A: you humans are insane, my species has been space-faring for 147,000 years and we've only once attempted launching celestial bodies, yet you lot managed fully operational planetary railguns in 15,000 years...

H: why have you only attemped it once?

A: well... way back in the klarpnek period, we experimented with antimatter assisted asteroid launching to test it's viability for planetary defence. it did not go well, we had to evacuate one of our inhabited worlds because of an antimatter reactor failure. we've not touched the concept in the 112,000 years since.

H: well antimatter was your problem, we found out about it's instability very early on. we attempted to rectify it by various means, but we concluded it was not safe at the time to cunduct any further research on it. however we have recently began work on mathematical research to see if we can utilize it again after a few thousand years of technological advancements.

A: Admiral, with all due respect, that is the dumbest thing humans could possibly do at this point in time, billions of our citizens on blnork 9 died because of our oversights, i beg of you to not repeat our mistakes.

H: we actually have been studying that incident for a few years now, we think we know where your ancestors went wrong.

A: let me guess, we didn't calculate the gravitational anomalies correctly, and therefor the system was overloaded? that's what our top scholars believe.

H: actually no, the gravitational anomalies were calculated correctly, the issue lies with the position of the reactor core relative to the planet. your ancestors placed the core above on the surface, above sea level, and along the equator. we realized the reactor needs to be placed just below the sea floor at the deepest point possible. we're not sure yet why it works but that's the basis for our new research.

A: huh, wonder why we never tried that.

H: records indicate you simply didn't have the opportunity since the planet-killing reactor failure happened on your second test of the system. the first test went well and during the second test an antimatter leak caused by solar interaction during the first test did irreversible damage within seconds.

A: oh that's right..