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Subscribe to RSSNASA says it needs more money to protect the planet from asteroids. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
Congress got the word from NASA on Tuesday about its options for dealing with the threats posed by asteroids and comets: Lawmakers can either provide adequate funding for detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, and diverting them if necessary — or they can pray.
Threats from space are generally the stuff of science-fiction movies such as "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact," but members of the House Science Committee took a hard look at the realities during Tuesday's hearing, which came in response to the Feb. 15 meteor explosion over Russia as well as a close encounter that same day with a much bigger asteroid known as 2012 DA14.
The lawmakers didn't always like what they heard. The committee's chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told the panelists more than once that the progress report they delivered was "not reassuring." But representatives from both parties were receptive to the idea of putting more resources into the effort to counter cosmic threats.
White House science adviser John Holdren noted that the funding devoted annually to cataloging potentially threatening asteroids has risen from $5 million to more than $20 million over the past couple of years. But even at that level, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden estimated that it would take until 2030 to catalog 90 percent of the near-Earth objects between 140 meters and 1 kilometer in width, as mandated by Congress.
"Maybe we can help you out with the budget. Don't know," Smith replied. He said "we need to find ways to prioritize NASA's projects."
Holdren said the single most useful project would be to put an infrared-sensing telescope in a Venus-like orbit, like the Sentinel Space Telescope being developed by the nonprofit B612 Foundation. The telescope could look for asteroids that currently can't be spotted from the ground because they spend much of their time within Earth's orbit, where they're lost in the sun's glare. The 55-foot-wide (17-meter-wide) rock that blew up without warning over Chelyabinsk in Russia last month was just such an asteroid.
"It came from a direction where our [existing] telescopes could not look," Holdren said. "We cannot look in the sun."
Don Davis
Artwork by Don Davis shows a meteor streaking across the skies over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. More of Davis' work is available at his website, DonaldEDavis.com.
Holdren estimated the cost of an asteroid-hunting space telescope at $500 million to $750 million, and said it could reduce the congressionally mandated survey time to six to eight years. Following through on the Obama administration's plan to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 would cost about $2 billion a year, Holdren said.
The automatic spending cuts known as sequestration will affect NASA's asteroid-hunting effort as well as the plans for human exploration, Bolden warned.
"The president has a plan. But that plan is incremental," Bolden said, referring to the Obama administration's budget proposal. "And if we want to save the planet, because I think that’s what we’re talking about, then we have to get together ... and decide how we’re going to execute that plan."
The idea of enlisting other countries as well as amateur astronomers to "crowdsource" the hunt for threatening asteroids struck a responsive chord with lawmakers. But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., reminded Bolden that China couldn't be on the list of partners due to a congressional ban.
Congressional teach-in
The hearing served as a teach-in for some of the panel members. At one point, Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, asked whether the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope could be retrofitted to look for asteroids. "No, sir," Bolden replied. At another point, Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, had to explain to lawmakers that the space-based surveillance system used for monitoring missile launches on Earth could not watch out for rocks coming in from deep space.
Holdren and Bolden provided a status report on the asteroid search, reporting that about 95 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than a kilometer are being tracked. However, only about 10 percent of the 13,000 to 20,000 asteroids bigger than 140 meters have been detected. If an asteroid of that size were to strike land, it "could devastate the better part of a continent," Holdren said.
Looking on the bright side, Holdren added that such asteroids are thought to hit Earth only every 20,000 years or so.
Bolden said less than 1 percent of the space rocks in the 30- to 100-meter range have been found. Such asteroids may not be continent-killers, but they are bigger and more potentially destructive than last month's Chelyabinsk meteor.
Lawmakers repeatedly asked how much advance warning would be required to deflect a threatening asteroid, and were repeatedly told that it would take years. Shelton said that if time was limited, "probably nuclear energy is what we're talking about." But even a nuclear-armed mission to blast an asteroid, Bruce Willis-style, would require lots of lead time. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., asked Bolden about the strategy for dealing with an Earth-threatening asteroid that was discovered with three weeks' warning.
"If it's coming in three weeks ... pray," Bolden said. "The reason I can't do anything in the next three weeks is because for decades we have put it off."
More about threats from space:
- 'Marsageddon' comet adds to concerns
- The global plan to deal with asteroids
- Cosmic Log archive on asteroids
Ali Weinberg is an associate producer with NBC News in Washington.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Really should have said Pay Now or Pray Later
It's not too late, thanks
:-)
You brown-noser. I'll be waiting for you in the parking lot....
Hmm what smart congress people we have. Even in the face of possible complete annihilation it is more important to not let certain kids play with your ball. We all went extinct but at least THAT KID didnt get to play, oh wait, were all dead. Oops.
Ok, so we're going to rely on Congress to act in timely fashion to prepare for a future extinction event?
