon, sending enough balloons and positioning them accurately enough to ensure a collision should be plausible. (The balloons DON'T need to be travelling fast) Once a collision occurs, fragmentation of the projectile is highly likely. The collision will liberate approximately 4.5TJ or 1kt-TNT of energy per square meter of foil involved. I don't know the radius of material that would participate, but an estimate of a 3m radius gives a total liberation of 85TJ or 20kt-TNT. As the projectile would need to pass through both sides of the balloon, the collision would then be equivalent to initiating two "Fat Man" nuclear weapons 16us apart, directly on the nose of the kinetic bomb.

Because of the small mass of each balloon, deploying vast numbers should be possible. Combined with the possibility of course adjustments prior to deployment and the large cross-sectional area of each balloon, so long as they are launched ASAP I believe this would make a realistic defence against a relativistic kinetic bomb.

>have send out light signals
>hope the missle isn't coated with vantablack
>detect missile through reflection
>send signals down a superconductor
>blow up before you can do anything else

Or do it at night dipshit

I suppose that if you toss another RKV at the RKV, it would explode into a billion tiny fragments. However, hardly any of those fragments would be on a collision course with Earth, especially when you consider that they were going to collide with Earth before something collided with them.

[honking intensifies]

This.
Couldn't we try to burn it up using giant powerful lasers?
The lasers would also slow it down.

...

Build it.