Magical Collisions

Hey, im working on a game, thats a side scrolling shooter, kind of like defender. Of course its in 3d though. I had a question about collisions, what would be the fastest way to detect a collision between my ship, and say a bunch of asteroids. There will be probably about 30 or 40 asteroids at a time of different sizes and shapes. What do i do to detect when i hit one? It needs to be fast. Ive never used colisions before so treat me like an idiot. Thanks in advance.

From the BB Help Archives (supplied with your software)

 Graphics3D 800,600

  Const CUBE_COL=1
  Const SPHERE_COL=2

  SetBuffer BackBuffer()

  camera=CreateCamera()
  CameraViewport camera,0,0,800,600
  PositionEntity camera,0,0,-5

  light=CreatLight()

  cube=CreateCube()
  PositionEntity cube,-5,0,5
  EntityColor cube,70,80,190
  EntityType cube,CUBE_COL

  sphere=CreateSphere(12)
  PositionEntity sphere,5,0,5
  EntityColor sphere,170,80,90
  EntityType sphere,SPHERE_COL

  Collisions SPHERE_COL,CUBE_COL,3,1

  While Not KeyHit(1)

  MoveEntity sphere,-0.02,0,0

  UpdateWorld
  RenderWorld

  If EntityCollided(sphere,CUBE_COL) Then
  Text 370,80,"Collided !!!"
  EndIf

  Text 335,500,"Collision Detection"
  Flip

  Wend

  End

To perform a simple function upon colision (this, ofcoarse coming out of the code above) study the code below

If EntityCollided(sphere,CUBE_COL) Then
  Text 370,80,"Collided !!!"
  EndIf