Hell, they can't act when they are faced with a hard dead-line like the Sequester. Who believes they act at all on something like this?
Humanity is doomed.
I, for one, am prepared to welcome our new insect overlords in the brave new world to come after our annihilation.
Alan. As I've mentioned before., would it be practical to build two Saturn 5 sized rockets with nuclear warheads to intercept threatening asteroids? Even though it might not completely destroy them it could break them up so the impact would not be as catastrophic or am I just blowing smoke? I say two so there's one in reserve in case of a first strike miss.
Why is this just a US issue? What about financial commitment from the rest of the world? Why does the American taxpayer have to keep shouldering all the burden? Our government cannot feed, educate or care for it's own citizens. This is another scare tactic to get more funding.
Hey, maybe we'll be lucky and the Chinese will get their act together on their own and save us all!
There is NO SUCH THING AS AN ASTEROID DEFENSE SYSTEM. Only a WARNING system in which we will know when and where it will most likely hit and prepare ahead accordingly. We do not have the technology or resources today to do anything to stop the strike and we will still miss ones the size of what just happened in Russia. China or Russia have the best chance and space technology to do something about it..perhaps in 30 or 40 years. The private sector might, but since such a system is not "profitable" you will not see it directly. It will be a byproduct of the commercial space industry.
So ... let me get this straight. We have not got the tech or resources to create a defense against asteroids, there is nothing we can do, so we should do nothing? Kinda self-fullfilling, eh?
And btw - Russia and China techs aren't even close to ours today. Russia has a big rocket, yes, but besides that they haven't had much success with anything recently except getting people to LEO. And China isn't even close to Russia yet. We still have the best tech, and could have the resources, if we wanted to. Finding the political will is the problem.
"Lawmakers can either provide adequate funding for detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, and diverting them if necessary — or they can pray."
Since they are not going to allocate sufficient funds, and the United Nations doesn't see the need for action on their part (most countries feel that any protection needed should be provided by the United States) I suggest the following action;
To determine whether praying is a viable action, put it to a roll call vote, "Shall each session of congress begin with us asking that God protect us from cosmic extinction?....and if so...should this be extended to public schools?
Secondly (also put to a vote) "If the United States has perfected it's Star Wars technology (we can now hit a bullet with a bullet) and we determine that a relatively small near earth object will definitely impact earth (say in the capital of North Korea) are we under any obligation to act?
Inquiring minds want to know!
We might be able to stop a "big one" but how many "smaller" ones zipped by and we didn't know about it until it has already gone by?
We are nothing but a mark on the dartboard of life.
And one day one of those darts will hit........... Not much we can do about that..........
Say no to socialized asteroid defense, which is a commie plot. Let the private sector handle asteroid defense. The free market always works.
Actually it should have read: Pay now and pray now.
It's never to late to pray, but it is also never too early to pray!
Jesus. Great. Given about 50% of this country thinks praying is a real solution to this risk, and it's really "just a scare tactic to get more funding" by the government, yeah, I'd say we're screwed. Sorry, God. Your followers are idiots. Better luck next time.
Russia is and has been funding asteroid detection systems for some time now, and since the scare in Feb. they are starting their own defense system to deal with the asteroids once they have been detected.
Also the international space station was a russian idea, is primarily russian funded, and most of the tech is russian and yes it is better than our tech by a long shot, you see once we got to the moon so long ago that was it, america declared itself the winner and put our space program on the back burner.
please stop with all the ignorant American exceptional-ism, we are far from exceptional...
You never tell a Republican politician that you can either "pay or pray", they will choose pray everytime. We are doomed! they will rely on their fictional father figure to save us from complete anhilation and since we (and they) truly know that isn't going to happen they will claim he is letting us all die because of gays, feminists and liberals.
... which pretty much assigns the appropriate efficacy parameter to that little useless ritual... Better, methinks, to lay in one's Armageddon supplies to cover the intervening 3 weeks: 2 cases of 25-year-old single-malt scotch, 50 grams of medicinal cannabis, 2 cases of 5-hr energy (any flavor but pomegranate) and 5 g or so of viagra...
Praying remains optional or you can simply go with the occasional "Oh, God!" during the, ah, exercise periods. So much for the universe's local homo sapiens experiment, I suppose...
Maybe they can send Trump to catch it with his ego, that's bigger than any asteroid...
You're probably right, besides; if an extinction level event does occur, we won't be around to to worry about it anyway...right? Kids and grandkids? ...well I guess they should have been born sooner, right? Just their bad luck.
No one said that is is JUST a US issue. We could certainly the European Space Agency involved. But, as with many so other things in this world, this is something that won't get off the ground without American leadership. You can say, "let other countries do it" but, really, how often does real work get done by a committee? Sooner or later, there has to be a leader. And, in the world today, there is NO other country with our combination of military, economic and diplomatic power. The US is the elephant in every room and it can't be helped.
