Suppose Aliens Attacked A Space Probe?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I got to thinking about a passage in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Footfall where aliens are orbiting Saturn and spot the Voyager II probe. They debate briefly about destroying the probe, but decide against it, since the probe can’t detect them and figured that if they destroyed the probe, we’d be curious to find out what happened, and send other probes or even a manned exploratory vessel.

So let’s say that we’ve got a probe around another planet in the solar system which spots what’s obviously an alien spacecraft. There’s a flash of light, and then the probe goes silent, presumably destroyed by the aliens. What would we do? Panic? Start gearing up for war? Try to establish peaceful relations with the aliens?

2

Interesting Arthur C. Clark touched on this in one of his short stories. I forget the name of the story but it was in the 9 Billion names of God Collection.

I’d say our only option would be to wait and see. Maybe minimal gearing up, but against what foe? We would essentially have no idea who done it. We’d know is surly wasn’t Osama Bin Laden, but if it were one of those guys from Signs, I know I’d have my water glass ready…

Seriously though, we’d have to wait and see whats up, before mountain any sort of anything. And with our space program as cripled as it is from the Columbia tragedy, I’d vote against a manned space vessel. Even if we did send a manned vessel, all the aliens would do is laugh at our amazingly slow speed. And probably leave us alone out of pity…
But then again why attack an innocuous space probe in the first place?

3

I don’t think there would be a lot of a response here. Its far away, the american public would go “Yeah… ok”, a few scifi people would love it, and it would end up on mystery shows and would go on the same shelf as Roswell, sadly.

4

“Sadly”? Roswell didn’t involve aliens y’know.

5

What do you think really happened to those Martian probes?

6

Welp, the reasons I could think of why aliens would blow up an Earth space probe would be:

There’s a major war hapeening on their planet, and one of the superpowers thought it was enemy spacecraft.

The aliens destroyed it because it posed some sort of threat—it was about to collide with their planet, it was poisonous to their atmosphere, etc.

The aliens live under a completely different set of environmental rules, such that anything metallic that contacts their atmosphere explodes.

They got big guns and they like shooting them.

They didn’t think their people were ready for knowledge of other aliens so they destroyed the probe before it got in general viewing range.

The same reason a bunch of army generals shot a photographer to death. He used a noisy flashbulb that triggered their trigger fingers.

Because it was there.

7

I think if it spotted what was clearly an alien spacecraft, that would make the news. Not much else we could do about it, though.

8

What about alien red-necks? Have you ever seen what happens to the road signs in rural oklahoma?

9

Yeh, with our luck the only aliens in our neighborhood are the hicks of the galaxy.

10

But based on how good a job we’re doing, I think we’d fit right in.

11

So what you’re saying is that if we ever become a one world society, we should adopt Dueling Banjos as our planetary anthem?

12

Heck, yeah. If the first thing your invading space fleet heard over its radios was “HOOOOO WHEEE!!! YOU SHOR GOT A PERDY MOUTH, CITY BOY!”, would you leave? :smiley: