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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.
DUCK!
Money for nothing, pix for free
Taco Bell has announced that if an asteroid strikes a platform floating off the coast of South Africa, free chalupas to any living survivors.
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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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.