What are the best ways to change the course of a meteor, besides nuking it? or is nuking the best way?

what are the best ways to change the course of a meteor, besides nuking it? or is nuking the best way?

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Politely asking it

Early detection. Hit one side with laser. Even a tiny fraction of a change in course is enough to make it miss at long enough distances.

>shoot a laser pointer at it
>do lasers have mass

in regards to the actual raw power you can smash something with (out of things we actually HAVE on hand), nukes win hands down
they might not be your best option from other perspectives though

yes

Nuke a smaller meteor into it

no, but they can cause temperature to change and generate off-gassing

Early detection. Preferably months or years in advance, while it was still going to go around the Sun another time or two before colliding.
THEN nuke it.
Send several rockets at intervals to see how the first ones worked.

You're right -- but I think you overestimate the power of current lasers. You're dealing with a chunk of rock, not with a missile that had to be built as lightly as possible. It you hit it at, say, a million miles, 4 times the distance to the Moon, that's likely only two days (or less!!) from impact and much too late. And I don't think the most powerful beam we could generate would even warm a man standing on the surface in a spacesuit.

I have a study done by MIT students back in the 70s or 80s. Class project. The rockets existed (or nearly). The bombs existed. Their chief worry was if we could build a radar "fuse" which could set off the bomb at the correct instant when the closing velocity was 10 miles a second or more. To modern electronics that's "slow motion", of course.

Push it with a rocket*.
*May require good timing or very powerful rocket