Planetary Defense: Protecting Earth from Asteroids

securitas writes "Space.com has published a feature about developing a planetary defense against catastrophic comet and asteroid impacts. The story arises from the aptly named 'Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids' held in California February 23-26. The article discusses potential methods to prevent an impact, the need for study missions to comets and asteroids, the to-date haphazard approach to monitoring Near Earth Objects (NEOs), and the NASA/US Air Force Spaceguard Survey, which aims to discover and track 90% of 'Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) with a diameter greater than 0.6 miles (1-kilometer) by 2008.' Some ideas for anti-impact technologies to develop include gas blasts, nuclear detonations, ramming microsatellites, lasers, mass drivers and gravitational tractor beams. The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger. Mirror at USA Today."

Comments

Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war

[kamapuaa]

why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war?

Alternatively, why should we realistically expect an asteroid to hit the Earth and destroy 90% of the population? How many millions upon millions or years will it take before this happens? And yet, Slashdot can't go a month without posting another "asteroids are about to hit us all." Is there anything more obscure that slashdot can be afraid about?

There's real things out there that people should be concerned about, and a 1/50,000,000 chance of a catastophic asteroid collision isn't one of them.

Re:Low priority?

[Gherald]

Ok, fine, fine, perhaps it is just what the doctor ordered. But ONLY if it touches down dead center between China, India, and most of the Middle East ;)

But are we worth saving in the first place?

[Quizo69]

Lots of arguments here for how to avoid a planetary extinction of the human race.

I'd venture a different line of thinking - are we worth saving as a species in the first place?

Think about it for a minute. The reason we want to save ourselves is a selfish one, not a necessary one. What do we contribute to the wider galaxy or universe? If we were made extinct, who would care? If you accept the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, then what makes us so special that another planetary species would consider us worth saving? After all, we continually kill one another, we look out for ourselves at the expense of others, we do whatever it takes to get one over the other guy.... we're not a really shining example of a species that deserves to survive, if you ask me.

Yes, I know that there are lots of good, well meaning people (I like to think I'm one of them). But on a planetary scale, if you were an alien civilisation, would you stop by and save us, or would you take one look at our barbarity and say "good riddance"?