Try to remember.... This is not a nation-wide problem, this is a GLOBAL problem... Nothing to do with political problems, who is in office, etc.... It is ALL of us. So please drop the political agenda...
Let's get to work!
Sadly a great number of zombie worshippers actually believe praying is a viable, helpful option;-)
I would think that having NASA work up a trip to a close asteroid to test ways on how to change its course would also be good research for technology going to Mars. Kinda a two-fer goal. Or put a BFL on the dark side of the moon to zap any incoming asteroids!? (Big F...... Laser)...actually I guess we would need at least four BFLs. One to cover each quadrant on the moon so we could be continually zapping an incoming rock during an entire cycle of the moon's orbit....just think of the light show!
Nigeria should fund the project. It is just as likely that it will get hit with a similar 1908 Siberian explosion as us. If 1908 reoccurs it will probably be over the Pacific anyway. Why are we, "the chosen", destined to protect the planet. As for me, I will play the odds. We do not have the money to spend defending pure speculation. The last devastation was 65 million years ago. Does anyone really believe that it will reoccur now -- that is to say in the next couple of generations.
The way technology is moving, we need not force the creation of a defense to a miniscule possibility, the technology will naturally come about. Nobody "forced" the I phone upon us.
Where is the rest of the world? Are we the only ones this affects. It is long past time that we pass the hat around. This affects everyone.
sullyness - I'm a believer and I speak for many when I say I think you are the idiot... Asteroid defense is something that is suddenly necessary... REALLY??!!!??
Is this even worth talking about!!?? Yes I think it's a scare tactic to get more funding and a ridiculous one at that.
Do you really think we are going to send Bruce Willis up in a shuttle to save the earth??!!? And you called others idiots!
Your delusional idea of this hollywood dream is beyond funny - and you used it to take a shot at people that believe in God - you go ahead and worship the hollywood and NASA types - go ahead and think these people are going to keep you safe from asteroids (I personally think hemorrhoids pose a greater threat). Good luck
We know we can't depend on Congress, thank God we've got Bruce Willis! He's our only hope!
@NJSteve
Right...and while hemorrhoids only affect an individual, an asteroid hitting the Earth can threaten an entire continent, let alone the entire planet. Do you realize that if the meteor over Russia had actually hit the Earth's surface, it would be equivalent to setting off a couple nukes? I guess that's ok with you though, right? People of any faith can pray all they want, but it's not going to result in some divine intervention to prevent an asteroid from making landfall. It's basically up to us, the human race, to come up with a program that can prevent this from happening because we have the resources and the technology (the later being something we didn't have before).
And last time I checked, Armageddon was a fictional movie and in no way portrays how we would deal with an asteroid in a real-world scenario. Plus, I don't worship NASA, but I'll believe them when they talk about asteroids since they've had scientists studying them for years.
Oh, and we do have ways to deflect asteroids. You can use a ship that flies through space parallel to the asteroid and acts like a tugboat (due to gravitational forces) to pull it from it's trajectory intercepting Earth. Or, you can land a ship on the asteroid (remote controlled) or just a timed-thruster and push the asteroid's trajectory off. Both viable options.
...and why is Rep. Weber on this committee/panel? Shouldn't some basic understanding of space-based observation and current or planned missions be prerequisite?
Our know-nothing House, on full display.
Asteroid defense is not SUDDENLY necessary. It has always been necessary, but it is only relatively recently that we've had the knowledge and even rudimentary technology to identify and deal with the threat. The explosion over Russia just drives home the importance of the concept and helps to remind people that asteroid strikes are not restricted to our ancient path.
One would think so. The House committee also has a physician member who claims that there is proof AGAINST evolution and FOR a young earth. Stellar academic credentials are not a prerequisite for being in Congress, unfortunately.
Ok, so you guys think that we should not do anything at all to protect OURSELVES because said protection would also protect others and we don't want to protect others unless they pitch in so lets just not do anything at all.
With that attitude nothing would have ever gotten done in the world. Everything we invent, every bit of progress we make, benefits others too. If we waited to do something until the rest of the world pitched in to help we would still be living in caves. Lets do what we know needs to be done to save the world from certain annihilation and worry about how we will pay the banksters later.
Debt is fictional anyway, it is created by people who have no real talent other than conning others. They didn't create a better widget, they didn't paint a masterpiece, they didn't write a symphony, they are just money handlers who create debt out of thin air. When they say the "world is in debt to the tune of $64 trillion." I say "TO WHO?" The banksters who claim the world owes them money benefited from the things that were built with that money too, they are citizens of the very countries they claim owes them money, they use the bridges and roads and schools also, the military equipment that we took loans to build protects them too. So why do "we" owe "them" money. This whole system is truly insane and it is doomed for failure.
