I already am prepared.
Posted on 10/11/2008 7:05:35 AM PDT by shove_it
A mini asteroid collided safely with Sudan this week, but mega disaster looms with nearly 1000 hazardous near-Earth objects roaming our universe—plus even more dangerous ones we haven't spotted yet. With no response plan for the worst-case scenario in place anywhere on Earth, four-time shuttle astronaut Thomas D. Jones offers a call to arms against the coming cosmic storm.
Early last Monday, Richard Kowalski, a University of Arizona astronomer at the Catalina Sky Survey team's 60-in. search telescope atop Mt. Lemmon near Tucson, flashed word to NASA of the discovery of a new Near Earth Object (NEO). The small asteroid, soon named 2008 TC3, was just 2 meters (about 6 ft) across. What made this space rock unique was its orbit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab quickly calculated that the asteroid would collide with Earth within 24 hours. It was the first NEO to be detected before striking our planet, and its surprising and fiery demise highlights the need to better protect the planet from a future cosmic disaster.
Right on time, 2008 TC3 entered the atmosphere and burned up harmlessly in the darkness over northern Sudan shortly past 2:45 am Greenwich Mean Time. A KLM jetliner crew flying about 750 miles southwest of the predicted entry point reported seeing a distant flash and an infrasound station in Kenya picked up reverberations from the object's breakup in the atmosphere. The collision released the energy equivalent of about a thousand tons of TNT...
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Asteroid insurance would be the perfect scam. No place is safe and all home buyers could be required to have it as a condition of their mortgage.
I smell Al Gore’s involvement in this.
Just got 4, count them 4, exclusion notices this week from my office liability carrier. Right now, I don’t know what the heck they are covering at my office. Maybe an asteroid strike is the only thing they will pay on.
I already am prepared.
Asteroid insurance. Who’s going to write it now that AIG is nearly gone?
Don’t laugh. I’ll guarantee the dems would be quite happy to spend a few billion at their favorite insurers store! The Soros Mutual Risk Co, for example.
When I was buying my house I had to have flood insurance as a condition of my mortgage despite the fact that a flood is an imposibility here.
I live above a dam on the shore of a lake. (the flood plain that’s already flooded to it’s top)
I’ve heard that Lloyd’s of London will insure anything...
If the guy could make a difference between "near-Earth" and the universe perhaps he would come across as more knowledgeable.
It sounds like Mr. Jones is fishing for a grant or earmark. He should talk to Dennis Kucinich — or Cynthia McKinney.
Note: this topic is from 10/11/2008. Thanks shove_it.
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