NASA Can't Keep Up With Killer Asteroids

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I can think of a lot of places to skimp on funding but the program in charge of tracking killer asteroids isn’t one of them. Someone call Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, we might need them for real this time.

Although Congress assigned the space agency this mission four years ago, the National Academy of Sciences says it never gave NASA money to build the necessary telescopes.
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Why don't you go ahead and tackle that AIDS problem for us, yeah. Oh, you'll need to secure your own funding. Have a nice day.
 
ffs what is the point.
The people that run things these days have lost the plot.
When I was at school, I talked with some friends about the idiots in class and how they will be running things some day.
Education and standards have got a lot worse since and now these people are running things.

Unless perspective is corrected and the state of education improved a lot, this is going to continue.
Too many jobsworths who dont know their job, are corrupt or are plain lazy.
I mean, how the hell did Bush ever get into government.
Too much BS, corruption and lack of education in much of western society.
 
I think one of the larger underlying problems here is the way our government handles employment, specifically with agencies like NASA and NOAA and the like. What the real problem here is that you have an engineer trying to play politics to secure money from the government for missions like this. And lets be honest, engineers aren't the best politicians and/or managers. Let me explain:
The government doesn't have any provisions for retaining strong engineers in their field. The only way to advance in your career is to get promoted, which typically takes you out of your specialty field and into management. What has happened over the recent 20 years, is that agencies like NASA have become extremely top heavy, meaning they have lots of management and few really good specialists. This top loaded management structure is full of ex-engineers, who wanted to make more money and advance but had to go into management. They are terrible at managing people, resources and funding. If the government would let engineers stay in their field and keep advancing, and let managers/politicians be managers/politicians, shit like this wouldn't happen.
If you have ever had the opportunity to speak to a really good software engineer or astrophysicist, you will agree that they aren't the best people to interact with others...
 
Let's say there was a trillion dollars being set aside to detect asteroids. What are we to do with today's technology when we do see one heading our way.
Party like it's 1999 or pray to your god(s) to save your ass.
It's almost a "why bother".
 
the-one1 said:
Let's say there was a trillion dollars being set aside to detect asteroids. What are we to do with today's technology when we do see one heading our way.
Party like it's 1999 or pray to your god(s) to save your ass.
It's almost a "why bother".
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Yeah, really.. It would probably just be best not to know it's coming. And the human race has thrived without such a system since prehistory (or Adam and Eve, depending on viewpoint ;))

We have a hell of a lot more important things on Earth to spend money on, like fixing the broken healthcare system, feeding starving families that are out of work, etc.

Why would we want to spend money on a system that'll just be able to tell us we're fucked?
 
the-one1 said:
Let's say there was a trillion dollars being set aside to detect asteroids. What are we to do with today's technology when we do see one heading our way.
Party like it's 1999 or pray to your god(s) to save your ass.
It's almost a "why bother".
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Until we know the true scale of the problem, it isnt possible to determine whether we should just give up or invest in solutions.
As NASA has already been charged with the task, it has already been decided it is important enough to research.
Therefore the project needs adequate funding.
Throwing unfounded numbers around doesnt change the requirement.
 
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Look at it this way...

At least we'll be healthy when we get our asses kicked by the asteroids!
 
UrielDagda said:
Yeah, really.. It would probably just be best not to know it's coming. And the human race has thrived without such a system since prehistory (or Adam and Eve, depending on viewpoint ;))

We have a hell of a lot more important things on Earth to spend money on, like fixing the broken healthcare system, feeding starving families that are out of work, etc.

Why would we want to spend money on a system that'll just be able to tell us we're fucked?
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The probability that we will be hit by something big is small, but eventually that probability will come to be represented as 1:1 chance. Without knowing what is out there, we will never know. There are already ideas that use current technologies that can deflect an asteroid. If we can detect one soon enough all we have to do is give it a small nudge to alter it's path and it will miss us.
Frankly I'd rather we spent the money on this than spend it on feeding a bunch of 3rd world people that can't take care of themselves.
 
