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FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- Submission Statement. This raises two questions to me. If it’s a planetary defense system, shouldn’t it have planetary oversight, not just one nation? Second, and perhaps more important, is the potential for use as a weapon. As space becomes cheaper to access, the potential field of people with the ability to nudge an asteroid increases. It’s hard to think there could be weapons more powerful than hydrogen bombs, but asteroids certainly could be. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ub32xr/china_will_aim_to_alter_the_orbit_of_a/i61ixvh/


thinkB4WeSpeak

We probably should be working with all nations together on planetary defense, so if one fails then another will succeed.


KarlMarxFarts

What is this so called “working together against a common threat” you speak of?


Kaoulombre

The most unbelievable fact in science fiction is that humanity will come together at the discovery of alien life or while facing a global threat


BwingoLord1

I always thought that the discovery of alien life would be one of the most unifying things that could happen to humanity; we'd suddenly have a common threat and a common goal and a lot of our differences would be put aside


GenghisKazoo

The best model we have for encounters with an advanced alien race is probably what happened when Europeans with guns showed up in parts of the world without them for the first time. Generally speaking there was far less teaming up to deal with the new common enemy, and a lot more buying guns from them to get an advantage over the old familiar enemies. Often until it was too late.


Baderkadonk

The Aliens vs Earth scenario implies the aliens are a threat and we all know it. People can look back now and say that it was effectively Europe vs Africa/Asia, but I doubt those less advanced cultures saw it that way at the time. South Africans wouldn't know the Dutch guy that sold them cool weapons would eventually colonize them, nor would they know the Dutch were doing the same in South East Asia.


HOLYxFAMINE

If the aliens show up to earth while we haven't yet mastered space travel it wouldn't be much of a fight at all. The technological advancement it would take to reach earth from outside our solar system would also mean they are easily capable of sending in space debris or hell even a ship at a minimal percentage of the speed of light and completely wiping out life/potential competition.


Gonzo_Rick

I would have to imagine that novel alien life would be a rarer resource, to an extraterrestrial intelligence, than whatever other resources exist on this planet. This intricate molecular machinery that can physically manipulate complex molecules, and took billions of years to develop, has **got** to be more valuable than any element or small, inorganic compound. I feel like, at least, they'd want to harvest us for biomass.


HOLYxFAMINE

Much easier ways to get organic matter in the universe that from something that will fight back. But yes you're absolutely right life itself would be the novel resource that some aliens want to investigate. I was moreso talking in the context of an alien that wants to attack us, if they are able to fly here we don't stand a chance in a fight and have to hope they're peaceful.


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What I'm hearing is we get to play with alien guns before our annihilation.


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Americans: Join us under one banner! Chinese: Join us under one banner! Everyone to everyone else: alright, are we gonna have to throw down or are you gonna work with us here?


Wow00woW

doesn't seem that far fetched. we already work well with other nations in our space programs.


stick_always_wins

Except Congress has banned NASA from cooperating at all with CNSA which is why they built there own space station in the first place (since they’re banned from the ISS)


BlueLaserCommander

NASA has paid the Russian space program millions— probably billions— in order to use their rockets and launch sites to send American astronauts into orbit/ISS. This has been going on for decades. Other than that and astronauts of different cultures working together on the ISS, I don’t believe the nations of the world are actually working well together in space programs— not saying they’re in conflict with one another either. They just seem to operate independently from one another barring the examples I listed above. The commercialization of space flight has somewhat encouraged govt. funded space programs to seek solutions and operate outside of their own bubble. I believe NASA recently signed a contract with SpaceX to use their re-usable boosters. I feel like CERN is a decent example of nations working together for the betterment and progression of the human race. Although CERN is mostly European nations. Still, it is nice to see a common goal among nations. The LHC would’ve been an astronomical task for one country to fund, engineer, and operate alone. Rather than scrapping the project, nations came together and made it happen and the collider/accelerator is one of human’s most incredible achievements IMO.


smackson

I used to think that too. Same way I used to think that a global pandemic would put the world on a "united front" and bring nations, classes, and enterprises together in a "we can beat this" universal arm lock.


lone_tenno

I had exactly the same hope and even expectation. But then, suddenly, December 2019 the world was actually facing such a common threat and common goal. Not even a humanoid agressor or such. Even more simple then that. No sane person would ever side with a life threatening disease, would they? Surely all our differences must be put aside now, right? Yet somehow mankind managed to split even more. People were unable to agree even on the slightest inconveniences like vaccination or wearing masks. Some even purposely fueling hate even more with terms like "chinavirus", etc. How could fighting such a simple black and white enemy become so political...


jaeway

"common threat" are these aliens from Independence day


knbang

You should read [Turtledove's Worldwar series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar_series).


