Talk:Planetary defense

On 2005-01-02 I rewrote this article, saving it from deletion. It still needs to be expanded; it and the related articles (Near-Earth asteroid, Near-Earth object, impact event, end of civilization) need to be refactored, some parts merged. &mdash;Quarl (talk) 2006-01-08 10:32Z 

Planetary defenses in science fiction
I added this section because of the huge amount of influence science fiction has in planetary defenses. I don't know much scifi, but I thought I'd start it out anyway. - Rudykog 22:42, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Changed title from "Alien Invasion" to "Planetary Defense in Science Fiction." I recommend separate article for it entirely, as the article itself is primarily about real life sciences involved. --Dchem (talk) 17:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Relationships with other articles
Asteroid deflection strategies currently has a notice "The following text needs to be harmonized with text in the article Planetary defense." Off-the-top-of-my-head logic suggests that Planetary defense is a more generalized topic, since it is not restricted to impactors. So it should cover other topics such as misbehaviour of the Sun (e.g. coronal mass ejection), natural threats from outside the Solar system (e.g. supernova at astronomically close range, for example within 20 light-years) and deliberate attacks by aliens or by human factions (invasion, bombardment, relativistic kill vehicles, etc.) That implies that Asteroid deflection strategies should contain most of the material about defence against impactors, and the relevant part of Planetary defense should summarize and link to Asteroid deflection strategies.

I'm not sure yet whether Planetary defense should contain "Planetary defenses in science fiction", for 2 reasons. First, it could just become a list of potentially enormous length. Second, there's little scope for reasoned analysis as most fictional methods are obviously unrealistic, e.g. an attacking fleet can go round ground-based or orbital defences, ground-based missiles suffer the huge disadvantage of having to lift against the planet's gravity, it's very difficult to propose a realistic method of invading a planet, etc. Philcha (talk) 16:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)