Space Opera Fans discussion

Quite a few good stories involve throwing rocks, whether asteroids, comets, or mining waste. Often it is used as a weapon against a planet or space station, but sometimes it is a miner in an asteroid belt or the ring of a Jovian planet flinging a good sized fragment to where it could be processed.

I’ll start us off with a classic: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. The Lunar revolutionaries throw rocks at Earth in an effort to win independence.

In the first part of The Silver Ships by S.H. Jucha, the main character mines the asteroid belt and flings ore rich rocks close to the processing plants. In a later book in the series Rainmaker flings large chunks of ice from a ringed planet onto the partially terraformed planet that they were trying to live on, to increase the humidity in the atmosphere so more plants can grow.

Several different authors have used ramming a planet at about 10% the speed of light, either directly with a kamikaze ship or by putting asteroids in a freighter’s cargo bay, getting up to speed a long way out, then shoving asteroids out, leaving them aimed at where the planet will be when they get there.

I’m thinking of books in these series specifically, but not sure which books of the series.
Family Law by Mackey Chandler
Take the Star Road by Peter Grant
War To The Knife by Peter Grant

Oh and Queen of the Pirates by Blaze Ward

Other than the Heinlein book I haven’t read any of these yet. Apparently I’ve been missing out on some serious rock throwing. Heinlein also uses it in Starship Troopers. RIP Buenos Aires.

It does feature in a number of short stories I’ve read, like in one of the early Man-Kzin Wars collections where they hit a planet with a ship going near light speed. Although tiny in comparison, the energy released was an extinction level event. One of James Blish’s stories In Cities in Flight has space pirates using this gambit. Hard on the scenery, though. Dark Phoenix in the X-Men comics pulled an asteroid down on her enemies once. This was reused in Avengers; Infinity War when Thanos threw Titan’s moon at Iron Man. (Which is rather like trying to squash a fly with a nuke.)

And can we just take a moment to appreciate that in a major motion picture one character was so annoyed at another one that he THREW A MOON at him. 😂

Oh, I just remembered that David Weber’s Safehold series uses the kinetic bombardment gambit colloquially known as “rods from the gods” as a method for maintaining order. Step out of line and they drop the boom on you. Literally.

Footfall features aliens hitting Earth with a really big rock. They assume it will defeat humans once and for all; instead it just pisses us off. This was also true in the Halo video game.

Footfall was great! Baby elephants arriving via hang gliders....

Edit: and wearing platform sneakers!

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) has most of the planet Earth destroyed by warring countries tossing asteroids at Earth from space.

In one or two of the Lost Fleet book by Jack Campbell, they use big rocks with a metal core to destroy a city or a space station.