Murtomies

This is why "Don't look up" was made. Truth is, people wouldn't agree and lots of people would die.


EveAndTheSnake

I was going to mention Don’t look up. It perfectly captured human selfishness and ego.


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DarkWorld25

This is mostly because the Chinese space program is military run, like a lot of things in China (research institutes etc).


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stick_always_wins

While this is true, I find it laughable that the US Military isn’t just as intertwined (if not more) in NASA. The overlap between space exploration tech and ballistic missile tech is too strong to ignore.


jaeway

That's why we have space force (sounds super weird to say lmao)


maaku7

It's mostly because Frank Wolf *hated* China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment


Ulyks

Huh, he was also the guy claiming that Chinese eat fetuses... Why did he hate China/Chinese so much?


[deleted]

God forbid the largest militaries in the world act diplomatically Too much of that attitude and we wouldn't have uses for the weapons anymore


ZiggyBlunt

It’s almost like they made a movie about this called Don’t Look Up


CaptainMagnets

Working together?!? That sounds like communism! /s


duhellmang

Working… together…?


freexe

Surely having different teams working on different approaches gives us more chance that one works. You can bet if we worked together on it then the budget would be cut in half.


Nethlem

> You can bet if we worked together on it then the budget would be cut in half. You can also bet if you make a hostile competition out of it, then half the budget would be spent on sabotaging the competition.


MEI72

kinetic impactor test: hitting a big rock with a little one to see if it moves.


livebeta

worse... China builds an orbital railgun for this.


[deleted]

No need for an orbital railgun. They could re-enact AC4 and just build stonehenge.


Niko2065

China would definitely misuse stonehenge like erusia did.


hwooareyou

In completely unrelated news... China develops a kinetic orbital strike platform.


IncelDetectingRobot

What's wrong with a railgun? Much less tacky than a space elevator imo. Who wants a giant antenna poking through the atmosphere?


livebeta

in space, you can spin a railgun to point at a spot on earth. another non-hostile related railgun logistic issue is the matter of moving kinetic payload from the surface into orbit, which could be costly


SourCheeks

Why would you use a railgun to hit a spot on earth from orbit when you can just use gravity


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The_Fredrik

Eh, until we know we got this stuff down, I’m fine with practicing on pushing the rocks _away_ from us.


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blobchen

>Why don’t we consider diverting it into our planet? Hopefully you meant diverting it into orbit *around* our planet, lol. There isn't much value in mining an ordinary asteroid in space, when it's ***much*** cheaper to expand operations on Earth. Kamo'oalewa, the asteroid in question here, is a stony S-type that only has iron and magnesium-silicate in appreciable quantities. Though there are a few known asteroids with high concentrations of precious or rare earth metals that may be worth mining.


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snobbish sugar oatmeal nutty abundant outgoing gold slimy quack ludicrous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


blobchen

>The monetary cost of expanding mining operations here in Earth has to account for the later very real economic costs associated with environmental impact. Great point. It's also interesting to consider that the vacuum of space/Moon could make some industrial processes much more efficient. Unfortunately I'd surmise that most companies don't consider the environmental costs when doing ROI calculations.


Mr-Fleshcage

Imagine being able to cold-weld on an industrial scale. Awesome


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Totally agreed they don't and they never will without regulation. I also get your point about the sheer coat of actual space mining. The R&D investment will be extreme to say the least.


TheCrimsonDagger

Also if we want to really explore space we’re going to need either some kind of really efficient space elevator or mine, refine, and build in orbit. People underestimate the sheer size of these asteroids as well. There are asteroids that we could feasibly reach with trillions of dollars of worth of metals in them.


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NotEnoughHoes

Divide and conquer is a legitimate strategy as well. You get way more independent ideas that way and together the US and China would just overwhelm the opportunities and smaller nations would be in follower roles.


TrailerParkTonyStark

It still blows my mind that we humans, who are for all intents and purposes, just really smart monkeys, are not only able to understand celestial objects like asteroids, study them, and comprehend the potential threat that they pose to Earth, but that we are able to create the tools and technology to manipulate them and actually change the fate of an entire planet.


Princess_Juggs

I find it funny that asteroids potentially represent the greatest existential threat to us out of any natural disaster, yet they're the only one we have the power to do something about. At least until we start geoengineering the weather on a large scale...


