Meteor Challenge - 1.0: R&D + Ideation

This term's Fusion challenge is to minimize damage from a meteor impact.

"There is a 500m wide meteor on course to hit BC place, leaving a 4.6km wide crater, half a km deep. Effectively, this meteor would destroy Metro Vancouver. We must find a way to stop this meteor and test it in a simulation at a 0.00048% scale using a ramp and a basketball. We have a budget of $50"

Our group has progressed by creating a google doc where we have noted our ideas and personality types. Last class, we noted our top priorities, namely minimizing loss of life and damage. We also defined absolute success as causing the meteor to miss earth. I feel we have progressed to the ideation phase. After several ideas were raised we categorized them into two groups, projectile deflection and damage minimization. Projectile deflection ideas involved launching another projectile to deflect or destroy the meteor while damage minimization ideas were aimed at cushioning the meteor's impact. I thought cushioning was unfeasible due to the meteor's unprecedented mass, velocity, and therefore energy.  As such, our group held a vote just to establish a basic sense of direction for our ideas and projectile deflection won by a slim margin. My idea was to launch a harpoon or sticky projectile with a reel mechanism (like a harpoon) from an anchored/weighted point below the meteor's trajectory in order to shorten its flight path to hopefully land in an ocean/the Georgia Strait. This would mean our counteracting force would largely rely on resisting forces pulling upwards so we wouldn't have to work directly against the meteor.