The cost of making us safe from something we know for certain could and will kill us all is absolutely nothing in comparision to the cost of doing nothing. Like I said, do what we know needs to be done to make the world safe and worry about paying the banksters later.
I guess you don't get it ... a large enough asteroid and we ALL die, regardless of where it actually hits.
Playing the odds is fine when you can afford the loss. In this case, the loss would be extinction of mankind. I don't think that our descendants will appreciate our thriftiness if an asteroid threat is imminent and the technology isn't there to stop it because we wanted to save a few dollars.
Finally, we are not THE "chosen", but we are one of the chosen. Nigeria doesn't have the money or technology. The US, Europe and Russia does. And, all three have a role to play in dealing with this threat. Also, only the US has the diplomatic clout to assemble a global approach to dealing with this problem. Most people would be proud of our preeminent position in the world. You seem to think that it is a burden.
right, cause congress is so effective in doing things in a timely manner....
As the Great Economist Milton Friedman famously said "If you put the Federal Government in charge of the Sahara Desert within 5 years there would be a shortage of sand"..........
You can only IMAGINE how much they would want to spend on THIS project...............
Milton Friedman was no great economist, he was a ruthless, greedy, ambitious, evil little man with an ego the size of Donald Trumps and was the only person to ever get heckled while trying to accept his Nobel Prize, which he truly did not deserve. He used Central and South America as a laboratory for his sick twisted experiments. Thousands upon thousands liberals, progressives and developmentalists were brutally tortured and murdered by the ruthless dictators who were installed to try and force his flawed economic theory of "neoliberalism" down the throats of people who were doing just fine with developmentalism before Friedman began playing god.
He is the reason the worlds economy is in the shambles it is in, his trickle down, rich man first, Austrian economics was what caused the economic disaster of this past decade. Nearly every country in Central and South America where he started coups and installed dictators has since thrown of the shackles of Friedman's flawed economics. Their economies looked good on the surface but when you dug deeper you saw that it benefited only the very few at the top while impoverishing the majority, but they have in recent years turned their economies around by casting off his theories and reverting to developmentalism.
Friedman was the reason our manufacturing base vanished, he was the evil genius behind globalization, which only benefited the investor class while destroying the working class. He will always be known as the proud father of global misery.
Deprogrammer: Then you don't understand economics. Milton Friedman was a great economist and identified as such in all economic literature.
Simply because I choose to disagree with you does not mean that I do not understand economic theory. I have spent the past 30 years studying economics, the effects of Friedman's economics to be exact. If his theories were so great then why did he need to install ruthless puppets dictators to force it on other nations? If his theories were so great then why did Nixon need to "make Chile's economy scream" in order to force it on them? if his theories were so great why did so many need to die? If his theories were so great why are so many forsaking them and returning to developmentalism? If his theories were so great then why did the world's economy falter and nearly crumble under those theories? Why are Iceland, Bolivia, Chile doing so well after throwing his theories in the garbage where they belong?
The only literature that claims he is "great" is right wing propaganda. Ask the people of Chile what they think of Milton Friedman. Ask the people of Bolivia what they think of Milton Friedman. Ask the people of Poland what they think of Milton Friedman. Ask another Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz what he thinks of Milton Friedman.
Read the Shock Doctrine and see exactly where he got the idea of how to force his flawed theories on unsuspecting countries, shocking the people to the point they were easily manipulated by propaganda. Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and see how he ruthlessly had demoractically elected world leaders murdered and installed brutal puppet dictators who tortured and murdered anyone who opposed them. Read The Price of Inequality and see the truth behind the facade. Travel to Santiago and see for yourself the poverty his theories created and how they are finally, after 30 years of neoliberalism, pulling themselves out of the gutter.
Nothing that is truly good for society needs to be forced at the point of a gun. His theories of every man for himself and rich man first were so distasteful to the once thriving nations of Central and South America that our CIA had to covertly destroy their existing economy and install murderers to force neoliberalism on them. This was not for the benefit of those countries, this was solely for the benefit of our country and our corporations, solely for the benefit of Milton Friedman's ambition and ego. In the 50's when our economy was at it's strongest Friedman was looked at as a kook. It took another 30 years, until the Reagan administration for his theories to be applied here and it has been one boom and bust cycle ever since, the disparity between rich and poor has increased 10 fold, our national debt has ballooned, the wealthiest Americans incomes have skyrocketed while everyone else's have shrank.
Nothing I can say to you will make you understand the devastation and suffering he caused to the nations he used as his unwilling laboratories and the millions of people who lived, and died as his lab rats. I suggest you take a trip down there and walk through the streets with a big sign telling everyone how great you and your rightwing propaganda think Milton Friedman was for them, I doubt you would make it one block before they tore you limb from limb.
