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Another Asteroid Close Call
james was one of a number of people that submitted the news that
the earth has had another near miss, this time with an asteroid. This particular one is thought to be about 300 meters in length, meaning that if it had struck the earth, it would have destroyed an area of say...South Africa. Not to mention the fall out. But
we don't need
a
better system
for watching the stars. Nope. Obviously not.
...watch for the bloody asteroids/comets.
The stars shouldn't be coming to visit, unless you live in Hollywood, and for most of us, not even then.
I was talking, not thinking. -D. Franz
DUCK!
Money for nothing, pix for free
We lost our chance to launch Bruce Willis and a plucky band of blue-collar heroes on twin space shuttles, set to the rock stylings of Aerosmith? Really, the only thing I'm concerned about is that we missed a chance to shoot him into space. And that other guy with the really bad teeth. I s'pose you can't have it all.
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Make up your mind!
Taco Bell has announced that if an asteroid strikes a platform floating off the coast of South Africa, free chalupas to any living survivors.
Love it - this article was posted a couple after an article titled "The End Not As Near As We Thought"
So which is it?
But where do we want it too hit? Redmond is too obvious. Washington DC is out, cause I live near there. Hartsfield Airport maybe? Never changing planes in Atlanta again has its attractions... New Holland, Michigan?
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The president, laughing vacantly, stated "I have seen this marvelacular system in action. I have even used the system myself to protect earth from these Goddless asteroids. The frugality of this system is amazing. Ordinary American people like you and me will be able to blow up these menaces for only a quarter. Just spin the doohickey until your ship faces an asteroid and push the fire button, it's that simple. I'm asking congress for 500 billion to deploy these machines in malls and bars across America imm... immadee umm... right now. The brilliant scientists who developed this system have named it Asteroids."
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Nah, we've already spent a fortune on *almost* useful projects.
Next, we'll spend billions of dollars implanting GPS locators into any comet/asteroid that could possibly come near the earth. For extra credit, we'll even give the asteroids a fighting chance by installing a decoy balloon to try and trick us.
Then, we'll just use our trusty missle defense system. No problems...
I'd script it this way:
Bruce Willis: "On average? What does that mean?"
Jeff Goldblum: "It means we're about due for three of these."
Bruce Willis: "Oh."
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Now, see that raises an interesting point.
Anarchy scares the controlling players of any political power structure, so who's to say that those in charge would share sky-watch information with the populace if they had it?
NASA, back during the Reagan years, had this really low profile military mirror version of itself; A whole second program complete with it's own shuttles which made space runs to plant military satellites in orbit. There's a lot of very expensive & very powerful junk up there which uses classified technologies far in advance of what John Q. Private Sector is allowed to sell in his hard drives. I'd be pretty surprised if there wasn't already enough hardware up there to do decent asteroid surveillance. --In fact, while it might seem like a long shot, I don't think it's that long a shot. . . I'd be willing to gamble that the American government knows a whole lot more about what's going on in Earth's vicinity than they talk about.
Of course, the way things seem to be run on this planet, I'd also be willing to gamble that even with the right hardware and regular reports, wishful thinking is far more pleasing to the mind, and far more distracting. Probably something along the lines of; "Yech! I don't want to worry about this asteroid stuff. I'm sure I'll be okay. I just need to make a pile of luxury resources for my wife and kids before the planet becomes a toxic waste land. This asteroid stuff only happens to poor people. Or at least, I'm sure it's possible to arrange it so it works out that way. .
-Fantastic Lad
Reminds me of George Carlin:
Near miss? It's not a near miss - it's a near HIT!
If it had hit the earth, it would have nearly missed...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
How do you calculate the damage?
You take a 1d10 roll per metric ton of impactor, and the resultant number is the number of square meters, in thousands, of surface land that is flattened/destroyed. If the impactor is above 1000 metric tons, you need a additional rolls to determine volume of matter thrown into the atmosphere, length of time before the matter settles back out, how far the matter spreads, and how much the Earth's albedo might change - but it starts getting complicated...
Get off my launchpad!
Redirect it to another planet - like Mars. I saw "Mars Attacks" - we better pre-empt. If they figure out how to muffle Slim Whitman, we're toast!
Besides, it would be cool to watch.