Re: Earth-grazing asteroids as a military resource

On 11/03/2025 12:05 am, legg wrote:

On Tue, 4 Mar 2025 13:02:09 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
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.

  Isn't Russian-occupied Ukraine already a mined wasteland?
You think Putin gives a damn?

It does tend to be full of Russian cannon fodder, which is starting to run out, whence the admixture of North Korean cannon-fodder.
Putin won't give a damn about the lives lost, but he won't be pleased about having to find more cannon fodder.

Throwing rocks? It may come to that, if the conflict goes on
long enough without aid. Look at Gaza.

It's tricky to get rocks to move as fast as a chunk of earth impacting asteroid.

Aid that is already withdrawn isn't a threat or bargaining
chip, it's simple betrayal.

So Trump is traitor. As if we didn't know that already.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney