posted
One of the major problems with an asteriod defense system (that both movies overlooked) is you can't really neutralize the effects of the asteroid with current available technology. Hitting the asteriod with a nuclear bomb or its equivalant will only create large fragments. Instead of one large hit destroying life on earth, you will have multiple hits that end up doing the same damage.
They have thought of simply changing the trajecotry of the asteriod. However, that still has its complications in regard to the power needed for such a feat. Too far away or not strong enough and the tragectory change will be trivial. Too close, or too strong, and you end up with the fragmentary problem.
posted
I need everyone, Alucard in particular, to look at this special pen I have.
Yes, look at the top end very carefully. Wait, let me get my glasses on...
>>>schvoomp<<
Yugoslavia has never made any automobiles. The Soviets have been re-labeling Fiats since the early 1970's. You are completely safe. Please return to your reglular lives.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Yes, it does no good simply to break it into fragments which all still hit the earth. The energy released would be the same in that case. It's necessary to either shove it off course completely so that it misses, or to blast it to smithereens so that the majority of the debris ends up on trajectories which do not intersect earth.
My thought for the next few years or decades until we have a moon base is to deflect them into the moon. There are a number of advantages to this plan.
1) We need to plan for all times. If we merely bump an asteroid with an earth crossing orbit a little bit, it remains a threat into the distant future. In 100 or 1000 years, will people on earth still maintain the capability to detect and counter the threat of an impact? Why not eliminate it entirely as a threat.
2) There's nothing on the moon to be damaged. No atmosphere. No life.
3) When we DO get around to building moon bases and structures, it would be super cool if there were a big chunk of nickle iron up there to be mined. As it is, on the moon, we have to either bring our materials from earth at prohibitive expense, or else make things out of glass. There's lots of silicone and other rocky stuff, but no iron for steel. Iron would come in real handy.
4) I have to admit the fireworks display would be really great. Close enough for thrills but not so close that we all die. <laughs> That's my idea of good fireworks. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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CT, yes! For all those reasons and one more.
If the intelligent, literate, people of hatrack who have been exposed to real science fiction, are not citizens of the galaxy, and able to see the sense of this, then who on earth is? Hatrack's reaction must be assumed to be far more enlightened and favorable to the logic of this step than the public's at large.
Also I do see hatrack as the movers and shakers. If not now, then in a decade or so when those who are now in college end up running everything. If the world is to be saved, it will be by us. We are the ones with the knowledge and the understanding, and we are the ones who care.
That's rather a frightening thought, isn't it? <laughs>
[ November 16, 2003, 04:58 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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The problem with the Moon deflection plan is that a large enough hit could damage the Moon and cause a whole host of new deadly problems. It would depend on the size of the asteroid we are talking about. My thoughts are if we had the ability to deflect the asteriod we wouldn't need to send it toward the Moon anyway.
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Occasional, what damage could it do to the moon? Cause a new crater? There's no atmosphere and nothing there to damage, so I can't see it causing any problems.
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And to think, some people actually want to get rid of nuclear weapons. How can they say so, when they are our only salvation from asteroid impacts? Posts: 28 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Occasional, Shepard and others: nukes are not the only answer. If the threatening asteroid is enough orbits away before it's calculated impact with Earth, trivial delta-V or momentum changes would add up over time to change its orbit enough to miss us. Solar-powered ion rockets and other 20th century technology could suffice to change orbits if enough lead time before predicted impact is achieved. This is why the NEO cataloguing is so crucial. If we don't detect an asteroid until it's barrelling down down on us, then we would be screwed, at least with present technology.
For example:
quote: researchers have calculated that there is up to a one-in-300 possibility that Asteroid 1950 DA will slam into Earth on March 16, 2880.
from ak's link on the 1st page. Given 700 years lead time, incredibly small human-induced momentum changes would change 1950 DA's orbit drastically over hundreds of years, more than enough to cause a miss. But if we forgot about it or waited till Jan 1, 2880, we probably couldn't do anything, with today's technology anyway.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Ak, if you hit the moon with an asteroid it could change the effects of the moons gravity on the earth and cause massive flooding due to tidal changes. I forget the deal but i read it somewhere but a small difference in the distance from the earth or the mass of the moon would wipe out most coastlines.
posted
I would think the break-into-pieces plan would be much more effective than you all are suggesting. What we want is to do is shift more of the energy to the upper layers of the atmosphere, as opposed to ground level where the impact would throw debris into the air and generate heat at surface level. I would think that smaller pieces would mean more surface area, which would mean more energy released as the pieces entered the upper atmosphere, and therefore less released when they hit the surface.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Humans, generally, aren't nearly as long sighted as would be good for us. Typically, if a problem isn't staring us in the face, we think "oh, we'll deal with that later". There are almost always less important, but more immediate things that we turn our attentions, energies, and money toward.
I personally think that the only way we will, as a species, get serious about this threat is if a smaller object devistates a populated area. Until that happens, I don't think that the majority of the people will view this as the very real threat that it is.
Of course, I could be wrong; I know that the British were putting money into both asteroid detection and deflection not so long ago. I haven't seen anything about it in the news lately though; anyone know what's going on with that program? Anne Kate, if you've already provided a link to current information on the British program, and I've just missed it, I'm sorry. Later today I'm going to reread this thread, giving it the depth of attention that it deserves.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote: Yes, it does no good simply to break it into fragments which all still hit the earth.
Tres already covered it, but just for the sake of posting I'll agree with him. We would be much better off if thousands of samll particles hit us than one large one. A rock has to be pretty fair sized to make it all the way through the atmosphere and still hit the ground with a good punch. If we pulverized the thing then 1) Many particles would probably miss the earth and 2) those that did would be much smaller so a good portion of them would burn up in the atmosphere.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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Actually, one of the things that happens is the forests all over the whole earth are set ablaze by the high temperature of the atmosphere. Breaking it into small pieces (UNLESS most of the small pieces then miss) would indeed limit the effects of blast damage at the impact site or sites, but the heat poured into the atmosphere would be the same, and so the vegetation worldwide would burst into flames just the same. The resulting soot would obscure the sunlight, and we'd have much the same resulting deep freeze. So breaking it up is only efficacious if we also blast most of the mass of it into trajectories that don't intersect the earth.
[ November 17, 2003, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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There is a distinction, too, to be made in a possible moon strike. These things are not big enough to cause any gravitational influence whatsoever. We are talking mountain sized chunks. The entire mass of the planet (either the earth or the moon) is so many times in excess of that, that no gravitational perturbations are to be expected, no tidal changes, no change in orbit. If a "dinosaur-killer" sized chunk hit the moon there would be no effects on earth other than some very cool celestial fireworks to look at, and probably a nice meteor shower such as we get with the perseids or leonids every year.
It's the atmosphere that is primarily disturbed here on earth, and the ocean. That and an impact crater is generated at the impact site. None of those things are a problem on the moon, or not until we have bases there.
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Why is it, since the moon has been bombarded all sizes of space debris since time out of mind, that it doesn't already have lots of good nickel-iron deposits? Is it possible that it does, but that we just haven't looked deep enough for them?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Hey, that IS a thought. Some of the impactors, at least, can be expected to have been the standard nickle-iron sort of asteroidal material. We haven't taken samples but from a few places. I bet there's really plenty already there for what we need, even if we haven't found it yet. <laughs> Good thinking, Noemon!
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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The entire visible side of the moon (the one that faces us) is composed of denser materials than the other half. This is likely due to the Mare Imbrium impact, which made the surface in that part of the Moon molten. There is likely all kinds of cool dense materials like that from those massive impacts.
To say that an asteroid impact on the Moon would not affect the Earth, would be rather presumtuous until we actually see an event. The impacts that created the lunar seas probably did have affects on our own planet.
But there is no way for us to know for sure. Not yet anyway.
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If we can build a platform to effect the courses of larger Asteroids and comets in NEO, what is to stop such a platform from either directing such object to earth, or to be aimed at earth, in stupid misguided attempts to destroy one enemy or another.
In other words, is humanity in greater danger of being wiped out by one of these objects, or by the misuse of the technology that could save us?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Some great SF has already been written about that. Walter John Williams has mentioned it more than once.
There is a great Corporate card in the CCG Netrunner called I Got A Rock. If the corp. gets this card out, it will probably win (for fans of the game, the card does 15 meat damage to the hacker). Someone hacks your net? Express your deep dissatisfaction with asteriods!
