“Brilliant Pebbles” THAT’s the term I was trying to recall!

I have a belief (and it’s just that) that any other intelligences that need to travel in spaceships might have evolved a way to detect and avoid collisions with anything, as well as a way to deal with the inertia problems encountered with sudden changes in direction or acceleration.

Given the amount of material in earth
orbit, I suppose it was only a matter
of time before there was some kind of
major crash. You’re right about the
event being reminiscent of some of
the ‘Star Wars’ projects ( Brilliant
Pebbles/Smart Rocks were a couple of
terms for this type of weapon ) and
it just serves to illustrate how fast things move in “empty” space.

I don’t know about an anti-alien defence, though. There may well be an
upper limit to the practicle aspects
of even the most advanced technology.
No point in going faster than light,
if the process truns your astronauts into tapioca…so we might well face
space invaders only slighty more advanced than us, even if their civilization is orders of magnitude
older…