For the &quot;larger ones&quot; that fitzwatermellow was mentioning, the problem is that your mental model of a big rock starts breaking down. You&#x27;d be closer to think &quot;big gravel pile sort of iced together, sort of held together by local gravity because there&#x27;s nothing else pulling them apart&quot;. You shoot a little pulse at the gravel pile and break a piece off and it may simply fly out into space, taking almost all the momentum with it and not affecting the bigger body at all. You apply a big force and you might just send rocks <i>through</i> the pile, with, again, the rocks going through taking most of the momentum you applied with them. (Same for landing a booster on it... there may be nowhere you can boost where the booster doesn&#x27;t just drill right through and come out the other side.) Hit it harder and it may simply spread out.<p>The advantage of the gravity towing approach is that gravity affects the entire pile equally; it doesn&#x27;t matter how tenuously the whole thing is held together. This approach could literally deflect a mountain-sized ball of pure sandbox-grade sand, completely and correctly. That&#x27;s not something a lot of other approaches can say. It&#x27;s only downside is that it&#x27;s miserably slow, so you have to call the problem years in advance.