[NicknamedBob]

"Does anyone else besides me think that this may have been a "test run" to see if we could either "change the path or destroy" a comet that may be on-track to hit us some day? "

Actually, it shows how pitiful our resources are.

What we would need to do is land a small nuclear rocket motor on a distant asteroid or comet, and use its own ices as rocket propellant by heating them, and then use some advanced astrogation to pulse at the appropriate times to steer the rock away from collision.

An alternative is a large solar sail, which would work even more gradually. I disagree with the idea of "blowin' it to smithereens" because that just makes more problems, (like the thousands of chunks of space debris already in Earth orbit), and it makes fewer resources.

It is much more practical to try to capture the asteroid into a safe orbit, so that its materials can be used for space exploration.

Who knows? Someday we may "hitch our wagon to a star," or at least a comet, and take off for interstellar space.

[RightWhale]

It is much more practical to try to capture the asteroid into a safe orbit, so that its materials can be used for space exploration.

Of course that is what we will do. Not even Congress would waste such resources that would make a manned lunar base possible and even self-sufficient. Would they?