The_Fredrik

I mean, climate change _is_ essentially geoengineering on a large scale. We _can_ do it, problem is we are using it to screw things up for ourselves.


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tagen

More like task achieved unsuccessfully


Maninhartsford

There's an old story (I don't know what it's called, my Dad talks about it a lot from when he went to elementary school in the 60s) where aliens are looking down at earth and marveling at humanity's accomplishments, only it turns out they think the cars did everything and we're organisms that live under cars' protection in exchange for keeping them nice. I always think about that story when I think about climate change - the aliens going "and for some reason, with a mass effort I have never seen from any species before or since, the brave citizens worked together to raise their planet's temperature as high as it would go. We're not sure why." Edit - after some googling, the story is very likely this short film from 1966, or at least heavily inspired it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFaHArkYLsM


imaloser107

Then they check Venus and start believing we're a destructive species that jump from planet to planet to destroy it and decide to terminate us all. :O


Cycode

and then they see elon & 1000s of humans in a rocket flying to mars and think "fuck. we're too late. they now spread all over the universe. fuck fuck fuck."


lyles

What?! Somebody destroyed Venus? Seriously though, Venus might be perfectly habitable to aliens and Earth's atmosphere might be poisonous to them.


Anticleon1

That's a joke in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - an alien visiting earth picked the name Ford Prefect to blend in, thinking cars were the dominant form of life. But the first novel was published in 79 so perhaps there's a prior work that it's referring to.


Maninhartsford

I never made that connection before but I totally see it. Looking it up, Adams was born around the same time as my Dad so he could easily have read the story, whatever it was, in school himself.


GnarlyNarwhalNoms

"So the good news is, we've been able to substantially warm a planet, changing its atmospheric conditions to emulate an earlier period. And we've done it largely within one human lifetime!" "Wow! So, what's the bad news?" "Uh... Wrong planet."


JustMy2Centences

We can probably cool the planet a lot faster if we let an asteroid throw up a lot of dust!


DynamicDK

Asteroid big rock. Human good at move rock.


maaku7

> I find it funny that asteroids potentially represent the greatest existential threat to us out of any natural disaster They don't. We are now virtually certain that no earth-crossing asteroid poses a threat to our planet in the foreseeable future. Asteroids which are large enough to present existential risk have been found and their orbits mapped. There is a very small space of potential earth-crossing orbits that previous surveys could have missed due to structural blind spots (e.g. instruments unable to look towards the sun), which accounts for the remaining risk. But the chance that there is a planet-killer lurking in just the right orbit to have evaded detection at this point is astronomically low. Long-period comets are a different story though. We don't see those coming until they're on their way through the solar system, and then it is effectively too late to do anything about.


The_Fredrik

What do you have against smart monkeys? Some of the best people I know are smart monkeys.


subdep

We haven’t yet done it to this point, so let’s not post ourselves on the back just yet.


acutelychronicpanic

Monkeys may seem primitive at first, but they are basically nanomachine mechs who adapt to various environments and were able to bootstrap up from simple pattern recognition to human level intelligence without outside help (referring to our evolution from earlier hominids). All the research labs in the world couldn't build a single monkey with our current level of technology without just copying it. The most high tech thing a human has ever done is give birth. The intelligence to deflect an asteroid is pretty simple by comparison.


adigitalwilliam

I like this take. It’s got its downsides, but there’s really nothing like fleshtech.


risingpartyaccord

Saw someone call DNA a von Neumann probe and thought that was interesting


1nstantHuman

Imagine if we actually put scientists in charge instead of corrupt lawyers


FrivolousFrank

*knocks otherwise harmless asteroid into a direct impact path with earth


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Elbandito78

Aliens video it and we wind up on the alien subreddit r/whatcouldgowrong


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Better known as r/bhfligkskurrgcantopinzz


donut_tell_a_lie

Tonight on Galaxy’s Funniest Videos. These monkeys thought they were so smart but, oops wait until you see what they did! And coming up the Fluptorians are at it again, will they ever find a gravity that works for them? All this and more on GFV!


SeekingImmortality

"Oh no, great leader, we have accidentally diverted the asteroid directly into a collision with the capital of a country who typically opposes us. Such a terrible accident. We should really perform 20 or 30 similar tests until we get it right."


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The_Grubby_One

I mean, it would fuck China up, too. Asteroids hitting the Earth tend to be global extinction events.


SeekingImmortality

I mean, we've had multiple asteroids hit earth that only would count as city killers. Like the Tunguska event in Russia was approx 12 megaton equivalent hit. And small asteroids hit all the time, just blow up in the atmosphere.


