Slashdot Mirror
Request for Cosmic Collision Insurance
HobbySpacer writes "According to this article a group of distinguished citizens has sent an open letter to Congress, the President, and other world leaders to request that they begin a serious program to protect the planet from the possible impact of a comet or asteroid. The petitioners include Freeman Dyson, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Neil Tyson (Director of the Hayden Planetarium) and others. They say that for "the first time in human history, we have the potential to protect ourselves from a catastrophe of truly cosmic proportions." A three phase program is urged that includes detection, exploration, and contingency planning. See the full letter at www.CongressNEOaction.org"
Imagine the premiums!
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Just look at the addle-brained mung-heads killing themselves in the middle east - for what?
Or the buttwipe driving his SUV down the highway at 100 MPH, flapping his gums on a cell phone?
There are many, many more examples of the uselessness of the human race in general.
Pffht.
For a one-time premium of only US$1,000, I will grant a US$1.5Million policy to anyone who wants one -- NOBODY TURNED DOWN!!
The policy will pay out, in full, to anyone whose species becomes extinct as a result of catastrophic collision with any celestial body.
Some of my competitors will only cover comets, excluding asteroids. Others may cover alien invasions, but exclude comets. I cover any celestial catastrophic event that causes the extinction of your species, and I pay cash!
--
I think they are implying that the US plan of having a group of oil rig drillers ready to go, won't save us ...
Unique signatures are rare.
Humans seem to be unable to comprehend the need for action in this kind of low probability/extremely devasting situation. Nobody living has seen anything like this kind of catastrophe, so the public won't relate to it even if they hear about it. Our leaders don't grasp that a very low probability just means that given a long enough timeframe, the event will still likely occur.
We need insurance from him first and foremost. Everything else can wait!
And without delay we should start thinking about insurance against the sun blowing up. .. ah wait, who the beneficiaries would be.
From the Do-They-Know-Something-We-Don't Dept.
about 20 years ago i read a blurb in the newspaper where this man slipped on his front poarch and fell into his rosebush and somehow a branch went into his throat and he choaked to death. a very unusual occurence to say the least. but i think this is more likely(no i did not crunch the numbers) than someone or vast numbers being killed by outerspace junk crashing to earth and causing wide spread destruction. i think we should spend our resourses on things like aides in africa. dealing with lost nuclear weapons or stupid politicians going to war and invading sovereign nations wasting billions of dollars and causing vast destruction for some asinine reason that no one understands. it seems to me when 5000 kids die everyday from diarrhea for lack of clean water and a couple of dollars worth of antibiotics then should we really spend a lot of resources on a possible cataclysm from space? let us face it--a million years from now the human race will be extinct--whether any life in existence then is our ancestors or not doesn't concern me very much. let us pass this ecosphere onto our children in better shape than we inherited it from our partents and let chicken little worry about the sky falling!
flowerbear adrift on a sea of confusion since 1958 flowerbear@phreaker.net FORTRAN programers don't eat quiche!!
If you want to make the humanity safe, the best way is the colonisation of another planet. This way, the destruction of one planet will not destroy humanity. In the long run, this is the only way. Sooner or later, an asteroid gonna fail on our heads. Colonisation protects humanity against most major threat.
Of course, colonisation will not protect individual who will always face the same probability of asteroid, nuclear weapons, ect no matter how many planets we can colonise.
Well, maybe i'm a cynic, but...
Why can I see a project like this getting huge funding and support from the government (we're protecting the country, no, the PLANET from weapons of mass destruction!), while NASA has to fight to justify itself? Why will weapons research and detection get more funding, attention and support than space exploration?
ID-10-T is a way of life
Really, am I the only one to think that even if our whole solar system would be devastated by a gigantic cosmic body (however unlikely that is) it would hardly qualify for cosmic proportions?
Maybe if a galaxy cluster was destroyed it'd be of cosmic proportions, but a tiny planet?
Nope, heh, talk about inflated self-importance. :-)
Gosh, and here I thought I'd finally be able to get by that Act of God clause in the darned contract.
I guess I'll start buying up cartons of cigarettes. That ought to be more valuable than cash in any extinction level event.
Before asteroid deflection reaqlly becomes in the public eye we need a nice small asteroid to take out a city. 10,000,000 people wiped off the Earth is nothing in the long run, but it would wake up the world's governments.
Assuming they dont think it's the first strike of a nuclear war.
Would a city-buster hit in a field be enough? Tungasta wasn't was it?
Chances are the next asteroid to hit Earth will land in the Ocean, probably the Pacific. Would a city-buster cause enough of a tidal wave to knock a few coastal cities off? Anyoen got any predictions of devestation? Perhaps a computer model where you specify impact speed, mass and location and you get a rough idea of numbers killed and where?
>> hy will weapons research and detection get more funding, attention and support than space exploration?
Because you can't do research if you're dead.
NASA isn't synonomous with space exploration. If we're going to get off the planet in a serious fashion, we need better propulsion, bigger vehicles, better life support, and better managers than NASA has ever provided. NASA has not enhanced our capability to travel in space since the launch of the first Shuttle. If fear of asteroid hits sparks a lot of money to DoD to fund engineering and space operations, I'm all for it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
of living in the middle of nowhere.
Oklahoma, a great place to avoid tidal waves. Just ignore the rednecks and tornados (which hit every year).
Midwestern living, it cannot be beat.
My favourite FAQ from the UK site is:
Are we going to die?
