Posted on 10/27/2013 4:35:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK — Members of the United Nations met with distinguished astronauts and cosmonauts this week in New York to begin implementing the first-ever international contingency plan for defending Earth against catastrophic asteroid strikes.
Six of the space travelers involved in these U.N. discussions discussed the asteroid defense effort Friday (Oct. 25) in a news conference hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the American Museum of Natural History. Their goal: to drive home the very-real threats posed by near-Earth objects (NEOs), or asteroids traveling within the radius of Earth's orbit with the sun. You can see a video of the asteroid defense discussion here.
Scientists estimate that there are roughly 1 million near-Earth asteroids that could potentially pose a threat to the planet, but only a small fraction of these have actually been detected by telescopes. There are about 100 times more asteroids lurking in space than have ever been located, said Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and co-founder of the non-profit B612 Foundation advocating asteroid defense strategies. "Our challenge is to find these asteroids first, before they find us," Lu said. ..
To help achieve this goal, Lu co-founded an organization called the B612 Foundation in 2002. Today, the group is developing a privately built infrared space telescope — called the Sentinel Space Telescope — with the sole purpose of locating threatening asteroids. The foundation hopes to launch the telescope by 2018.
The Sentinel telescope will help space agencies identify threatening near-Earth objects years before they hit Earth, providing governments and space agencies with enough time to take action, Lu and his colleagues said. Such action would entail deploying a spacecraft — or multiple spacecrafts, depending on the size of the space rock — toward the asteroid in order to smack it off course.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Finally ... this is something governments and even the UN should be doing. Unlike global warming the threat of extinction from asteroids IS real. Sooner or later a big rock will be coming our way and it is possible to nudge them out of the way.
H.L. Mencken had it right when he said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The punch that gets you is the one you never see coming.
Exactly. This would be the biggest financial black hole of all time. And of course, the UN would be in charge with Al Bore on a committee. !
Ask yourself, does Algore get a cut of this sh!t??
A load of fear-mongering.
Thanks for posting this thread.
Chelyabinsk, Tunguska, Younger Dryas Impact.
http://cosmictusk.com/clovis-population-decline-at-younger-dryas
Now Americans are harming SPACE!
Quick! Enact a VAT tax!
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