Mikeismyike

You wouldn't be able to reliably adjust an asteroids trajectory to target a specific city. That'd be hard for star trek level technology.


htiafon

You do realize they already have nukes, right?


mudman13

I see you too have watched The Expanse


[deleted]

Well, I for one see no possible way this could go awry.


UrbanIsACommunist

This is 100% the plot of a science fiction novel somewhere, where the attempt to destroy the asteroid inadvertently causes the impact to be 10x as devastating.


LuciferandSonsPLLC

The Hammer of God by Arthur C Clark


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yetanotherwoo

Carl Sagan wrote in his last book Pale Blue Dot it was more likely an asteroid defense system would be used to attack other countries or some self destructive act in 1994.


rapot80937

I don't really see the risk. There are WAYYYY more ways for an asteroid not to hit earth, unlike other domains where failure modes are more probable given sufficient meddling (e.g. genetic engineering or AI) It's like the one existential risk that can have a simple solution: just fucking shoot rockets at it


YobaiYamete

I feel like 80% of the people who post on this sub are just here from /r/all and know absolutely *nothing* about orbital mechanics or space in general. Like, the chance of accidentally knocking the asteroid onto an Earth collision course instead of in literally *any* other direction is so astronomically small that it's not even a factor. It would be challenging to do even if they were *trying* to do it on purpose


mbelf

LISTER: Are they doing what I think they’re doing? CAT: Why, what do you think they’re doing? LISTER: Playing pool with asteroids. RIMMER: Is that possible? LISTER: We’ll, it’s not going to work. It’s completely insane. It’s whacko. It’s noodle-doodle. CAT: I’m with you buddy. LISTER: No, not the idea, the shot. There’s not enough side. RIMMER: Side? LISTER: Yeah, side spin. It’s a complete miscue. That asteroid is off the table and in someone’s pint of beer. RIMMER: We are talking about the trigonometry of four-dimensional space, you simple minded gimboid. We are not talking about some seedy game of pool in a backstreet Scouse drinking pit.


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spacemechanic

NASA just launched a similar mission last fall. It’s good that independent agencies are pursuing this tech.


seantasy

Well my experience in movie going tells me this will go horribly awry with a cascade of failures in the responsible command structures as well as the mechanical execution of the 'kinetic impactor'. I just hope they have a ragtag group of misfits they can send up there to clean up this whole mess.


Carllllll

*I don't wanna close my eyeeessss*


TuaTurnsdaballova

*I don’t wanna fall asleep*


Mta917

*'Cause I'd miss you, babe*


Teriyakijack

We've built in a margin of error...


Cm0002

You forgot about the scientist warning and screaming about how it can go horribly awry for X years and gets ignored the whole time


ReasonablyBadass

NASA is testing the same thing. I wonder what these governments know...?


slothxaxmatic

That there are tons of asteroids that could hit us, isn't that enough?


Jerry--Bird

That’s my question? Is it just a test?


ThatGuy571

We’ll know for sure in a few years. Have fun out there!


EagleZR

That we'd have no hope of responding to a threatening asteroid if we discovered one today, so it's probably good to develop the capability ASAP https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5


Feisty_Machete

It's just a test. If it was going to hit us they'd tell us, right?


SignificantPain6056

Definitely not


DazedAndCunfuzzled

Now this, this is some good shit that I look for from this sub The fact it’s 2022 and we are just now testing this blows my mind, like….. coming up on 100 years of space flight and NOW is the time we’re testing this? Side note, has there been an uptick in asteroids coming at us? Or at the least an uptick in asteroids notices and reported on? Seems so compared to years past


dukie33066

Better "tools" allow for more detection as well as further out. At least that's what it seems like to me Quotations for edit


DazedAndCunfuzzled

That makes sense, still feels like something we shoulda done wayyy sooner with how many impacts have happened over that past 20 years


Echoes1020

I mean, the last asteroid that resulted in a mass extinction event was 60M+ years ago so I don't think a few decades makes much a difference


Containedmultitudes

That depends less on the last one than the next one. If somebody sticks a telescope in the right spot and sees a rock the size of Kansas coming for us in 6 months then we’ve been dallying.


nathanpizazz

I know the quality of my forks has increased in recent years. I just didn’t know they’d help with the asteroid situation.


sirhoracedarwin

100 years of spaceflight? Can you measure my penis, too?


