Will asteroids become a new weapon of international terror diplomacy?

It’s certainly going to pose interesting ethical questions, such as if mankind has the ability to partially alter the course of an asteroid such that it will still hit Earth, but WHERE on Earth might be adjusted, how that determination might get made and who gets to make it? What if it were going to hit mainland china and the CCP wants to push it further out such that it creates tsunamis on Japan’s East coast? Does Japan have the right to send their team to prevent China’s?

Great question.

I’m not sure it’s possible to divert an asteroid with pinpoint accuracy. It would obviously be a WMD. Let’s say that they “aimed” it to the Japanese coast. If it’s off by just a squillionth of a degree then it could easily hit China.

Interesting question.

I am surprised that it would really be a matter of choosing where to hit Earth. If one craft can do that, why wouldn’t we send 20 craft to make it miss altogether?

@Zaku – the intended target might not have the capability to send those 20 craft.

Nope. Humanity is crazy stupid. We will never get our stuff together enough to make it work. Apparently, we have over 3000 dead satellites orbiting earth and 2000 good satellites that may soon be damages by other satellites or space junk large enough to damage them. So the fact that everyone is like Oh, well, lets just send up another one if there is a crash, makes me doubt they have any ability to move the direction of an actual asteroid.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was 10 to 15 kilometers wide.

This 2024YR4 asteroid is believed to be much bigger (“40–90 kilometers wide”).
If that beast hits anywhere on Earth it will send us back to the Stone Age if not wipe out all of mankind.

metres, not kilometres.

Oops

Units!!!