PLANETOID BOMB

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(Starmasters#2) - Beta Ray Bill, Quasar, and the Silver Surfer attempted to destroy the planetoid, but the gravity from its internal black hole reassembled any damaged parts. The Cosmic Commando Unit was dispatched to bring in Quasar (who had been framed for the slaughter of the  inhabitants of a Charter Federation), engaging his allies as well.      Realizing the planetoid was on a collision course with Earth, Commando leader Morfex decided saving Earth was a greater priority and ordered his agent Stenth to aim their decohesion beam at the planetoid.

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Stenth relayed the instruction to Command Central, and an apparent Axi-Tun superior ordered Morfex to not assist in destroying the planetoid but to follow orders and capture Quasar.      Morfex nonetheless ordered Stenth to fire the beam at the planetoid, allegedly in order to flush out Quasar on the planetoid; when Stenth delayed, Morfex cast him aside and fired the beam himself.      Stenth soon after struck Morfex from behind with a handblaster (hitting, not blasting), knocking Morfex out and exposing him as a Skrull, after which Stenth cast Morfex out into open space, naming himself as the new Squadron Leader.     Xenith saved Morfex, who revealed the treachery in the Charter, and the Beta Ray Bill, Quasar, and the Silver Surfer destroyed the planetoid, presumably been weakened by the decohesion beam.      This was accomplished largely due to the Surfer briefly reactivating the barrier that Galactus had previously used to imprison the Surfer on Earth and then imbedded his surfboard within the planetoid, causing it to be affected by and crash into and be shattered by the barrier.

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The black hole, unaffected by the previous impact, continued through Galactus' barrier, heading toward Earth.       Quasar then teleported Beta Ray Bill and himself in front of the black hole, and Bill then formed an interdimensional portal through which he banished the black hole previously at the planetoid's center. (Starmasters#3 - BTS) - Aldebron reported to Votan the failure of the Planet-Pulverizer against Earth. (Starmasters#3 - BTS) - Shortly after Ghant informed Ramrog that Earth had survived their planetoid bomb, Votan contacted them and ordered they purify themselves to atone for their failure.      They complied, blowing up their ship and killing themselves and anyone else aboard. (Starmasters#3) - Prime Administrator Tana Nile led a group of three organic beings and 24 Recorders to the Hub to investigate the cause of the deaths of the Charter delegates. When Recorder#901 reported that the Hub's telemetric system recorded a disturbance by Earth, Tana instructed 901 to contact Rigellian High Command and determine if any of their Planet-Lock devices had been reported stolen or missing.

Comments: Created by Mark Gruenwald, Scot Eaton, and Bob Almond.

    The Axi-Tun's theft of a Rigellian Planet-Lock device was speculated by Tana Nile in Star Masters#3 and confirmed in the Axi-Tun profile in FF: 50 Fantastic Years

    Here's some physics/mass information courtesy of Mike "Spider-Mike" Fichera, the engineer of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe group:
    I/Snood provided the misinformation that the planet was spherical, when some make it look more like a rectangular prism

Mass of the planetoid

Assuming a density similar to Earth (mostly iron and nickel):

5.51 metric tonnes/cubic meter  (1 tonnes = 1 metric ton = 1000 kg)
diameter: 500 miles  (Earth is 7918 miles)
mass of planetoid: 1.503 x 10^21 kg
1.66 x 10^18 tons (English units)

If it's ALL iron (a "ferrous" planetoid), and not a mix, the density is 7.87 MT/m³ and therefore

2.37 x 10^18 tons mass

This site -- https://earthhow.com/density-of-earth -- says the Earth is:

• Iron (35%)
• Oxygen (30%)
• Silicon (15%)
• Magnesium (13%)

but the density varies by which layer you are looking at. More dense in the chocolatey crunchy center!
Whatever -- more info than you need.
If like Earth - use the first #.

Mass including the black hole:

Marble = half inch diameter
Volume = 1.07 x 10^-6 m³
Mass:  4.73 x 10^8 tons
Added together: too many decimals apart to see the contribution of the black hole. 
2.37 x 10^18 + 4.73 x 10^8 = 2.37 x 10^18

Answer is still: 2.37 x 10^18 tons mass for an all iron planetoid.
 