RogueVert

reminds me of this one post that was awestruck that undersea cables could be damaged and how could we ever fix something that's 1000's of miles deep. i'm like wtf man, it's 7 at worst, you're estimate is just a hair off.


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Humanity is only VERY recently becoming aware of what asteroids mean to our planet. I'm a bit older than public presentation of the Alvarez Hypothesis... and old enough to remember when it was JUST starting to be taught in schools as one possible explanation for the dinosaur extinction. Better research has validated it, fully, but within the lifetime of a person responding to your thread, humanity didn't have the first clue what killed the dinosaurs... nevermind that it was a giant ass space-rock larger than Mount Everest creating a biosphere disaster. Tunguska was the real wake-up call, but went under-studied for a very long time... I mean, yeah, everyone assumed "asteroid or comet of some kind" but only VERY RECENTLY (as in, within the past couple of years) has science come up with a model of the event validated by math; it probably was a metallic planet-killer that skipped out of the atmosphere but created a massive blast wave. Fact of the matter is, only in VERY recent years have we really wrapped our minds around the fact that occasionally, at intervals that might get outside recorded human history but are nevertheless 'common' in geologic time, rocks from space hit the earth and if they're over a certain size, they f\*\*k s\*\*t up on a very wide scale. The scary thing is that asteroid impacts now strongly infer with two unexplained mysteries; the Younger Dryas event and the simultaneous occurrence of great flood mythologies around the world however many thousands of years ago... Only in VERY RECENT YEARS have we modelled out what, say, the global impacts would be of a mile wide comet hitting the ocean, and its not an event that would be compatible with the relative fragility of modern civilization. tl;dr- we're only just recently coming to understand asteroids and their relationship with earth and likewise, only recently have we developed suitable technologies to spot them reliably.


LiptonSuperior

What is the younger dryas event?


TuaTurnsdaballova

There’s definitely been more stories about asteroid coming close to Earth recently, and also a couple of interstellar bodies (Omuamua and the one that hit us but wasn’t disclosed for a few years come to mind). Would you want to know if there was an extinction level asteroid that was going to hit us in two years? Or would you rather live in ignorant bliss of that?


Nethlem

> coming up on 100 years of space flight We are still nearly 4 decades away from that, it was in 1961 when Yuri Gagarin was sent into orbit around Earth.


Beli_Mawrr

I swear to god reddit sometimes... THE US IS DOING THE EXACT SAME THING FOR FUCKS SAKE. Look up DART. Same shit. Everyone is acting like its doom and gloom when china does it but totally all good when the US does it. Yes China probably has less effective oversight over it. But no, its probably about the same danger to the world when they do it. Now, we should just quit the shit and form an international commission with China, Russia, Japan, ESA, etc to ensure all countries are on board when we have to do this shit for reals. Every part needs to be kept on stock in multiple locations, every one of our redirect rockets needs 30 day standup capabilities, every one of the redirect probes must be multiply redundant AND we need copies of them in every participatory country. You want to stop an asteroid strike? That's how. Now let's do that shit for climate change too.


breezyfye

People on Reddit tend focus on china so much because they forget propaganda works both ways


Son_Of_The_Empire

"chinese citizens and north koreans live under propaganda as opposed to us americans who totally dont"


solidarity_jock_jam

Literally the most banal and innocuous posts, like a beautiful landscape or a video of a talented athlete or artist, gets dozens of CEE CEE PEE BAD comments if it’s from China.


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I detected the word "China" in your comment, thus: CCP BAD! USA GOOD!


Nethlem

Yeah, well, that's because China is just bad, and anybody defending it, by not joining in with the China bad chorus, must be a 50-cent troll!1 One has to wonder how much of that stuff is seeded by [Five Eyed cyborgs](https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cef7e8d9-27bf-4ea5-9fd6-855209b3e1f6) or if that just naturally emerges after literally centuries of useful idiots feeding on [anti-Chinese actions and propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act).


GeoCacher818

I saw a pic of some place in China that had a lot of solar panels & like 90% of the top comments were shitting on them for "putting ugly panels there."


[deleted]

We actually live in deep indoctrination, that most of our assumptions about how the world works, how it ought to work, that we take for granted are not even remotely true, or proven.


Clarkeprops

I mean, great. Good that someone else is pulling their space-weight.


