Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Smithalicious 500 days ago
Why would you? Space weapons are also very definitively illegal. I don't see what you could accomplish this way that a nuke couldn't, and it's not like there's a shortage of nuclear firepower. Plus, this seems really slow to deploy.
1 comments
pengaru 500 days ago
> I don't see what you could accomplish this way that a nuke couldn't

The nuke poisons the land, a metallic asteroid just makes a conventional mess you cleanup and rebuild under your own flag...

link
tsimionescu 500 days ago
You realize that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are huge, inhabited cities, and have been without interruption, right?
link
pengaru 499 days ago
Elevated rates of leukemia and other cancers don't prevent cities from existing or even thriving...
link
tsimionescu 499 days ago
Even if that's true, it still means that there is at best a tiny advantage to an asteroid weapon compared to a nuclear weapon - and a gigantic disadvantage in terms of energy cost of moving an asteroid from its orbit to Earth's surface, and in terms of the months or years it would take to deploy (in which time your enemy might even find a way to stop you, or at least launch all of its nuclear arsenal on you if that's not possible, MAD style).
link