Further discussion on the science and practicality of the Planetoid Bomb courtesy of Donald Campbell:

Part One: The Planetoid-Bomb

First, in Starmasters#1, Captain Ramrog and his crew referenced their weapon only as "the projectile."

    I went to Wikipedia to check out its list of exceptional asteroids. At almost 500 miles wide, the planetoid fits between the top two asteroids with the greatest diameters: somewhat narrower than Ceres (at 584 miles) but significantly wider than Vesta (at 326 miles).

    Of course, even though Ceres is wider than the planetoid-bomb, the fact that about a quarter of its mass is water ice makes it less than one-third as dense as the ferrous planetoid. This means that the planetoid-bomb would be much more massive and therefore the energy it would release upon impacting Earth would similarly have been much greater. The energy with which a moving object (the impactor) strikes another object is proportional to product of the mass of the impactor and the square of its velocity at impact, so the speed at which the planetoid-bomb was moving would have been more significant than its mass.

    Unfortunately, it's impossible to calculate how fast the Planetoid Bomb was traveling because the story in Starmasters#1-2 doesn't provide specific values for the two factors needed to calculate speed. Being told that the planetoid would impact Earth in less than 5 hours is one thing, but stating that it materialized between the orbits of Venus and Earth is so imprecise as to be useless. Assuming that what the story had meant to say was that the planetoid had materialized somewhere between Earth and the part of the orbit of Venus that was then closest to Earth, that distance would be, on average, about 25 million miles (but that can vary somewhat since both planets have elliptical orbits). So, if the planetoid appeared about 5,000 miles away, then its speed would have been about 1,000 miles per hour (or about 0.278 miles per second). If the planetoid had appeared midway between Earth and the orbit of Venus, about 12.5 million miles, then its speed would have been about 2.5 million miles per hour (or about 694 miles per second). Finally, if planetoid had appeared the full 25 million miles away, then its speed would have had to have been 5 million miles per hour (or about 1,389 miles per second) in order for it to have impacted Earth in less than 5 hours. 

    Of course, considering how close to Earth the planetoid was shown to be on page 2 of Starmasters#2, a really slow speed seems more likely, but the possibility that the artwork did not accurately represent how close the planetoid was to Earth at that time cannot be ignored. After all, page 1 of that issue showed the Moon and Earth being far closer to each other than they ever would be in real life. In contrast, the letters page of Quasar#6 did show images of the two bodies that were drawn to their correct size and distance, and accurately showed that the distance between them was about 30 Earth diameters.

    On a related topic, the last page of Starmasters#1 is a full-page image of the planetoid that appears to be looming over an unidentified city on Earth. In order to appear as large in the sky as it does, that planetoid would have to have been incredibly close to Earth, as in "only a matter of seconds before impact" close. This is inconsistent with the fact that, in Starmasters#2, Quasar, the Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill were able to spend minutes whittling down the meteoroid to half its original size.
--I think that showing the planetoid that close to Earth was artistic license to dramatize the threat.--Snood

    By the way, considering how quickly that trio can travel, they should have been able to reach the vicinity of the meteoroid with more than 4 hours to spare, so where did the time go? The total elapsed time that they spent blasting the meteoroid and battling the Cosmic Commandos seems to have been only a matter of minutes, not hours.

    Given that the purification vessel shown guiding the projectile immediately before it impacts the surface of Arcturus IV appears to not be that much smaller than the asteroid itself, does this mean that the purification vessel was similarly huge, as in hundreds of miles across? Or did they use a smaller projectile against Arcturus IV? Or maybe the artwork just did not accurately represent the proper scale of the two objects with respect to one another?
--I think the latter, or possibly the ship was a lot closer than it initially appeared--Snood

    The fact that the planetoid was described as having "(torn) a hole through the planet (Arcturus IV) like a bullet through a brick of cheese" does seem to suggest that "the projectile" did pass entirely through the planet and was thus was available to be recaptured by Captain Ramrog's purification vessel to be used against other targets. However, while I'm willing to concede that that may have been writer Mark Gruenwald's intent, I strongly doubt that any planetoid, even one with a tiny black hole at its center, would have been able to avoid being vaporized by such an impact. The black hole's gravity may have helped hold the meteoroid together, but it wouldn't have done anything to protect the matter of the meteoroid from the energy that would have been released when its kinetic energy had been converted into heat upon impact. The planetoid should have been completely vaporized while the tiny black hole had just, as Quasar put it, passed through the planet "like a Teflon-coated bullet through room temperature lasagne." 

    While every meteoroid that is known to have encountered Earth has been vaporized, either through ablation while passing through the atmosphere or upon impact, all of them were less than 10 miles in diameter and thus far smaller than the planetoid-bomb. On the other hand, the largest object believed to have ever struck Earth after its initial formation 4.5 billion years ago is Theia, a hypothetical Mars-sized planet whose giant impact with Earth is believed to have resulted in the creation of the Moon. However, even Theia isn't believed to have passed through Earth.

    As to the question of whether the Planetoid-Bomb was reusable, I have always thought that the projectile that the purification vessel recaptured after Arcturus IV was destroyed was the tiny black hole and that they had then embedded it within a new planetoid. However, the fact that Captain Ramrog seemingly ordered the astrogator to set course for Sol III so soon after the projectile had been recaptured does suggest that there hadn't been enough time for them to acquire another planetoid from the Arcturus system. On the other hand, maybe the "planetoid " was actually a ferrous chunk of Arcturus IV itself? That would, sort of, be what the story implied. Anyway, the only thing we know for certain about the planet-pulverizer that failed to destroy Earth was that it was, as a Recorder told Tana Nile in Starmasters#3, "a planetoid originating outside this planetary system."
--I think that the planetoid's mass was reconstructed from the planets it destroyed each time. I don't think that was outright confirmed, but it makes the most sense to me--Snood

    The idea that the Silver Surfer was able to stop the meteoroid by embedding his surfboard into its surface and then reactivating the barrier that Galactus had once placed around Earth is interesting, but I'm not sure how well it really would have worked. For one thing, the entire stopping force of the barrier would have been concentrated solely on the surfboard and one would think that that, instead of stopping the whole meteoroid, would have simply driven the surfboard into and through the meteoroid, punching a hole through it but not otherwise impeding it much. Of course, it's always possible that the Surfer did something that somehow prevented that from happening, but it would have been nice if the story had mentioned that. Also, the impact with the barrier seemed to have shattered the meteoroid into smaller fragments, all of which would no longer have been stopped by the barrier. This would have left them free to continue falling down upon the Earth, and would have required the heroes to take some quick action Unless, by some lucky chance, the fragments were somehow all so small that they would burn up in the atmosphere?
--Definitely some "comic book sci-fi" going on here. I had the same first thought, wondering why the surfboard didn't stop, but the planet keep going, just driving the surfboard through the planetoid (and then who knows what would have happened when the surfboard hit the black hole). I think perhaps the Surfer was able to extend his surfboard's energy field across the striking surface of the planet so that the barrier recognized/blocked the whole  planetoid. That's the only explanation  I've got.--Snood

    Fun fact: According to Wikipedia, Ceres and Vesta together contain about 50% of the total mass of all known asteroids and scientists have estimated that that total mass is only equivalent to about 3% of the mass of Earth's Moon. Scientists also believe that the modern-day asteroid belt contains only a small fraction of the mass of the primordial asteroid belt and that the total mass of the original asteroid belt may have been similar to that of Earth but that gravitational perturbations ejected over 99% of that material within about one million years of the belt's formation. In other words, there was never a "fifth planet" located between Mars and Jupiter, at least, not in the real world.

    Additionally, while researching asteroid impacts online, I read somewhere that "NASA has calculated that an asteroid 60 miles (97 km) in diameter would wipe out all life on Earth as in burn us alive so it gets the bacteria too. Actually, there are bacteria deep in the ground so it wouldn’t wipe out all life but it would get all life on the surface."

    So, using a 500-mile-wide planetoid against Earth was definitely a case of overkill.

Part Two: The Tiny Black Hole

    While having a black hole inside the Planetoid-Bomb may have helped keep it together, it would have also vastly increased the amount of mass that the purification vessel would have had to move in order to launch/guide the Planetoid-Bomb. There's also the question of exactly how the Axi-Tun would have been able to keep it at the center of the planetoid since there could not have been any physical connections between them because any matter from the planetoid that got too close to the tiny black hole's event horizon would have been sucked into it. Given that they would thus have been two separate masses, each with their own momentum, one would expect that any changes to the course of the planetoid would have resulted in the black hole simply continuing forward on its own course and passing through the side of the planetoid as it turned.

