http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/sc...=1&oref=slogin

We've been getting points lately on NASA ranging from "It's the only worthwhile program" to "It's a total waste and only spent on failed missions to other planets".
But it looks as though one of its purposes is seeking out asteroids that could become a problem for life on Earth... at least life as we know it.

What strikes me is that if this is underfunded... what about the funding we would need for a program to actually deter the impact of a near-earth object. It's my understanding that as of yet we cannot.

Is this one of those things to make us shrug our shoulders and say "Oh well" or is there some point to moving money from more futile budgetary items to better technology development to stop a potential end-of-the-world scenario? Frankly I don't see this as one of those "The free market will fix it" anymore than I expect that of national defense.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

The Earth hasnt needed saving in the last half million years or so...why exactly do you think the next couple decades are so critical? Whats changed?

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Mostly the realization of just how many rocks are out there (and the fact that we haven't located anywhere near all of them), how often we've been hit, and the fact that we're apparently overdue for a big one -- as I answered when last you posed the question.
http://politicalforum.com/viewtopic....621&highlight=

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Man up.

All we have to do is label them "terrorist asteroids". Problem solved.

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The number has not really changed though...it was the same as it was last week, and last year, and last century. The threat has not increased. The chances of being hit now are the same as they have been pretty much throughout recorded history.

And the chances are so low they might as well be zero. We have not had a catastrophic impact in the entire time the human race has existed. That is why I am not worried about impacts, even though the chances of being hit are not mathematically zero.

The chances of terrorists developing the technology necessary to exploit asteroids as a weapons in the forseeable future is acceptably low to me for the time being.

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I'm not worried about an impact tomorrow -- but the threat is sufficiently real and potentially catastrophic that I think it's worth developing a long-term plan to deal with it. Which mostly means developing robust interplanetary transport capacity, something we should be doing anyway. So if we maintain a strong committment to the exploration and exploitation of space, we should develop a good anti-asteroid capacity as a byproduct.

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Man up.

So we haven't been hit in the recent past? But we have been hit a long, long time ago and it is bound to happen again. It's one of those things that isn't so much a deadline as it is a sooner-the-better. Because we don't know if it will be tomorrow or a few thousand years. But if it happens tomorrow, we're screwed.
Just ask the dinosaurs.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

I am confident we will have a global defense by around 100 years or so. That is acceptably soon enough for me.

Not catastophically, no. Nothing that would be more than an annoyance on a global scale.

Irrelevant even if true, since chances are we will have defenses by the time it happens again.

It is extremely unlikely to be either. Tomorrow and the next thousand years might as well be the same thing on a geologic time scale. Which is how impacts are measured, because they occur so rarely.

How long were the Dinosaurs here before an impact finally wiped them out? Hundreds of millions of years is a pretty good run.

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My Political Blog (Updated Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

Terrorists are a greater threat than any asteroid or meteor. Congress should disband NASA and use it's funding to fight the war on terror. Al Queda sure as hell isn't in outer space are they? We haven't gained anything of substance from NASA other than pictures and rocks.

Here is a case in point of a scenario in which we will definitely NOT have global defense within the next century.
Not to mention the assumption that somehow more money is what is necessary to fight terrorism better...

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside