If anyone still needed any reason, events playing out in Ukraine since February 24 have given us many reasons to thank God America won the Cold War. But the event that played out in space yesterday threw even those reasons into clarifying relief.
America planning to save Earth, Russia threatening to destroy it
America demonstrated the cosmic ability to save humankind by nudging a potentially catastrophic asteroid away from Earth. It did this by DART[ing] an unmanned spacecraft at 13,421 mph, which it launched way back in November 2021, on a trajectory toward the asteroid 6.8 million miles away and making impact on time – just as planned.
Meanwhile, here on Earth, Russia demonstrated for the umpteenth time that, so long as Vladimir Putin rules, it intends to be nothing but a menace to humankind. It did this by holding sham referendums to annex huge swathes of Ukraine in a farcical attempt to give a patina of legitimacy to his genocidal invasion of that country.
Oh, Putin is threatening a nuclear apocalypse if the world does not let Russia have its way with Ukraine. And yet he wonders why America is as revered as Russia is reviled…
Except I’m all too mindful that nothing triggers his notorious superpower envy quite like stellar demonstrations of America’s unrivaled superpower. Therefore, I shudder to think what his reaction will be – given the juxtaposition of America demonstrating the ability to shift or destroy an asteroid 6.8 million miles away from Earth with Russia demonstrating the inability even to feed, clothe, and arm its soldiers, who are bungling through an unwinnable war in Ukraine.
Finally a NASA mission worth cheering
Nobody has been more cynical about its Groundhog Day missions to Mars and star gazing through extraterrestrial telescopes. But this mission gets my full support – with great admiration and appreciation!
Because, notwithstanding Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship, this ability to shift asteroids off course might determine whether we humans survive or end up like the dinosaurs…