NASA Making Plans To Save the Earth

aluminumangel writes, "Taking a page out of a Michael Bay movie, NASA is considering a manned mission to land on an asteroid, 'poke one with a stick,' and see how feasible it would be to deflect it from its course. Obviously, the application would be valuable in a doomsday situation and hopefully could keep us from going wherever the dinosaurs went." The article makes oblique reference to another goal such a mission could serve: giving us something to do in space, something to engage the paying public, between the time we return to the Moon and the time we get to Mars.

Comments

Chicken Little NASA

[edbarbar]

Let's see. There was an air blast in Siberia that people hypothesize was a meteorite. There was a large meteor strike 35Million years ago, and one about 65 million years ago. Better spend $Billions$ to fight this threat. Who cares if there is an actual threat, better look to Bruce Willis movies to figure out how to get public support for the expensive beaurocratic solutions, and develop a solution now that is 100 times more expensive than it would be 100 years from now (i.e., let's find a reason for existance).

The only threat here seems to be that NASA is an agency in trouble. Forbidding launches of private spacecraft in the US to protect the shuttle merely helped other countries to develop their own space programs. We are all tired of expensive failure after failure of overly complex missions, and see the many near misses of massive failures such as Hubble with its inverted lens, and Galileo when the antenna wouldn't open. [Being honest people we love the two Mars rovers, and applaud the out of the box thinking in their lander].

NASA, figure out a mission, or get out of the way.

Re:Save the earth?

[ScentCone]

A couple of cleansing asteroids actually would not hurt getting rid of those little pests walking upright and haven't learned yet how to use their enlarged brains

Well, then, what have you done today to lower the population? Oops! Silly me. You can't read this, because you've killed yourself. I hope you at least did it while taking out some of the religious zealots that want to turn Iraq into the next Taliban stomping ground. Because that would actually help. But if you just plain killed yourself, that would be constructive, also. I mean, based your theory, anyway. Oh wait: you just want other people to die. Silly me!