According to our friends at NASA, a massive asteroid is hurtling towards Earth at almost 34,000 miles an hour. Is it the size of Texas like the one in Armageddon? Unsure, but it does have a diameter of 3,250 feet. NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) says that the asteroid is “potentially hazardous” but that it will miss us by a few million miles on February 15th, 2020 at 6:05 a.m. Eastern.
It’s being labeled an Apollo asteroid because it could potentially intersect with the Earth’s path around the sun. And if it’s in our orbit, it has the potential to make impact every time it passes the planet, hence the hazardous description. If it did hit, just picture Billy Bob Thornton scaring the hell out of you as he talks about nuclear winters, global killers and the worst parts of the bible. Can this giant rock at least wait until after I see the new Batman movie?
Anytime we get one of these things coming dangerously close to Earth, I immediately think of the summer of 1998 when Deep Impact and Armageddon went head-to-head. Deep Impact came first and while one could argue that it’s a more coherent and realistic depiction of such an event (it took me a good 15 years to realize the double-meaning of the title), Armageddon is by far the better and more memorable blockbuster.
Bruce Willis and his team of ragtag oil drillers train (in like a week) to become astronauts so that they can go into space, drill a hole 800 feet into the asteroid and drop some nukes. It’s big, loud, dumb and I love it.
The commentary track for this movie is phenomenal, too. A young Ben Affleck, in between his Sling Blade impressions, openly mocks the plot of his own film. He also correctly points out that it would be much easier for astronauts to train to become oil drillers than oil drillers to become astronauts. Honestly, he raises some great points.
Anytime NASA uses the words “potentially dangerous” when describing one of these asteroids though, my ears perk up. But then I rest easy knowing that somewhere out there, Bruce Willis is saying: “Hold my beer.” Forget about Space Force, right?
