"Nice little planet you've got here. Be a shame if something was to happen to it."
You've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?"
More likely, I will feel DEAD
Yowch! I are going to take the long way home and hope the Hotel will allow me an exit...
The California Hotel is always so “iffy”...
The Stig and I are doing well. And tomorrow is another day. See you then!
Was it eight planets or nine? Well, in all the excitement I think I lost count.
Anyway, the point I was making is that if you want to live and do well, you have to pay for "protection".
No, not the kind that Chicago hoodlum and his gang are peddling. I'm talking about state-of-the-art asteroid-movers, sent out to wrangle a few high-metal asteroids into a serviceable area, and then dismantle them.
Now folks talk about how much steel and other stuff is in the asteroids, as if they were going to take it down to Earth and put up buildings with it. What nonsense!
The steel in the asteroids, and even the common dirt and rocks, is worth hundreds of times the price of steel at the bottom of the gravity well.
What they need to do is build space-ships with it.
Then all they'll have to do is send up some nuclear rocket engines for the ships, swing over to Venus for some reaction gas (carbon dioxide), and then go rambling off into the wild black yonder for more asteroids.
After you've got enough of these space tugs working out there, when someone discovers an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, we'll just send over a team of space tug-boats, and move the asteroid into a more useful destination.
There are LaGrangian points all over the system where such bodies can be parked. (Part of my plan to take over the Solar System is to know where all the bodies are!)
So, basically, if everyone is in agreement that we need to pay for the protection of our planet, then we can get on with business.