But the idea that we can do this to asteroids highlights a real 'double-edged' problem. Anything travelling fast enough is deadly. Propulsion technology is a reaction to this (pun intended). We are researching how to get things travelling very quickly, hopefully very cheaply. You could de-orbit a schoolbus into a space-station with vaporizing effects, no problem.
Nothing comes for free....
Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
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eslaine, there was just an article in Scientific American about the moon. They said nobody understood why the near side of the moon is all melted looking (covered with lava flows) compared to the far side. They mentioned speculation about it being some weird sort of tidal effect. I had not heard the theory that it was impacts, but that's interesting. Just that it happened about 4 billion years ago.
The K-T object (the dinosaur killer) was thought to have been about 6 km in diameter, I believe. (I will check this.) If an object that size hit the moon, there would be some meteors on earth from junk ejected and splash effects and stuff. Little junk. Not big stuff. Gravitational and tidal effects wouldn't happen. As for lava flows, there isn't any molton core any longer to the moon. It's solid all through, with no active "selenology" anymore. No "moonquakes", no plate tectonics, etc. Anything that flows now will have to have been melted in the impact.
[ November 17, 2003, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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What if we created a remotely operated version of the Dyson space craft. The craft could be launched using convension technology and piloted from earth using the technology used for Mars landing craft. It could then attach itself to the astroid and begin the nuclear propultion phase.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Say...I've been thinking about nickel-iron asteroids lately and wondering. Aren't those metals the two easiest to magnetize, or something like that?
Is the Earth's magnetic field strong enough to actually attract the things? Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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If we developed the kind of rocket-power technology necessary to pull it off, could we construct a giant titanium net to catch them with?
Yes, I'm serious.
The wires of the net would be so thin that you couldn't see it from this far away--of course it wouldn't need to be deployed very often, I guess--but if it were sufficiently large enough and you attached enough rockets to it all around the edges, you could CATCH one, couldn't you?
With sufficient warning you could meet the object at it's own pace, and then slow it down over a long period of time (how do you power the rockets? Solar power? Fusion?) you could actually bring it safely back and HARVEST the thing. How could would that be?
Plus, a titanium net would be a really excellent weapon to use against an alien invasion. If it was large and fast enough it could do a lot of damage to a fleet--or seriously annoy one big mothership. And they could shoot holes in the net but if it was a good enough net with thin enough strings--and frickin' huge surface area--it would be really hard to totally destroy it.
I wonder if the planet has enough titanium in it...
Posts: 1307 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
It's looking likely that the great Permian extinction was caused by a collision with a huge space object as well.
I wonder what the dominant life form would have been if that impact and the later dinosaur killer hadn't struck the planet. Would there be a lifeform with an intelligence level equal to or even superior to our own? Would they be tool users?
Hell, for all we know, there could have been just such a being back then; that's long enough ago that any trace of their civilization would probably have been wiped out by now. Or would it? What do you think? If something like that had smacked into the Earth prior to the industrial revolution, how much evidence would there be of human civilization 251 million years later? How about if something like this struck now? What would be left in 251 million years?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Yes, I expect there would be no trace remaining of human technology after 250 million years. What could possibly last that long? Perhaps shaped stone that was then buried and never unearthed for that long? I'm not sure. Certainly nothing less durable than stone, and nothing aboveground. The pyramids are quite weathered after only, what? 7,500 years? <just guessing; I'm dreadful at history; someone who knows please say>
So there could well have been some spacefaring species on earth before the great Permian extinction. They didn't mount an asteroid defense in time. Too bad.
Actually, I believe the propensity to build things like radio telescopes and spaceships may not be a feature of any other species in our galaxy. It may be as uniquely human as, say, an elephant's trunk is uniquely elephantine. Maybe intelligence is more commonly like that of the dolphins. I would not be surprised at all. I am rather inclined to believe that's true, in fact. There is no inevitable ladder of evolution that leads to us. We are just one twig on the end of the bush of life on earth. Evolutionary pathways are very contingent on particular histories. Had the K-T impactor missed, we would certainly not be here.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Yes, watching that in the telescope (all we actually saw were some dark smudges on the face of Jupiter, but knowing how BIG they were...) well, it made quite an impression on me, for sure.
Erik, did you follow the link to the time lapse series of the impact that I linked to above? It is VERY impressive! Particularly when viewed at double size.
[ November 21, 2003, 11:17 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote: How about if something like this struck now? What would be left in 251 million years?
Noemon. Someone has pointed out the durability of stone. And fired ceramics like porcelain are remarkably durable.
So, jumbles of stone from crappy neo-classical government buildings, uncomfortable and poorly designed bathtubs, and lo-flo toilets??
I imagine any future aliens digging through our ruins would not be too impressed with our engineering skills. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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The Permian extinction was indeed the mother of all mass extinctions. Each of the geologic periods represents an abrupt shift in flora and fauna, though. It's quite possible that all of them were caused by impacts of differing (but definitely large) maginitudes. We are just now (in the last decade or so) beginning to realize how very often this happens in our solar system. We definitely need to do something about it soon. The sooner the better.
You guys are going to be so mad at me for not convincing you of this sooner, if we find one headed straight down our throats and we've dilly-dallied around until it's too late. What would life be like if we were all waiting around to die, I wonder? I don't much think I want to find out. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Dear Friend, I am a former genral in the Canadian Armed forces, eh, who has escaped the recent conflicts with two hundreds million dollars (Cdn) and twelve Skyhawk helicopters--I am at present sitting in one, the other eleven have been stored in Newfundland--the bombs are falling now. I need a secured bank account in a developed nation in which to deposit this money (and some safety-deposit boxes for the Skyhawks). If you will only--wjhat is that smoke coming out of the turret?--if you will, dear friend, only respond with your persoanl account number I will condider sharing 1% (Cdn) of this koney with you. That is.......200 dollars (Cdn), for only your secured bank account number (and the safety-deposit boxes)--is that oil pressure gauge correct?--then fix it you fool!, eh. I eagerly await your prompt response--Mayday! Genral Lance "Contiki" Bay
Posts: 1154 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Well, if ya gotta go, i figure a giant asteroid to the head is one of the better ways. Plus the whole forests of the earth suddenly combusting amuses me. What a great bonfire.
See, the way I figure, if there's a giant asteroid coming to kill us all, we might as well let it. nature put a lot of hard work into that and we wouldn't want to see it all go to waste.
posted
There's a freight train bearing down on you. Do you 1) Step out of the way? 2) Stay where you are and think about what's really important in life?
It astonishes me that so many people with whom I seem to share a species, seem to pick 2. <laughs>
[ November 22, 2003, 10:07 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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We should get together and purchase that space mission. Then we can....
Uh.... I guess we need to plan more than that.
Nearly off-subject, have you seen the Anime series Mighty Space Miners? Apart from having one of the worst titles ever, it's a pretty cool tale of disaster on the captured Haley's Comet. Lots of microgravity stuff, portrayed pretty accurately. I could only ever find the first episode though. I drag it out occasionally for some of the really pretty animation.
(the bandwidth on this machine won't allow me to load the animation mentioned above )
Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Even more amazing ak, is that there was a report in yesterdays paper about how many students are injured by trains each year on this campus. 5 train tracks run through campus and the station is right down the road so they are always moving slowly. Apparently many students decide to walk across the tracks despite the fact that a moving train is 2 inches in front of them, they figure they can climb over between cars.
Also, you know I'm only kidding about the letting the asteroid hit us stuff right?
Or maybe that's just the musician side of me being irresponsible again?
posted
I was reading this article in New Scientist about a new type of ion engine that's been developed. The article mentioned that Japan has an asteroid chasing craft that uses this type of engine, but unfortunately the link that discussed it seems to be broken. Anybody know anything about the Japanese ship? Could something like it be modified so that it would not only chase asteroids, but actually catch them, anchor to them, and then use the ion engine to redirect the asteroid into a harmless path?
posted
That is so cool! Yes, the ion propulsion system is the definite choice for catching asteroids and directing them away from earth when we have many years advance warning. This is the approach the British team is working on as well. Even tiny course changes add up to a big difference in trajectory, given many years over which to work. I am fairly confident that, given 25 or 30 years notice, we can deal with the thing in this way or some other doable way.
We also definitely need something to handle the ones for which we get no lead time, or very little lead time. The majority of the really near misses in the last few years have been detected for the first time on the way OUT. We need better more thorough scanning, to catch these when they are inbound instead, and then we need a way to launch and obliterate them or blast them way off course within weeks or days rather than years.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Can you think of any way to obliterate them, when they're that close to Earth, in a way that wouldn't result in equal devistation? Diversion still seems like it would be the best plan, although I realize that it would take a lot more force for that to be an effective response to a threat at such close range.