Breaking up asteroids about to hit us doesn't help much. Then we get hit by two smaller pieces and the kinetic force impacting our ecosphere is pretty much the same. The only two viable options are vaporization or diversion.
Please remember that their entire mindset is based on absolute terror at the idea that someone, somewhere might be deriving more benefit from the government than they are. It is fear of raving hordes of such benefiters that keeps them up at night.
But I'm really concerned that if private enterprise funds and creates an anti-asteroid system, how will they base their charges to the public? How do they protect me when the guy down the street refuses to pay his bill? By "canceling service" to him don't I die too?
They just break up the asteroid and make sure that pieces that were going to hit you only fall on his house.
The Dinosaurs probably pray, and how did that worked for them? Some of the Russians that were injured during the recent asteroid strike probably pray prior to getting hit, and how did that work for them? Stars are constantly changing, material in space is pushed in different direction by the natural conversion of energy. Humans need to prepare to move from this space rock at a moment's notice. If humans can not save the planet, or our own solar system, the technology needs to be develop so humans can move on. All governments should be working full throttle on research and development. The Chinese have a lot of people that can be kill. The US has all the funds and corporations that can fail and no amount of money can save anyone from a defenseless planet. The Russians have a lot of land and people to save, so does India and the rest of the world. This is a serous issue that no one can ignore. The upcoming comet ISON should give everyone a glimpse of a powerful space rock. In case of a massive space rock hitting earth, not everyone can be save, there are too many humans for space transport.
We do need to prepare, but we also need to put it in perspective too. The odds of a monster storm hitting the eastern seaboard capable and literally wiping out major cities (a 500 year storm) per 100 years, 1 in 5 (Sandy was just a paltry 25 year storm and Katrina, a tiny 50 year storm). The odds of an asteroid large enough to inflict city-scale damage hitting the planet per 100 years, 1 in 1x5e to 1.x6e. I'm not planning on worrying too much about it.
It was a mistake to offer Congress that option, because we know which the House Republicans will choose.
Big mistake, as that is their solution for nearly everything..
Hey, they used to laugh at the idea of nuclear winter until Shoemaker-Levy smacked Jupiter around a bit. They won't fund anything until it is proven that the big one is headed for Washington, DC and even then many will think it is only a ploy for scientists to get more funding like Climate Change so they can all become rich like Al Gore. At least that's how Nutcase Radio says Gore became a millionaire.
Nothing fails like prayer.
KppR, you're correct about what the House Republicans will choose. We're dead. Say a prayer and kiss your doggies good-bye.
Based on their American-style, Christian fundamentalist beliefs, their ignorance of science and their ideological reluctance to invest funding in anything for the common good, I'd wager that most of the GOP Tea Partiers that dominate the budget committees in the House of Reps believe they'll personally avoid any apocalyptic cataclysm by experiencing, "The Rapture."
Republican members of the House of Representatives that sit on the House Committee on Science:
"All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior." -- Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth," he added. "I don't believe that the Earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says." -- Again, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)
"Legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down." -- Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)
Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), who once cited possible "dinosaur flatulence" in a discussion about the Earth's fluctuating temperatures. "Who knows," he said. "Who knows, Maybe it was dinosaur farts. We don't know!"
rradiko,
WE'RE DOOMED!
They'll pick prayer every time over science.
Perhaps Texas will be spared!
After 9/11, Kentucky's security plan included prayer. I used to be a proud Kentucky native, but it has gone so wacko (i.e. Rand Paul) that I just tell people that I slipped across the border. Less embarrassing.
Anyone ever play ace combat? A crapload of anti-asteroid ideas from hybrid railguns, missiles, and lasers are mentioned.
NASA wants all this money so they can do research and see if they can intercept an earthbound asteroid. They just want to save their jobs. There are a lot more important items that need funding that aren't getting it. This proposal is just another "military" toilet where the public funds will be flushed.
Do you really think that someday one of these things won't wipe us out like the dinosaurs? Oh wait, silly me I forgot, you teabaggers don't believe in science, dinosaurs etc, the Earth is only 6000 years old or so. How could I forget?
Theresa, you're a f*cking idiot. Perhaps you prefer the "pray" option.
Give that a shot. See how it turns out.
Right ... its to save their jobs....
Did you know that we Americans spend almost TWICE as much on PIZZA each year as we do on NASA? Or that we spend THIRTY TIMES as much on gambling as we spend on space research?
How is that for "more important things"?
Teresa Russell......you said:
What's wrong with that if they are doing something valuable? Don't you want to save your job?
Perhaps if a meteor had exploded over your community with the energy of an atomic bomb and/or you understood the concept of low probability / high impact disasters, you might see this differently.
However, this should be an international effort as much as possible.