Yes. We are all going to die some time. It is, however, very unlikely that the collision of a Near Earth Object will be responsible.
Forget Congress. They're asking for an increase of less than 17 million/year! Come on, how many Slashdot readers are there ... we could almost pull off that much money ourselves.
You'd think out of the 7 billion on the planet, at least 17 million of us (less than half a percent) would care enough to pitch in a dollar a year. I'm in for my buck.
Er, then again, maybe we should have a contingency plan.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
10. Spend days and days destroying planets in the arcade game "Mad Planets". Surely this skill will be useful somehow when the time comes.
9. The "Space 1999" lesson: blow up a nuclear waste dump, and we escape orbit. Wacky hijinks with Barbara Bain will ensue.
8. Make a deal with the dolphins ("So long, and thanks for all the fish")
7. Bet your life savings that worlds will collide. A sure way to make sure it never happens
6. Increase funding to "Star Wars"/ SDI by thousands and thousands of percent. Sure, it will then cost $34,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 by then, but won't it be worth it?
5. Rent the Death Star, park it in near-earth orbit, with laser point aimed outwards, with "Go ahead, make my day" painted on the side.
4. Board the "B Ark" with the telephone sanitizers, SCO attorneys, actuary adjustment agents, and the rest of the useless people.
3. Hide under an umbrella and close your eyes.
2. Send Bruce Willis into space.
1. Join the Flat Earth society. Sail off the edge of the earth and avoid any collision problems.
I know that I always research better insterstellar drives long before I worry about planetary shields. Expansion is the key to galactic conquest, even complete n00bs figure this out pretty quick. Of course we are talking about Congress here, so I guess they might take a bit longer.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"Or the buttwipe driving his SUV down the highway at 100 MPH"
If you don't like SUV's, don't drive one. Problem solved.
...have flashes of Armageddon or any of those other asteroid/meteor type movies pop into your head?
Frankly, I doubt, with all the global instability about war and terrorism, the US can make any kind of strategic defense against such a threat without the other nations of the world thinking "They're making Weapons of Mass Destruction!!!" And what nation would believe the US is building weapons as a defense against potential celestial bodies that are approaching and not just arming itself for invasion... Britain maybe.
True, we need some kind of defense, but one wrong move and WW3 here we come. Forget about some asteroid or comet striking the earth, we'd all be dead by then if things don't cool off.
.unsigged
"And what nation would believe the US is building weapons as a defense against potential celestial bodies that are approaching and not just arming itself for invasion.
The only countries that would have to worry about such an invasion would be the Hitlerian dictatorships. Let 'em worry. That is not a bad thing.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
for "the first time in human history, we have the potential to protect ourselves from a catastrophe of truly cosmic proportions." A three phase program is urged that includes detection, exploration, and contingency planning.
This plan sounds suspiciously like an excuse to put lasers in space.... I can see it now,
"My fellow citizens, in the name of securing ourselves from evil celestial bodies hurtling towards the earth and thousands of miles per hour, we are beginning an expansive program to protect each and every citizen on this great planet. These lasers will be used for peaceful purposes... we wouldn't even think of aiming them at certain nations that have restarted nuclear programs or anything like that... noooooo."
if we all just walk up on our tiptoes and flail our arms around while swining our right legs out in big sweeping arcs, then we turn invisible.
seriously, try this out at the mall and suddenly it is like you aren't even there, people won't notice or look at you at all. and if you are there with anyone, they too will suddenly not see you anymore.
nothing can collide with you if it can't see you.
seriously - perfect logic.
fear me.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
If we can't get our act together to get 17000 kilobucks together, then maybe we're really not worth preserving. It's something to think about.
..don't panic
However, people are unaware of the effects that even a much smaller object could have on our economy, depending on where it hits.
Ever played any of the civilization games, or for that matter any 4x game will a decent tech system? Lets take for example aplha centauri, beause it is such a clearcut example. All the techs are in one of 4 types or a combination there of. Explore, Discover, Build, Destroy(I can't remember what the last one was actually called, but it's the military one.) People like me stress the Discover ones, just as I go for writing as quickly as possible in Civilization games and generally always try for the most science related techs. On the other hand, one of my friends who used to play the game more than any living person should would always select technologies based on thier ability to help him wage war. We had very different styles. I would build a peacefull, technologically advanced nation with a stanglehold on technologies so that the other nations must do my bidding or be killed by the ones who pleased me and got advanced technology. He on the other hand starts attacking his enemies from the beginning of the game, keeping them weak, and organized thier conquest at the first opportunity. Now, what you have to ask ourselves is, what kind of techs is our nation choosing?
Nothing Dead Here.
You're more likely to get killed by an asteroid than hit by Lightning... That's because each year, N dozen people get hit by lightning that gives a probability in the range of 1/100million. An extinction-level meteor strike happens about every 60 million years -- thus a probability of 1/60million because it would be expected to kill everybody if it hit.
A metor impact program would be a good excuse for near-earth observations and might also allow us to prevent non-extinction large impacts but it's not that likely to make a big difference in my life either for god or bad.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Seriously. With todays technology, I don't see how hard it would be to attach a retro-rocket to an astroid. From there, you do your math calculations and fire that puppy off to full burn. If your calculations are correct, you can take out a city of your choice and no one would be the wiser. Of course, this would be a good way to melt the ice on mars too. Just lug a few rocks to that planet while your at it.
Life is not for the lazy.