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From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Earth-grazing asteroids as a military resource
Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2025 16:24:47 -0500
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On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 21:16:52 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

>On 2025-03-05 05:28, Bill Sloman wrote:
>> On 5/03/2025 10:21 am, john larkin wrote:
>>> On Tue, 4 Mar 2025 22:59:44 +0000, TTman <kraken.sankey@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 04/03/2025 02:02, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>> The latest New Scientist talks about asteroid 2024 YR4 being downgraded
>>>>> from a 1 in 32 chance of hitting Earth (the 17th February estimate) 
>>>>> to a
>>>>> one in 25,000 chance on the 24th February.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's some where between 40 and 90 metres in diameter. Presumably there
>>>>> are more smaller asteroids (which will be harder to see).
>>>>>
>>>>> Eventually some military clown is going to get the idea finding a 
>>>>> few of
>>>>> them and sending up stick-on ion drives, so that the earth-grazing
>>>>> orbits can be shifted into earth-impacting orbits.
>>>>>
>>>>> A couple of them hitting Russian occupied-areas of the Ukraine would
>>>>> upset Putin no end.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Excellent suggestion.! Needs some clever maths calcs though...
>>>
>>> Silly suggestion. You'd have to plan your wars 30 years in advance,
>>> and you couldn't sign a peace treaty with the thing a week away from
>>> hitting earth.
>> 
>> You wouldn't have just one of them, and the trick would be to have a 
>> bunch of them in orbits that could easily (and quickly) shifted from 
>> earth grazing to earth impacting. You might mot be able to shift it back 
>> into earth grazing in a week, but you could probably get it to hit the 
>> Pacific ocean rather than your enemy's territory.
>> 
>>> We can launch a nuke in 20 minutes.
>> 
>> And everybody can see where it came from. Junk in the asteroid belt is 
>> anonymous, and an asteroid hitting the earth will vapourise anything 
>> that might otherwise have been traceable back to you.
>
>In The Expanse series of novels, asteroids are used as weapons, and it 
>took them months. Of course, you need the proper drive (which we don't 
>have). I'm not sure they calculated the hit place.
>
>Ok, it is fiction, but calculated fiction.

Same core issue, on a smaller scale, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

..<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress>

Joe