Editing 2908: Moon Armor Index
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
| Latest revision | Your text | ||
| Line 22: | Line 22: | ||
* moons already serve a protective purpose by deflecting and even intercepting some incoming asteroids (with a ''slight'' chance of turning a future miss into a hit). | * moons already serve a protective purpose by deflecting and even intercepting some incoming asteroids (with a ''slight'' chance of turning a future miss into a hit). | ||
* the four gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — lack a solid surface to practically sustain a layer of armor without even ''more'' ambitious engineering than the already complicated process of somehow distributing soft-landed fragments of disassembled satellite evenly all across a planet. | * the four gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — lack a solid surface to practically sustain a layer of armor without even ''more'' ambitious engineering than the already complicated process of somehow distributing soft-landed fragments of disassembled satellite evenly all across a planet. | ||
| − | |||
The title text continues that NASA's [https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/ Planetary Protection Officer] is purportedly in favor of the idea. In reality, this officer is actually responsible for keeping other celestial bodies safe from Earth's contamination, not for shielding planets in armor. Theoretically, though, armoring other planets could indeed protect them from further Earth-sourced contamination, and armoring Earth would also theoretically protect other planets by burying the biosphere and all of Earth life not already sent into space — a potentially civilization-smothering action, though a surprisingly unapocalyptic result compared to many of Randall’s “What If?” scenarios. | The title text continues that NASA's [https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/ Planetary Protection Officer] is purportedly in favor of the idea. In reality, this officer is actually responsible for keeping other celestial bodies safe from Earth's contamination, not for shielding planets in armor. Theoretically, though, armoring other planets could indeed protect them from further Earth-sourced contamination, and armoring Earth would also theoretically protect other planets by burying the biosphere and all of Earth life not already sent into space — a potentially civilization-smothering action, though a surprisingly unapocalyptic result compared to many of Randall’s “What If?” scenarios. | ||
