PI-Terminal Planetary Defense Terminal Planetary Defense PI is a practical and effective method of planetary defense that allows for extremely short mitigation time scales as well as general use for longer warning time cases . The method involves an array of small hypervelocity kinetic penetrators that pulverize and disassemble an asteroid or small comet. This effectively mitigates the threat using the Earth’s atmosphere to dissipate the fragment cloud where the atmosphere acts as a “bullet proof vest” or “body armor”. The effects of doing so are remarkable in their effectiveness. The key is to de-correlate the resulting acoustic blast […]