Well its nice to know they are coming for us, but when is the question. We dont have the technology to send them in a different direction so what the point in knowing they are out there when its clear they are?
 
iGrooCk said:
Well its nice to know they are coming for us, but when is the question. We dont have the technology to send them in a different direction so what the point in knowing they are out there when its clear they are?
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So we can riot before hand.

Also, the fat kid wearing the Babylon 5 t-shirt may get sympathy and finally get laid.
 
iGrooCk said:
Well its nice to know they are coming for us, but when is the question. We dont have the technology to send them in a different direction so what the point in knowing they are out there when its clear they are?
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Realistically that is not necessarily correct. There are too many variables to say that we can or cannot. Distance from source, velocity and mass determine if we can or cannot. Something large enough could be altered by a really small fraction of a degree or even slightly changing its rotation could have huge impacts on very far distances. Its not like in the movies, no shuttles to drill and so forth with only 19 days, but think long term like say we find one that is likely to hit us in 6 to 7 years. Don't you think we, as a species, could put something together to move that object just a fraction, so in the 6 to 7 years travel time it misses us or something?
 
There wont be time to build anything that could deflect asteroids. We would be dead either way you look at it, so no point in wasting money.
 
Lebowski said:
The probability that we will be hit by something big is small, but eventually that probability will come to be represented as 1:1 chance. Without knowing what is out there, we will never know. There are already ideas that use current technologies that can deflect an asteroid. If we can detect one soon enough all we have to do is give it a small nudge to alter it's path and it will miss us.
Frankly I'd rather we spent the money on this than spend it on feeding a bunch of 3rd world people that can't take care of themselves.
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How about we use the money to keep the United States from becoming a 3rd world country, before feeding 3rd world countries? :p

Seriously, though, if something is going to hit us, it's going to hit us. That means a million years ago, the piece of debris that's going to hit us, was still floating around, still going to hit us.. The question is when? So it's kinda like a cosmic version of shrodinger's cat.. except it's the planet that's destroyed and not destroyed at the same time.. Because the chance of us getting hit by that particular asteroid is always 1:1.. So we're already dead, why bother looking? :D

On top of all of that, "nudging" isn't all that easy to do.. And one slight miscalculation, instead of nudging something away from us that we thought was going to hit us, what if it wasn't going to hit us, and we nudge it right into our path, or we hit the moon with it? If it's large enough to take out Earth, that's going to have to be one hell of a nudge!

I'm off to play The Witcher before my brain really starts misfiring from thinking of such things. :D
 
Personally, I'm all for the funding. I'd like to go down swinging. Even if there is a 95% chance we won't be able to alter it's course, I'd like to take that chance rather then just give up.
 
If we look for them, we usually can detect and track them a few orbits before they come for us. We don't always know if or how close they will come by next revolution, but we can get a good estimate from observation. A great example is 99942 Apophis.

What this means that if we LOOK for asteroids, we'll probably have a decade or more to do something about one that may hit us. If we don't we have weeks.

It's one of the civilization-ending disasters we as humans can hope to avert (maybe, even if we know it's coming there's the trick of getting the capability to actually doing something about it) so we may as well use our capacity to try and do so.
 
Dont move the astroid. Move the people.

Thats my philoshophy. All our eggs have been in one basket for the last several hundred thousand years....lets fix that.
 
no doubt lets get off this rock shit Andromeda and the Milky Way are on a collision course anyways

think they have an idea how to stop that?
 
himmy said:
So we can riot before hand.

Also, the fat kid wearing the Babylon 5 t-shirt may get sympathy and finally get laid.
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That would be great, If we had enough of a warning to go out and get drunk, start rioting and having a blast! I think it would totally be worth the cost, just for the sake of having a ton of fun before we die.
 
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