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Spitballing about DART & Dimorphos. Yes, actual scientists have done TONS of rocket science, impact calcs, modeling, scenarios, etc, & now are analyzing data for making this efficient & viable at redirecting killer asteroids. But this is just for funsies! A 🧵
This was basically a fast refrigerator hitting a stadium sized gravel pile. In my head, that's not what an asteroid was. They're MOUNTAINS. IN. SPACE. But as a lot of recent missions have shown, and asteroid researchers suspected for years, a lot are just loose piles of rubble.
They're loosely held together by static forces and gravity, but not that much gravity. If they're more potato than sphere, there's not enough compression to form them into solid bodies. So, less mountain, more ball pit. At least for these types of asteroids. Really surprised me.
