It turns out that not everyone is excited about both NASA and commercial companies going back to the moon. It turns out that Brianna Wu, the central figure in an Internet scandal known as “Gamergate,” and now a candidate for the United States Congress from Massachusetts is very afraid that someone on the moon might threaten the Earth by dropping Moon Rocks on it. Since the news is being reported in the Washington Times and not the Onion, we have to assume that she really said this.

Wu is most concerned that a private company such as SpaceX or Moon Express would weaponized moon rocks.

Why a commercial entity would suddenly behave as if it was controlled by a Bond villain is something that she has chosen not to reveal.

The scheme to weaponized moon rocks might be possible in theory. An insane Bond villain would set up a rail gun on the lunar surface capable of lobbing boulders from the lunar surface toward Earth. Of course the boulders would have to be large enough so that they would not burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Then the problem of aiming at precise targets on the Earth’s surface would be something to consider.

The United States military once considered building a missile base on the moon, but finally rejected it because a nuclear strike would take three or so days to reach its targets, more than enough time for an enemy to respond with a retaliation attack.

The boulder weapon would have a similar problem. The evil mastermind might be able to get off a few boulders off, though Earth might be able to divert or destroy them before they arrived, but eventually a military attack would take out the weapon and likely the evil mastermind, Nehru jacket, Persian kitty, and all.

A better way to use space resources to threaten Earth would be to divert an asteroid and threaten to land it on some part of the surface, say the ocean offshore of a country, and then demand ransom. That sort of scheme is something that a self-respecting Bond villain would try. One supposes, therefore, that asteroid mining outfits should be watched very carefully.