    Not having the skills needed to calculate the mass of a tiny (or marble-sized) black hole, I chose to seek answers online. According to someone on Quora, a black hole with the mass of the earth would be about the size of a marble. However, I also found a podcast in which astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated that "an Earth-mass black hole...is about the size of a plum" and a video in which astronomer Phil Plait stated that, if the Earth were turned into a black hole, it would measure about 18 millimeters across. Not knowing which statement was the most  accurate, I decided to take the possibility that the tiny black hole had the same mass as Earth and do some calculations of my own.

    It has been established that the force of gravity at Earth's surface, 3959 miles from its center of mass, is "1 g." So, given that the gravitational force is inversely proportional to the distance between the centers of mass squared, it should be fairly easy to calculate the g-force that would be exerted on someone who was standing on the surface of a 500-mile-wide planetoid with an Earth-mass black hole at its center. Since the radius of the planetoid was about 250 miles, or roughly one-sixteenth the radius of Earth, the distance squared would have been reduced to 1/16 squared (or 1/256). And since dividing by a faction is the same as multiplying by the inverse of that fraction, the g-force on the surface of that planetoid would have been about 256 g. Until I had actually worked out that calculation, I had never really believed that chunks that had been blasted off the planetoid could have been pulled back to rejoin the main mass of planetoid, but it turns out that I was wrong. 

    Of course, if the mass of the tiny black hole had been anywhere near the mass of Earth, its presence within Earth's Roche Limit would have meant that its gravity would have begun tearing the planet apart even before Beta Ray Bill was able to create a warp vortex to send it a million light-years away. The fact that Earth was seemingly unaffected by the black hole's proximity suggests that its mass was actually much less than that of Earth.

    Normal stellar black holes are formed when stars at least eight times as massive as the Sun explode as supernovas and their cores collapse into black holes. However, since the event horizons of even the smallest of this type of black hole are over fifty kilometers across, the tiny marble-sized black hole could not have been one of that type. The only possible explanation is that that particular black hole was actually one of the (theoretical) primordial black holes that astrophysicists believe might have been created in the earliest moments of the universe, when all matter and energy were compressed into an incomprehensibly-dense region.

I don't have much to contribute to this discussion other than the mass calculation/explanation provided by Mike Fichera above.--Snood

Part Three: The Rigellian Planet-Lock Device

    This profile takes it as fact that agents working for Axi-Tun leader Lord Votan had stolen a Rigellian Planet-Lock Device and that Captain Ramrog's purification vessel was equipped with that device which they used to capture, transport and launch immense planetoids at their chosen planetary targets. And, yes, I am aware that the Axi-Tun profile in FF: Fifty Fantastic Years#1 does confirm that that was how Ramrog and his crew were able to control their Planetoid-Bomb.

    The problem is, I just don't believe it. Yes, when informed by that Recorder that Earth had recently experienced a near collision with a planetoid from outside the Solar System, Tana Nile did immediately order the Recorder to contact Rigellian High Command and determine if any of their Planet-Lock Devices had been reported stolen or missing, but that's the only mention of such a device that appears in the entire five-issue storyline. It appears to me to be mere speculation on Tana Nile's part, based solely on the fact that she was aware of the capabilities of such Rigellian devices and wanted to know if one of them could have been responsible. Now, if there had been the slightest hint in the remaining two parts of the storyline that a Planet-Lock Device had been used by Ramrog and his crew, then I would have no problem accepting that idea. However, as it is, I believe that Mark Gruenwald included that reference as a bit of continuity trivia that would be appreciated by those readers who were familiar with Tana Nile and might have known of her previous experience with moving planets.

Part Four: The Rigellian Space Lock

    This was the spaceborne device that Tana Nile had begun to use (in Thor I#131-133) to slowly pull Earth out of its natural orbit during her attempt to take over the planet. As presented in those issues, the Space Lock was a single massive device that could project a ray instantaneously across interstellar space. Once a planet had been completely encircled by the Space Lock beam, the controller of the Space Lock could then transport the captive planet to any location in the universe.

