Posted on 08/12/2009 4:05:16 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Congress assigned the space agency four years ago to watch 90 per cent of potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space by 2020 but never gave it the money to build the necessary telescopes, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.
The agency estimates that about 20,000 asteroids and comets in Earth's solar system bigger than 460 feet in diameter are potential threats to the planet.
Rocks between 460 feet and 3,280 feet in diameter can devastate an entire region Lindley Johnson, NASA's manager of the near-Earth objects program, said.
So far, scientists know the whereabouts of about 6,000.
Last month, astronomers were surprised when an object of unknown size and origin bashed into Jupiter and created an Earth-sized bruise that still is spreading. Jupiter gets hit more often than Earth because of its immense gravity, enormous size and location.
Movies such as Armageddon and near misses in previous years have alerted people to the seriousness of falling asteroids.
However, the academy concluded that there had been "relatively little effort" by the US government to addressing the threat.
NASA calculated that to spot the asteroids as required by law would cost about $800 million (£483m) between now and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system.
At the moment, NASA has identified about five near-Earth objects that pose greater than a one-in-a-million risk of hitting the planet and being big enough to cause serious damage.
Astronomers are watching a 430-feet diameter rock that has a 1-in-3,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2048 and a much-talked about asteroid, Apophis, which is twice that size and has a 1-in-43,000 chance of hitting in 2036, 2037 or 2069.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
WTH? I have a telephoto.
Obama will just print up more money and fix this problem. What’s the big deal? ;-)
Don’t know that they could do much about a killer asteroid anyway.
Send Nancy Pelosi to Mars with a pair of binoculars.
If that doesn’t sound like a budget justifcation plea I don’t know what does
A Tunguska sized piece might not be spotted until it’s minutes away. Not much time to warn people to duck!
If NASA really wants some bucks they should say they might have discovered life on asteroids.
yitbos
What, is the U.S. the only ones threatened? Why not ping on the governments of Spain, Albania, Ubekistan or Uruguay?
Hmmmm.....
If NASA REALLY wants some bucks they should say they might have discovered TAXABLE life on asteroids.
If it’s a big rock, you gotta stop it, if it’s a missie headed for NYC and will kill 2 or 3 million, you gotta let it come on in, we can’t have no missile defense thanks to numerous libs/RATS. If you interfere with it a lot of libs will be very unhappy.
Only Congress is arrogant or stupid enough to believe NASA can be mandated to find 90 % of various size rocks flying thought the mind boggling unbelievable vast amount of space even in our own galaxy.
I think it's more like a grain of sand hitting a basketball.
Massive tidal waves ? Yes. End of life. ??????
I think it's more like a grain of sand hitting a basketball.
Massive tidal waves ? Yes. End of life. ??????
But, more to the point of this thread: Any rock big enough to do this is not going to be convinced to go elsewhere just because humans spend a bunch of trillions of dollars and devastate the global economy to alter its path. Not a single inch, or degree of trajectory, would it be diverted.
Actually a lot - if they had enough of a lead time, and the political will - but given all the squabbling in Congress, your right - no amount of lead time measured in less than 100s of years would be enough. So no, a killer astroid would be just that: ELE.
Maybe the Chinese would be able to do something (certainly not the US) but who knows?
ELE as far as humans are concerned - nothing new however. Happened before numerous times - some life would survive and things would start over, just as they always do.
“a grain of sand hitting a basketball”
A grain of sand traveling at 40,000 mph hitting a basketball at an oblique angle makes a real mess. There is a real time shot of this happening in a lab on some TV - Discovery, History, N Geo. one of them.
I understand it would be ugly. I just don’t buy into the ELE part.
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