The frustrating thing about this is that the ability to develop a program to protect us from threats like this is well within out technical abilities. The only thing we're lacking is the common sense to devote sufficient resources to such a program.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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That would have to be a very strong engine. Asteroids have a lot of momentum.
And about something earlier...
quote:Actually, one of the things that happens is the forests all over the whole earth are set ablaze by the high temperature of the atmosphere. Breaking it into small pieces (UNLESS most of the small pieces then miss) would indeed limit the effects of blast damage at the impact site or sites, but the heat poured into the atmosphere would be the same, and so the vegetation worldwide would burst into flames just the same.
I find the "whole earth on fire" possibility to be extremely unlikely, even relative to the extreme unliklihood of an asteroid hitting us in the next 100 years - particularly if most of the asteroid burned up in the upper atmosphere. For one thing, most of the heat would be projected back into space, as space is far colder and far less dense than the surface of the earth. The hot air would rise, rather than sink to the surface. Virtually none of the heat would manage to travel all the way through the earth to the opposite side. As a result, atmospheric dynamics would quickly pull in relatively cool air along the surface from those cooler areas to replace the hot air that has risen from the surface, like when a nuclear bomb hits. Hence, almost all the energy that does not travel out to space is going to remain or rise into the upper atmosphere. A small fraction will reach the surface, but even that is going to be greatly lessened by evaporating water from the oceans and/or clouds. Given all this, it would be pretty impossible to get enough heat to the surface to light even a portion of the world's forests on fire, particularly if we manage to burn up most of the asteroid in the upper levels of the atmosphere. The asteroid would have to be ridiculously huge.
posted
So then you're arguing, Tres, that freaking huge asteroids haven't struck the Earth in the past, and that it would be impossible for one to be headed our way now?
As for it taking a lot of energy--yeah, of course it would. I'm not sure that deflection at such a short distance would be possible, but I'm pretty sure than just blasting the asteroid wouldn't do the trick either, unless you could vaporize enough of it that what made it to Earth didn't amount to much. There's no argument that it'll be easier to deflect the things when they're farther away; it's just that it would be good to have a backup plan too.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Not that huge, Noemon. I've heard speculation that mountain-sized or even small-state-sized asteroids may have hit a few of times in the past few billion years, but I would doubt even that would come anywhere near what would be needed to burn all or even most of the world's forests at once, particularly if we were able to break it into enough pieces before it entered the atmosphere.
posted
I've got this really cool bright blue stick imbedded in my back yard. It's squared off and sticks up out of the ground about three feet.
It's purpose? To keep elephants away.
Don't believe it works? Well duh, there are no elephants near where I live - thus it works!
Okay, so that's obscenely stupid.
However...
Let's say some folks in the government decide to spent a few hundred billion dollars to design, build, and deploy an anti-satellite system of some kind.
Now it's been at least five thousand years since a global-killer hit, and most likely a few hundred times longer than that. Ana, you like to quote all kinds of numbers about how likely we are to be hit by an asteroid (not necessarily a global-killer I might point out). It's the celestial lottery. Your odds of "winning" may be one in 10,000 but even if you play 10,000 times there is a very good chance that you will not win. The odds of winning in that many plays is higher than the odds of not winning, but it is anything but assured. In fact, the odds of never wining in a million plays remains non-zero.
Think about it. What you're asking a government to do (and only a government has the resources to do it) is invent a new technology (because no current technology would do the job) build the hardware and then deploy it. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars to do what? Stop an asteroid that may or may not show up.
If the asteroid doesn't come soon, the government looks amazingly stupid and no one gets re-elected. This is a democracy. Even if a bunch of politians wanted to commit professional suicide on the outside chance that their actions might someday save the species, all the other short-sighted politicians would whine and laugh and ridicule the others until public opinion forced things back to the way they are now - no anti-asteroid defense system.
Think. You're asking hundreds of people you don't know to give up their careers and thus asking their families to sacrifice that as well. The only way such a project would not be political suicide for its supporters is if there were a tangible and recognizable threat. Personally, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the human race's ability to get things done in an expedited manner. A 3 year deadline would focus every nation of the world onto the same task. People would not complain about the higher taxes such a program would require. The world would work together.