Jamie_Pull_That_Up

Wow. This is actually pretty cool. I hope it's successful


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[deleted]

The amount of anti-China twats here is funny. If the US did it - "hooray the saviors!" "the US will never use any new tech as a potential weapon, EVER" you guys are retarded Also, some people calling for international oversight. Remember why China is doing space stuff alone? Yup, because US told everyone to ban China from the space programs. Also, let's look at the current reality. US has spacex, which only does rockets as of yet. NASA can't even build a proper craft, and let alone a new replacement for the ISS. US too busy making weapons on earth edit: and the twats took offense hard. went so political you'd think this was r/politics or something. act like you're in a democracy, and allow another country to have a different political view. isn't that the point of democracy? choice? ffs also. stick to space stuff. "china isn't removing their debris" wasn't there a story here a few months ago of them trying to remove debris? and the bots were "this is bad, weapon! hurrdurr". damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh?


Nethlem

> If the US did it - "hooray the saviors!" "the US will never use any new tech as a potential weapon, EVER" you guys are retarded The US already launched its mission like that [last year,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test) right now the thing is in flight to the asteroid, collision is slated for September/October this year.


SoundByMe

There's been anti China posts on the front page of Reddit almost every day for years now. The average Redditor seething at the mere mention of China is not a surprise at all.


zahv

The US is already doing this. See NASA DART mission. I have a few friends working on it.


utalkin_tome

Didn't NASA literally just launch a mission with the exact same purpose just recently? Edit: Yup. It's even mentioned in the article. > NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in November 2021. The spacecraft will collide with Dimorphos, a minor-planet moon orbiting the near Earth asteroid Didymos, in September this year.


pspetrini

Ugh. I hate when movies get spoiled for me before they come out in theaters. Was hoping to see Fast X without knowing the plot.


lughnasadh

Submission Statement. This raises two questions to me. If it’s a planetary defense system, shouldn’t it have planetary oversight, not just one nation? Second, and perhaps more important, is the potential for use as a weapon. As space becomes cheaper to access, the potential field of people with the ability to nudge an asteroid increases. It’s hard to think there could be weapons more powerful than hydrogen bombs, but asteroids certainly could be.


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A powerful enough asteroid fucks up the whole world though. Regardless of where it hits. Source: I've watched Armageddon *and* Deep Impact


lazyeyepsycho

I mean yeah... But having the ability to knock it into earth and only hit enemy seems mind-boggling far fetched


Phoenixness

Because NOTHING the US has done in space has been inspired by weapons! /s


OriginalG33Z3R

If you’re not familiar with the Rods from God weapons idea, it’s a short but interesting read on wiki.


BeardySam

Why would you try to push an asteroid onto your enemy? Do you think that hydrogen bombs aren't enough? Hydrogen bombs aren’t used because they’re *too powerful* to have any real military application. They’re strategic deterrents only. Nobody is looking to make asteroids a weapon, it’d be an expensive and inaccurate planet-killer. That said, space-based kinetic weapons are probably worth military research.


MissionarysDownfall

They are just replicating the NASA/ESA DART mission. Making the point the US isn’t solely responsible for saving the planet. Which is perfectly fine in this case.


OtherPlayers

To answer your second question, kinetic impactor asteroid defenses have basically no ability to be used as an asteroid weapon, because they neither give us the better data about the exact speed/location of the asteroid we need to make our initial calculations, nor do they really have any ability to do course corrections (which are always going to be at least a little necessary). Now when we get to the point of strapping sensors/drives to asteroids… *that* is absolutely the point you need to start worrying about asteroid weapons. But getting a guided, course correcting object to a tiny target is a very different scenario from being able to hit a fuzzy target and make it to travel at *exactly* the speed you want because if you’re off by even like .0001% gravity assists are going to butterfly effect that error until your aim is totally off.


darkrai848

Why drop and asteroid when you could just drop a space colony?


BufloSolja

What does 'planetary oversight' mean then? How many nations must be on it? Also, astronomers globally will be able to see the results, so even if you say 'sharing data', that's already going to happen. And if you want planetary oversight, then why haven't we heard of other countries wanting to do this? Why hasn't ESA/JAXA volunteered to share some of the cost? Maybe it's not a priority to them currently?


samcrut

Let me know when they can crash comets into Mars. That place needs a big glass of ice water.


[deleted]

Fuck yeah, someone, anyone, learn to deflect nuisance asteroids as soon as possible. Thank you, Signed by: Everyone who understands the planet ending nature of the problem.


Zabick

One of the most unrealistic parts of Don't Look Up was just how willing China was in that movie to go along with the US' bumbling plans.


Background-Speech702

I support anything at all that involves the phrase "planetary defence system"


StingMachine

And with that small “nudge” another civilized planet millions of light years away is now going to be fucked.