Colliding Worlds

Abstract

Over the past twenty years a small group of astronomers and planetary scientists have actively promoted the idea that an asteroid might collide with the Earth and destroy civilisation. Despite concerns about placing weapons in space, the asteroid scientists repeatedly met with scientists from the Strategic Defense Initiative to discuss mitigation technologies. This paper examines the narrative context in which asteroids were constructed as a threat and astronomy was reconfigured as an interventionist science. I argue that conceptualising asteroids through narratives of technological salvation invoked a 'narrative imperative' which drew the astronomers towards the militaristic endings that their stories demanded. Impact-threat science thus demonstrates both the ways in which scientific research can be framed by fictional narratives and the ideological ends which such narratives can serve. They foretell a large impact causing global fires, the failure of the world's agriculture and the end of human civilisation. But, these scientists assure us, we live at a unique moment in history when we have the technological means to avert disaster. They call for support for dedicated astronomical surveys of near-Earth objects to provide early warning of an impactor and they have regularly met with defence scientists to discuss new technologies to deflect any incoming asteroids.The scientists who have promoted the asteroid impact threat have done so by invoking narratives of technological salvation -stories which, like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), promised security through a superweapon in space. The asteroid impact threat can therefore be located within the broader cultural history of fantasies about security and power which Bruce Franklin (1988) has argued is inextricably linked to the century-old idea that a new superweapon could deliver world peace. Howard McCurdy (1997: 78-82), in his study of the ways in which the US space programme was shaped by popular culture, has suggested that the promotion of the impact threat can be seen as the completion of Cold War fantasies which had used a politics of fear to justify space exploration. McCurdy highlights the alignment between the promotion of the impact threat and works of fiction.In this paper, I consider the reconceptualisation of asteroid science which this alignment entailed.It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a complete history of the science of planetary impacts. My focus is on how a group of scientists moved from seeing impacts as significant events in Earth history to seeing them as threatening events in the human future -a move from historical to futurological narratives. Nor is there space to give a full account of the empirical developments which were used to support the construal of asteroids as a threat. Rather, I wish to make the case that these empirical developments were given meaning within a specific narrative context which drew civilian astronomers into contact with defence scientists, especially those working on SDI.

The New Right Stuff: Social Imaginaries of Outer Space and the Capitalist Accumulation of the Cosmos

“…"Something is going to hit us, we need to survive. We have to convince people of that" (Valentine 2012, 1062)-and while the risk of asteroid strikes exist, this kind of desperation can lead to the justification of increasing the brutalizing effects of capitalism for "the greater good" (Mellor 2007), a concept that has been used in the past to justify terrible injustice to those not in power.…”

“…However, this same prophetic narrative of doom and gloom did not exist for asteroids until the late 20th century. Throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century, asteroids were viewed taxonomically as either the building blocks of planets, or as the fragments left over after planet formation (Mellor 2007). Asteroids follow planetlike orbits, moving predictably through familiar geometrically abstracted space inclined close to the planetary plane-so much so that they are also called "minor planets" (Mellor 2007, 502).…”

“…Since the 1930s, astronomers understood that there existed the possibility of future asteroid impacts due to their researching asteroid collision rates on other celestial bodies; however, their work was never framed as alarmist (Mellor 2007). In 1967, after the close pass of the asteroid Icarus to Earth, students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ran a thought exercise that imagined how to mitigate an asteroid impact and published their results (Kleiman 1979).…”

“…mainstream potential threat within the astronomer and paleontologist social imaginary (Mellor 2007).…”

“…Heinlein as influences for their weapons designs (Seed 1999). Furthermore, several science fiction authors themselves, such as Niven and Pournelle, were in direct contact with weapons scientists (Mellor 2007). Some scholars have argued that militaristic science fiction and military policy itself both operate within the same discourse system…”