    Although exactly how the Space Lock functioned was never revealed, the fact that it was able to move planets by itself is one of the reasons why I strongly disbelieve that Captain Ramrog's purification vessel, which seemingly needed to use guide-ships equipped with tractor beams to move their Planetoid-Bomb, was using a Planet-Lock. Of course, this is assuming that the Planet-Lock Device mentioned by Tana Nile is the same technology as the Space Lock that she had once used against Earth, something that I don't think has ever been confirmed.

The Space Lock has never appeared in any story published since 1966. At least, not under that name...

    --I think the Planet-Lock is how they teleported/materialized the planet to a new solar system, and then the tractor beams were used for fine direction control. But, yes, we don't know the exact connection between the Space Lock, the Planet-Lock, and the Planetary Defense System.

5. Planetary Defense System/Planetary teleportational defense

    In Thanos I#1, writer Jim Starlin introduced the idea that the major defense system of the Rigellian Colonizers was their ability to teleport their entire planet as far away as another galaxy in order to escape any threat. Thanos also mentioned that the Rigellians used that technology to discipline any unruly planets that they colonized, something that sounds very similar to the Space Lock. However, the actual technology involved was never depicted in-story, even when Thanos used it to transport old Rigel-3 (the second known Rigel-3) into close proximity to Rigel-18 in order to stop Hunger.

    Your question about why the Rigellians didn't use their Space Lock technology and/or their Planet-Lock Devices against the Black Stars is a valid one, and the most likely real world answer is that the idea simply never occurred to writer Gerry Conway back in 1973. Even though Tana Nile appeared in Thor I#218-220, maybe he hadn't read Thor I#131-133? However, like you, I am at a loss for an in-universe explanation for this oversight.

    Having said that, your question caused me to think of another question: If the Rigellians could safely move planets with their Space Lock, why couldn't they have used its beam to transport Rigel-3 itself far away from the threat of the Black Stars? One would think that, if it was actually the same (or similar) technology as their planetary teleportational defense, then using it would have made it unnecessary to evacuate all nine billion Rigellians from their command planet in a fleet of over seven hundred starships. It would also have made the evacuation of the subsequent Command Planet in Thor I#423 unnecessary.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Planetoid Bomb should be distinguished from:

• PLANET-DESTROYER - creation of Sagittarians, placed on Earth in Savage Land to slowly stop Earth’s rotation to cause its destruction for Galaxy Master, guarded by Umbu, deactivated by Bruce Banner--Incredible Hulk II#109
  
• PLANETFALL WEAPON - derived from the genome of an otariidae predator genus native to Turakis, unleashed by Turakisites in response to Annihilation Wave but they were unable to regain control of it afterward, destroyed by Nova (Rich Rider)--Nova IV#1 (1d)
• PLANET GUN of Earth-928 circa 2099 A.D. - spaceship used by Vendetta + Punisher--Punisher 2099#31
  
• PLANET-KILLER - weapon of Maraud, used to destroy Kymellia II - GALACTUS-MATIC*--Power Pack I#50 (51, 52
• PLANET THRUSTER - Starblasters weapon, push a planet out of orbit, or squish a planet between two of them--Namor I#46
• SIDERAL PROPULSION UNIT - placed on Ego by Galactus, initially sending him flying out of control, but eventually taken control of by Ego--Thor I#228?
• other Planet or Planetoid weapons, technology, characters, groups, events, races or places...

images: (without ads):
Star Masters#1, pg. 1, panel 5 (planetoid directed to crash into Artcurus IV);
           pg. 2-3, panel 1 (asteroid crashing into and destroying all life on Arcturus IV);
           2nd to last page, panel 1 (planetoid with guide-ships);
           last page (planetoid approaching Earth);
     #2, story pg. 2, panel 1-2 (Beta Ray Bill, Quasar, & Silver Surfer approaching and blasting planetoid bomb);
          pg. 3, panel 1-2 (struck with combined power of Beta Ray Bill, Quasar, & Silver Surfer; reassembling);
          pg. 15, panel 4 (Surfer's surfboard striking planetoid);
          pg. 16, panel 6 (impacting Galactus' barrier);
          pg. 18, panel 1-2 (black hole pentrating Galactus' barrier, approaching Beta Ray Bill's dimensional vortex); 

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

First posted: 04/05/2024
Last updated: 04/05/2024

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