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ygert comments on Asteroids and spaceships are kinetic bombs and how to prevent catastrophe - Less Wrong Discussion
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The principles involved here are not dependent on spaceflight or any new technology, but apply with current technology just as much. In fact, almost twelve and a half years ago, terrorists actually did this exact thing, but with airplanes rather than spaceships.
From this, we can try to extrapolate to the possibility of this happening on a larger scale. So I have two points: The first is that that attack was by far the largest and most destructive terrorist attack ever. If it involved spaceships rather than airplanes, it would have been even larger and more devastating. The second is that since then, not a single attack has managed to get even close to that one in devastation. Modern security measures against attacks like that one seem to be working, and that shows that effective measures against attacks like this are possible.
Modern security measures like fellow passengers not accepting the line that they're hostages, instead fighting vigorously.
The air would already have been safe on September 12, if anything had been in the air by then.
Yes, true. I agree that that is the most effective part of modern airplane security. I doubt all the crazy TSA stuff has any real impact. But resistance by the passengers seems to be working so far in preventing another 9/11. So, hopefully, the same will extend to spacecraft. Of course, nothing is preventing someone, now or in the future, from buying their own airplane/spaceship and crashing it into something. So it is true that this still doesn't absolutely assure safety.
See Joe Stack. I recall the media at the time being very careful to not call it a terrorist attack, oddly enough.