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wedrifid comments on 60m Asteroid currently assigned a .022% chance of hitting Earth. - Less Wrong
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Why does it need to be aim along the planet? Use orbital mechanics: Send your spacecraft on an orbit such that it hits the planet it launched from at the fast point of a very long elliptical orbit. Or even just at the far side of the current planet's orbit, whatever. It can't be that hard to get an impact at whatever angle you'd prefer with most of the Orion vehicle's energy, launching direction barely seems to matter.
No particular reason. It's just that the arbitrary task of planetary self destruction that Multipartite specified happens to be that of destroying the planet with a bomb on the surface. If you were just trying to destroy the planet then doing so from the surface seems like a terrible idea.
(For thoroughness, noting that the other approach was also wondered about a little earlier. Surface action is an alternative to look at if projectile-launching would definitely be ineffective, but if the projectile approach would in fact be better then there'd no reason not to focus on it instead.)