Also worth mentioning that the amount of money they are asking for is actually pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
Certainly a lot less than what it would cost to repair the damage if even one of the smaller ones hit.
Teresa, NASA's budget is only about half a penny on the dollar, not much. It was funded way more obviously during Kennedy's era. Teresa, God is not going to save us if that's what you think. Mankind has to save themselves and how are we going to do that when we can't see what's coming. These are extinction events, where there is no surviving the big ones, and no escape from the smaller ones. Even some of the smaller ones can kick up enough dust and dirt into the atmosphere to block out most of the sun's rays for quite a time.
Stephen, I agree with you entirely...but...so from now on any time you or any member of your family wants to buy a pizza or eat out out or buy prepared food...do not do it. Cut a check for the price and mail it to NASA instead. See the problem?
News flash: side effects from saving some NASA jobs - obviously a Democratic plot, but some boost to localized economy, some international relations plusses, oh, and yeah, POSSIBLY SAVING YOUR GDAMN PLANET AND IT'S OCCASIONALLY WORTHLESS, SELF-CENTERED INHABITANTS!!!
@Glen: No, what is the "problem" you refer to? What I got from his comment was that Americans have poor choices of priority when we spend more as a nation on buying "pizza" (name your own item here) or gambling than we do on supporting programs/agencies that can do something to better all humankind. We sit around and complain about taxes, yet think nothing of wasting our "precious" hard earned money on such "trivialities", especially that spent on gambling (including on WS gambles.)
Totally agree with you !
Teresa, you disgust me.
Did you know that we've gotten over seven dollars of economic return, or more, for every dollar invested in the space program over the last 50 years?
I doubt you care about facts and logic. Let's see your god post those kinds of returns!
anti trust
The problem is that although stephen and yourself say it should be done, I am certain that neither of you will take the lead and give up trival things in your own life and cut those checks and lead by example. If you are broke like the government is, they cannot cut checks. Taking it as a few percent in taxes is not an option because we end up like we do today: it goes into the general fund and gets siphoned off for other things. Private sector and those with the money have to cut the checks. It has nothing to do with what could be done or should be done. It is a question of time and resources and priorities.
If I had "my way" we would fund this program, but I do not have the billions to do it and neither does the country. No milk money, no milk. No gas money, no gas. It is up to the up and coming nations of the world to take the reigns on this one.
The government is not broke. It is not even close to being broke. The reason it is not cutting some checks is because the Republicans in Congress are deadbeats. There is a huge difference between that and being broke.
Byron, what asteroid are you on?
If you cannot pay debt and even if you TAKE all the money and assets from the wealthiest people in the country you cannot keep the government running for a year never mind even touch the DEBT...you are not close to broke...you are well beyond it unless you have a printing press handy.
I say each person in the US should be taxed $5.00 a month (the equivalent of a CHEAP pizza) that goes directly and 100% of the money to NASA for the defense system and cannot be put into the general pool for everything else like entitlements, social security, pensions or the like. I am serious about and all for this. What say you Stephen? What say you Byron.
The beautiful thing about science is that it is true even if Theresa doesn't believe it.
Science flies us to the moon; religion flies us into buildings.
The asteriod should be no threat at all. I don't recall if it was Bruce Willis or Will Smith who took care of something from space, I didn't see the movie but did see the commercial for it. Perhaps call Captain Kirk or Picard and have them take care of it.
Thanks for the laugh!
Rightwingers/Teabaggers: praying won't hurt the deficit you know. Though Tommy Teabagger keeps praying for a brain and God keeps ignoring him. Much despair in his trailer park.
GOP: we don't believe in stinking science. The earth is only 6000 years old you know.
The real scary thing is that the Jesus party would actually think that praying would help!
I think that they realize that their prayers wouldn't save them from an extinction event sized asteroid. It's more likely that they would be praying for baby Jesus to forgive them for their their sins of bigotry, hypocrisy, greed, ignorance, and intolerance of everything not religious. They would be praying to assure their place in that great Disneyland in the sky after their bodies are vaporized by the asteroid.
I'm actually more worried that some of them would decide that the asteroid is God's rightful judgement on the world and actively try to STOP any meaningful action to prevent it.
amphoix
I watched that installment of Planet Of The Apes, too. It's gawds plan.
They don't care about 'life' because they will be rewarded eternally!
Why worry when you have that to look forward to?
This is all scientist propaganda. What do they know? They haven't read the good book. They haven't spent their entire lives believing in things they cant prove. They only study the world, know math, know history, understand that there are thousands of other cultures and peoples sharing this planet. Where I'm from we call that baloney! And highly processed, big-industry baloney at that. Give me my assault rifle so I can protect me and mine from this liberal attack on my freedom!!!!
@a2ggg2 ... you nailed the attitude so perfectly that you should add a "/sarcasm" tag to your posting.