But one country building something that can apply celestial-scale force to an object of sufficient size to end all life on earth...
Come to think of it, how are you sure the US isn't building such a tool? Do you honestly believe they'd tell the world they were developing a weapon that can alter the trajectory of or destroy an object that large?
As far as taking some blows "on the chin" (getting the asteroids to hit the moon) I'd be a little wary of that. Without the moon the earth would not be a fun place to live to say the least. In fact, the moon is currently leaving earth orbit at the rate of about 11-12 inches per year. Maybe a couple strikes on the far side could slow or stop that progress, but it won't be a problem for several hundred years anyway.
As my final explanation for your teeth-grinding frustration with everyone else's ambivalence I'll offer you this: God. The vast majority of the people on this planet believe in some kind of higher power, myself included. He/She/It may not be the kind of supreme being that doesn't expect us to do some or all the work ourselves, but by and large people believe that we won't be tested beyond our ability to respond.
So from my religious side I say with confidence that there is nothing to fear. From my analytical side I say that the odds don't actually suggest a fear vital enough to require politicians to lose their jobs over.
A 1 in 5000 chance of death by asteroid? Who cares? That's not a global-killer figure. That's a small impact figure. Find the "1 in" chance for all life to be destroyed and focus on that. Don't resort to chicken-little numbers based on similar but inappropriate facts.
Posts: 55 | Registered: Nov 2003
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quote:We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars to do what? Stop an asteroid that may or may not show up.
Spektyr. No, you are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.
I along with many astronomers and scientists are asking for more telescope time for NEO (near earth objects) searches and cataloging, more telescopes optimized for such searches, and modest research into alternate propulsion (which has alternate uses for manned and unmanned spaceflight.)
I'm not sure what Ana=AK is supporting, I don't what to speak for her, she may wish to go farther than what I've just mentioned.
I agree, hundreds of billions to prevent an asteroid collision that may or may not happen is political suicide for a politician to bring to Congress.
But if one were shown to be barreling down on us, such a program would recieve enthusiastic support.
You're probabilistic arguments are unconvincing to me. At a minimum we need a more extensive NEO search--that's the first priority, so we can have early warning and time to react to a hypothetical dinosaur-killer. The international budget for such a search is currently a joke.
As far as the God argument, you yourself say " by and large people believe that we won't be tested beyond our ability to respond," Spektyr. Sitting in our hands with confidence is hardly what I would call using our abilities to respond. Perhaps it is part of God's plan that we are tested by a huge asteroid, who can say??
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
I agree that increasing the budget for early warning of NEO's is prudent. Ana has not given any indication that she feels this is anything near enough.
Personally I think that we should be looking much more extensively out into space, both in the terms of vigilence and in terms of getting a more significant manned presence outside Earth's atmosphere. The more experience we have in each category the better prepared we are to undertake the dubious task of trying to move, deflect or destroy a celestial object. Eventually this will become necessary.
As far as the religious point goes it depends largely on individual belief and the point I was trying to make was the same as the previous points in that argument: it is virtually impossible to get enough people to agree without any tangible proof. Some people may believe that God expects us to do all the work ourselves. Some believe that God will never permit a global destruction to become immenent if we are not prepared to avoid it. I personally believe that there will never be a global-killer asteroid impact because it is my belief that God will not destroy the Earth. Whether that means that such an asteroid will never be on an intercept course or that it won't happen until we have the technology to prevent it, I don't know. The point is that for me there is no sleepless nights worrying about the destruction of the human race because I have faith in God.
I'm not alone in this.
Sure, it's not a bad idea to put more money into astronomer's pockets, asking them to watch the skies more carefully. It's not a bad idea to develop better technologies for moving personelle and materials into and out of Earth orbit.
Trying to invoke terror in order to push forward one's own belief that statistically the sky is about to fall (or be blown off by an asteroid) - that is a bad idea in my opinion.
posted
Terror? I'd be happy if I could get anyone to acknowledge that yes it's a solvable problem and we need to address it. I've seen all sorts of reactions in my 4 years of proselytizing for an asteroid defense, from "ho hum" to "you must be nuts", to "we shouldn't try to subvert God's will", but I've yet to get anything even approaching mild alarm. <laughs>
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