Like Sean said, Wouldn’t the radiation pressure from shining a series of lasers on the asteroid be more than the gravitational attraction from the spacecraft? And have the added benefit of being workable from the Earth?

I will repeat my absolute astonishment that this patent was granted. Having filed a number of patents this should have gotten bounced early in the process. This is the intellectual property equivalent of Sokals article.

Elliot

Elliot,

Let me remind you: Alan Sokal from NYU became famous because he was able to submit a paper on “Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” to a renowned journal called “Social Text” and published by the postmodern social science experts at Duke University. The paper was a continuous flow of nonsense: for example it argued that the value of PI changes with the amount of political pressure and discrimination.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html

I gave some light on this issue. But more importantly I have to agree with you, about what you are saying, even if Lubos thinks it was the right thing to do by Sokal.

The travesty here was how new the era of quantum gravity is, and the decisive attempt to highlight how easily people can be fooled.

If with good conscience you knew what you were doing to disrupt the publics views and encourage the failibilty of good science minds in the bunch, then the history, has been sourly infected.

Why? Because good scientists were folded up into the bunch. The public mislead. This directed behaviors, around the issues of quantum gravity. Some would even quote Sokal article as to the reasons why “quantum gravity” was a failure? Da:)

So now you know why honesty is important. Why “sokalitis,” is not avery good thing? So I place it along side of the infamous remarks on stringevangelism. It filters, to the public. Some science tabloids take hold of it. See?

If I may point something out: the spacecraft must exert a force on the asteroid, which will equal the force of the asteroid on the spacecraft. Unless the mass of the spacecraft is on the same order as the mass of the asteroid, then the spacecraft will simply be drawn into the asteroid without appreciably changing its path (unless it uses rocket fuel to keeps its distance).

That being said, if the asteroid is roughly the same size as the spacecraft, then there’s no point in using gavitational effects—it would be at least as effective just to push the asteroid out of the way.

Yeah, PB, I was thinking about that, too… in essence, the problem is exactly the same as it would be if you tethered the asteroid to to the spaceship, and had the latter fire it’s thrusters. It’s just that here, you have the tether provided by gravity.

this is interesting like MMH he is the coolest.

but that would never work cause you dont have enough time to send the spaceship know what i mean, know what i mean??

JOKE TIME:
what is a cheerios worst nightmare??

a serial killer

hahaha get it? like a cereal killer or someone who smashes them cheerios

dam you cheerio smaher!!

i love you mom!

Why not mate two rockets “nose to nose,” and push on the asteroid with the exhaust plume from one of them? Should be fairly gentle, and broad enough to avoid cracking the thing. The other rocket keeps the package in place, of course.