LMAO.... and you all think republicans are intollerant? You really should read your own postings.
But we're allowed to be intolerant of ignorance. That's something that CAN be changed.
So IsrJ, just because it's not what you believe it's ignorant? How very tyrannical of you.
They'll be surprised when they come face to face with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who informs them they have been misled all these years.
Praise his noodley goodness.
You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts.
What facts might those be Byron?
So our lawmakers think the chances of our planet being hit by a big rock from space is just science fiction. The lawmakers after thinking about it, put a price tag on saving our planet. The only thing that the lawmakers could think of was to ask how much warning time would we have before a big rock could hit our planet. The bottom line here is, it would just as difficult to move our planet out of the way, as it would be to move a big asteroid out of the way. So if you look at it that way, then just forget about saving our planet, and just pray more, that it wont happen.
Admitting that a big rock from space could devastate a continent... or worse... hmm. I think that means the right would have to give up on "intelligent design", or blame Jesus for asteroids.
Or, there's the old canard: "God's wrath for all the (put cause here), and we DESERVE it..."
How I wish Congress had an I.Q. test...
Just look at whom the Pubs put on the Science And Technology Committee.
We're skrude.
I'm petitioning Congress to change the name to "The Jesus Controls Science And Technology Is Fine As Long As It Doesn't Hurt Jesus' Feelings Committee."
The only problem is the acronym is a bit unwieldy. ; )
This should be a joint U.S. Europe, Japan, China, Russia program. Detecting is only step one. Step 2 is diverting/destroying, and everyone is a potential target. And we don't want to just depend on prayer.
maybe we could get congress just to stick their butts up in the air to deflect any wayward meteors, lord knows they would cover at least half the earth........and would be put to some real use.
Nasa should get as much funding for object detection as humanly possible. Those of you too stupid, ignorant or foolish enough not to see the catastrophic results of doing nothing, looking at you "Teresa Russell", should take a good long hard look at recent impacts. Not just the one's that slipped by us or even entered the atmosphere, but to the other planets in our system. Try Jupiter Impact. You'll get the picture.
Shoemaker-Levy 9 punched several holes in the Jovian atmosphere. Some were larger than the diameter of the Earth.
Actually, no, Jay. The largest fragments were approximately 2 Km in size. Still, something you don't want hitting the planet. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Jupiter not ripped it apart before hand.
Eric, Shoemaker-Levy 9's fragments were much smaller than the Earth, however, upon impact with Jupiter, some of the holes in its atmosphere (due to bow shock and/or explosions) were larger than the diameter of the Earth. Look under "Impacts" in the link, below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9
Right, I understand the impact points were larger that the Earth, but the way you worded your post made it sound as if you were referring to the comet fragments, not the impacts.
So Congress is spending time considering legislation about space asteroids hitting us, while real threats such as gun violence are still happening with stunning frequency (2,793 deaths or more since Newtown.)
Why doesn't Congress stop fooling around and take a hard look at that reality?
It was announced today that the proposal to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines will not be included in upcoming votes on gun legislation. I guess the massacre of 20 schoolchildren isn't enough to bring us to our senses.
I am disgusted by the cowardice and foolishness of our nation's lawmakers.
betty, both are real threats.
fisher42,
Couldn't agree with you more if I wanted to and here is another issue/problem we could/would face.
If we had say all the world super powers and even the smaller countries involved in detection and the ultimate destruction of an asteroid who would make the decision on how it is dealt with?
That would be a huge issue in itself as if the asteroid was say split into 2 large pieces and those pieces were to still hit the planet but maybe cause colossal damage in say China would China agree on the plan or just possibly go ahead with a plan of there own where they say fire there own missiles at the asteroid and again possibly make matters even worse for other countries and this list of probable scenario goes on and on..
It should be a plan where as we try to make it so that the damage is limited or spread across an area so that we do not have that one colossal event like that took out the dinosaurs if we cannot prevent it from hitting earth better to make it smaller, IMHO of course.
I hope people get what I am trying to say here, not like its going to make a huge bit of difference at this point anyways!
In the grand scheme of things though this really should be a priority issue as after what Russia went through just recently imagine that asteroid hitting the US say in New York or any city period, we only have this plant and no other options whatsoever for mankind so its either put up or shut up now.
Next problem would be getting all world powers to agree with each other on just that fact alone.
"Lawmakers can either provide adequate funding for detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, and diverting them if necessary — or they can pray... representatives from both parties were receptive to the idea of putting more resources into the effort to counter cosmic threats."
Welcome to the government's latest crisis for confiscating and spending more taxpayers' money!
"...only about 10 percent of the 13,000 to 20,000 asteroids bigger than 140 meters have been detected."
