Astroid Deflection using Anti-matter

Its science fiction, except that its true. Sooner or later a big asteroid is going to come and we have no idea what to to.

Even worse, there is no political consensus over who would pay. We have an international treaty saying "no weapons in space", so exactly how are we going to deflect or disintegrate an asteroid ?

If only there was a weapon that we could use only in space! It would have to be something that basically could never get past the earth's atmosphere, but that would pack lots of punch against an asteroid. It would have to  never come back to bite us, either.

It occurred to me recently that anti-matter would be interesting. Assuming for a second that it was possible to create lots of antimatter on a moon colony or something, say anti-protons or anti-helium, we could use an accelerator to guide it into an asteroid's path. Every particle to impact the asteroid would give it a push, either backwards or sideways. A bit like using gamma rays for a cancer treatment, any misses would become dispersed in the solar system and would probably have negligible impact on anything else.

This type of antimatter stream could never be used to threaten a country. It would probably be used to draw advertisements in the sky, eventually.

Added benefit, it might be able to de-orbit space junk. It would be a great justification for a moon base, and an incredible jolt to world economy.

Extended Urban Twilight with Space Mirrors

I'm sitting in the office, on a winter evening, and its dark outside. The streetlights are on, but its still quite dark.
Has anybody ever studied using mirrors in space to provide a sort of extended twilight to dense urban centers?

Sure, it might not be a good idea to have 24-hour lighting, for animals or for humans. But if satellites reflected sunlight onto Paris up to 22h30, for example, that would certainly reduce the electricity bills and improve safety. It would also bring the space age into everyone's life. And there are lots of dense urban centers that could sign contracts for something like that.

Has this been discussed somewhere on the web? I've never looked.

The Mystery of the Unloved but Sucessful software products

I've worked in a few software houses, small and big, that sell software products. I regularly see successful products being ignored by the development teams, while they work on exotic and unlightly new ideas. Customer suggestions are ignored unless required to win a sale, and even then the the effects are underwhelming.

Why are all software products ignored once they're delivered?

The answer is that all software companies share a dream, of spending a fixed cost to develop a product that can then be sold to the entire planet. I call this the "Mushroom effect". Or maybe its an hallucination and not an effect?

During development phase the dream of future profits keeps the management committed. However once the product is out and the sales team start trying to place it, the dream of world domination gets replaced by a reality of less than exponential sales. Then the cost/benefit analysis kicks in - why improve this product with such limited sales opportunities, when we could work on the Next Big Thing? However the product is never killed, otherwise someone would have to take responsibility.

Please comment if you've seen a similar effect. How long does it take for the dream to evaporate?