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The 1997 film Starship Troopers presents a future where humanity is at war with aliens. The bugs, who launch projectiles from their home planet Klendathu, pose an existential threat to Earth. While the film suggests that the bugs make it look easy to wield asteroids as weapons, in reality, moving rocks in space is a monumental task. The limitations of 21st-century technology and the laws of the universe make it challenging to handily aim and redirect an asteroid.
Humanity’s only successful attempt at altering an asteroid’s orbit occurred on September 26, 2022, during NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The mission aimed to redirect the orbit of the nearby asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos. The DART vehicle collided with Dimorphos, resulting in a shift in its trajectory. However, even slight changes in an asteroid’s orbit are challenging to achieve, as moving asteroids is incredibly difficult.
Asteroids are small, typically bound by gravity to larger bodies such as the Sun, planets, or larger asteroids. While collisions between asteroids and planets can send rocks flying on a new trajectory through space, the vast majority of meteorites that land on Earth come from asteroids in the Asteroid Belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. While asteroids, comets, and other cosmic objects can make their way into the Solar System from outside, such occurrences are rare.
In Starship Troopers, the bugs launch an asteroid from the opposite side of the Milky Way towards Earth. However, the sheer distance and gravity of other large bodies in the universe make it challenging to achieve. Even if an asteroid was traveling at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years to reach Earth. The bugs would have to launch a rock tens of thousands of years in advance to hit Earth during the film’s time frame.
While the movie suggests possible shortcuts, such as wormholes, the logistics behind launching asteroids as weapons remain difficult. At most, pushing an asteroid can result in slight changes to its orbit, but wielding it as a space projectile is far from easy.