Really! How do you know that there are 13,000 to 20,000 asteroids if you've not even detected them yet? Talk about pulling numbers out of your ASSumptions!!
"Lawmakers repeatedly asked how much advance warning would be required to deflect a threatening asteroid, and were repeatedly told that it would take years... The telescope could look for asteroids that currently can't be spotted from the ground because they spend much of their time within Earth's orbit, where they're lost in the sun's glare."
Ha Ha Ha! This is hilarious! They want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to detect an asteroid which is already within the earth's orbit around the sun, but they need a lead time of years in order to be able to respond to the threat. Anything within the earth's orbit will be here momentarily!
The arrogance and foolishness of many in the scientific community and just about all in the government continues to amaze and astound me. In my lifetime we have become a nation of fools led by fools.
The unwilling, led by the unqualified, to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful.
GTO66,
Ignorance is bliss, believe what you want to believe. Conspiracy Theory. You do know that the asteroid that hit over Russia followed in our orbit for years right? You did read the other articles on this right? You do follow space activity right? It is obvious that you don't, or else you would be more informed.
Based on the current and past rates of detection of asteroids in a given size range, it's actually not that difficult to estimate statistically how many more likely remain undetected.
Let the North Koreans nuke the incoming asteroids. That'll keep them occupied, if they can find one.
I know that I'm in a distinct minority, but I believe that we really need something to cull the herd here on this planet, and a big rock falling out of the sky would be just the ticket.
I agree, but wouldn't it be nice if we could selectively cull the herd. First to go should be the religious nuts, followed by the usual bottom feeders (lawyers, politicians, petty dictators, chronic bigots, etc). Now, that would be Intelligent Design. Ground zero should be Mississippi.
Sadly, I agree. Too many of us, too many problems to be solved, except it should be entirely random. Sorry, Mcbarker, but your kind of talk is best reserved for Nazi rallies.
Scientists/Ecologists say we have too many humans on Mother Earth......that said, I'll put $$ on man-made nuclear war (occuring) before we have to worry about scary space rocks.
Edd, there have been studies to show that we could easily support trillions more people if we would just use our resources responsibly. We don't now, because we only care about money.
Trillions? Ah, no, don't think so. Wanna quote a source?
My money is on a manmade mistake also, pandemic, nuclear, or just the slow death we
have going now on the planet.
trillions? With less than 10 billion we are already experiencing exponential population growth, the rate of which is only increased by additional members of the population. With a trillion people, you would either have massive numbers of deaths every year (how would society look then) or an increase by another trillion every year or so. You don't need a study to know that would destroy this planet.
Short of colonizing mars or the moon, growth is finite.
I say roll the dice. If an asteroid hits, an asteroid hits. Humans are just too arrogant to catch on that nature rules this roost. We're visiting. And everyone of us will die someday. Time for humanity to grow up.
I'm just happy to see prayer take it's proper place at our 'Christian' capitol. We all know wishing, hoping and prayer are useless but it needs to be said sometimes.
I'm praying . . . really would prefer not to have to go to work tomorrow . . .
congress doesn't care about people it only cares about companies so if they put this in terms of how many small businesses a asteroid will destroy or how many nationawide locations walmart would have to shut down rather than how many millions of lives could be lost then this would have a chance of going through. as it is though it has about as good of a chance of being passed into law as my 1997 appeal for traffic cones that have pictures of children's faces on them so that people would take more care not to run them over when driving through construction zones on highways.
Sounds good. Put it in terms of how much they'll lose in kickbacks, and you'll see some action.
The only probes or scopes the current congress is willing to pay for are the ones that go inside women!
If asteroids had vaginas we'd be all set. Congress would no doubt appropriate funds.
Actually, Charlie, that might not be too bad of an idea, sell it as a big Pro-Choice campaign. I meant think about how many hundreds of millions of simultaneous abortions that would occur in the event of an extinction level impact. Might work.
Nah...they're OK with the "right hand of god" performing hundreds of millions of simultaneous abortions...the big space rock is god's punishment for gays, pagans, communists, liberals, progressives, socialists, brown people, black people, yellow people, red people, the "wrong" white people, women, Muslims, Jews, Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, the "wrong" Christians...
charlie7274
If asteroids had vaginas I'd care.
Doc You Are An Idiot!!!!!!!!!!
Hmmmm...... give Congress the opportunity to spend ENDLESS amounts of cash on something that in EVERY CASE that actually hit the earth...... no one knew was coming......
Either way it goes I'll be praying.
The lunatic right does not believe in science so we know which they will choose.
I honestly think congress should slowly build funds for this and private companies should also invest in this. It would be wise to have tracking systems and possible ways to prevent something like this from happening in the future.
This is another case where Congress passed a mandate for a federal agency to do something by a certain date, then failed to provide the proper funding to fulfill that mandate. That basically is what this story was pointing out.