Best line in that is the big energy weapons are firing and the Captain says they hit them with "six-million electron volts..." (less than one watt...) But it sounded good in the 1950's...
If one Chicxulub is not enough, a single ship specialized in asteroid mining can deflect several hundred asteroids into an inner orbit of the System. Asteroids are cheap.
I doubt hundreds of asteroids are enough to sterilize the planet. However, a few asteroids converted into giant solar mirror, or a near-sun laser conversion array, might be enough to melt the surface over time.
Right next to Ursula Le Guin.....
Asteroids may not achieve total annihilation, at least that's what happened during the Motie Wars. A more expensive and slower solution: the mirrors should orbit the planet in the opposite direction of its rotation and should be placed in many orbits with different inclinations in order to illuminate the entire surface. A cheaper solution would be to turn some asteroids into clouds of dust that would cover the planet orbiting above the atmosphere, eventually turning that world into a cryosphere. Anyway, I think using Mega-Lasers is more spectacular. Which ships do you propose to use...the battleship Lenin or the cruiser MacArthur?
Like the Terminator asking for a pulsed plasma rifle in the 40 watt range.
Ah yes, that attack was serious and nobody was called Shirley.
Boaty McBoatface. Far better suited by having won a public competition and then rejected by so called smart people in favour of the Sir Richard Attenborough. After all, why ask if you are not prepared to comply with the winning entry?
HiA Meeting with Medusa, with a sequel written by Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds: The Medusa Chronicles
The Medusa Chronicles - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I hate musical movies and I'm a fan of Attenborough
I am very much a fan of the global asset known as Sir David Attenborough. Much richer for his being around for a while yet, I hope.I hate musical movies and I'm a fan of Attenborough
Various other blimp-like creatures too. One species in Fredrick Pohl's Jem and another in Harlan Ellison's collective world building exercise, Medea. Frank Herbert spun off from his participation in this for his Pandora stories. John Varley had the blimps in his Gaia trilogy, illustrated by Connor Freff Cochran here, in the first book, Titan.
On the other hand, the crew of the starship might look at it as if it were a brick wall.
Genetically modified goldfish that feast solely on the Shoggoids? A pathogen that causes the goop they're made of to crosslink into long-chain polymers, turning the whole thing into a giant block of plastic that can be harvested and carved into low income housing units?
Sounds almost like The Blob.I'm reminded that 'Coconut Crabs', those tree-climbing scaries distantly related to the more familiar 'hermits'...
... are progressively evolving bigger, better book-lungs to augment their juveniles' gills. FWIW, the youngsters 'go hermit' until too big and tough for most predators.Coconut crab - Wikipedia
To put it politely, their species seems to have 'growth potential'.
Else-where, there's that wry quip about Earth's hypothetical 'In Their Own Image' Creator or Designer having an inordinate fondness for beetles.
Plus an interesting observation that multiplying segments to extend body-plan lends itself to limb specialisation, then progressive reduction of load-bearers to hexapod...
We already know of copper-based oxygen carrying 'blood',. Though not as efficient in current ~20% O2 atmosphere as our iron-based, it seems to work well in near-anoxic conditions. Equivalent is our 'foetal' heme variant, usually lost within first year.
FWIW, in 'City of Fresno', my current 'WIP', a problem they will face is a planet whose inhabitants have fled massive mainland to defensible off-shore islands. One of their 'forest floor' fauna, an omnivorous 'sorta-protist', went polyploid, grew and multiplied, grew and multiplied, grew and grew to what the astonished humans describe as 'Shoggoids'.
Too many are the size of ground-cars, while each territory's 'Boss Beast' is big as a bus. Seriously difficult to kill: Like sponges, even fragments reform to mini-Shoggoids, continue eating, growing. Fire ? Beam weapons ? Char sloughed, remnant resumes insatiable nomming. Toxins ? Poisoned part gets sloughed. They eat anything in their slow path, including each other. Hermaphrodites, the adults bud clones, but also ovipositor eggs to metres underground.
Locals, happy to trade for minor stuff, demand the humans tackle these 'NSFW Purple Perils' to win permission to refuel 'Fresno' by gas-mining the system's sub-Saturnian for Deuterium and Helium_3. After considering 'Shoggoids' near-immunity to combat weapons, and the locals' triple-helix, wrong-handed biochemistry, the humans devise a cunning plan...
Not very far in the future. Stuff gets lost to the internet all the time. Standards change, sites aren't updated or go defunct. The internet archive doesn't capture everything.
Research. Life is rare in the universe and any aliens interested in science would not give up on a chance at researching an alternative branch of life. Even practical aliens could benefit from knowledge of another developmental branch of carbon based nanomachinery and compute architecture.
Not buying. Catching samples aka alien abduction maybe. But everything else you have in area 100LY around us. Even more funny - just send us signal and we send you all the knowledge. Alternatively make small church, promise them everlasting life and ask for internet connection. Still you don’t need invasion or war.
One Certain Desert Nation has an active nuclear power program, and could probably have nuclear bombs within a relatively few years. They have plans and goals for vast megaprojects, advanced structures hundreds of km long. They dream of spaceflight, having had astronauts sent to space along with their own satellites; moon probes are not too far away. At the same time, they have a big box that religious people feel the need to walk around in the blazing summer sun while worshipping a rock. Hundreds regularly die in stampedes for this activity.
That's not all that far off base considering that British and American jet and jet-rocket interceptors, both produced and proposed, of the era usually had 2 to 4 missiles each.
www.britmodeller.com
Even stranger is that the plane is launched from a submarine that happens to always be in the right place in the ocean to intercept UFOsThat's not all that far off base considering that British and American jet and jet-rocket interceptors, both produced and proposed, of the era usually had 2 to 4 missiles each.
Also, the UFO interceptor craft did have a trio of machine guns with barrels forward of the windscreen.
This post makes a good point, https://www.gerryanderson.com/science-ufo-interceptor/
This build of a studio scale Interceptor model mentions the machine guns, and shows their placement,
Studio Scale UFO Interceptor
There are just too many excellent designs to chose from the worlds of Gerry Anderson. UFO, his first live action series, is full of incredible designs, especially the Moon Base Interceptors. Three were on standby in their silos below the lunar surface, ready for launch against the Alien's craft a...
This build on the Paper Modelers forum is alos worth looking at.
I think you have to be a member (I am) in order to view full size images from the thumbnails.
Forum will also check if you seem to be a human instead of a bot, that has become a necessity.
U.F.O. Interceptor - 1/12 Scale Paper Model - PaperModelers.com
U.F.O. Interceptor 1/12 Scale Paper Model This is my version of the U.F.O. Interceptor that is was based on the model by UHU. As can be seen from thewww.papermodelers.com
In the westerns of the last century there was always a Frenchman who sold rifles to the Sioux
