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Huge Meteor Blazes Across Sky Over Russia; Hundreds Injured
New submitter dovf writes "The Bad Astronomer analyzes incoming reports about the apparent meteoric fireball over Russia: 'Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows. I'm seeing some reports of many people injured (by shattered glass blown out by the shock wave). I'm also seeing reports that some pieces have fallen to the ground, but again as I write this those are unconfirmed." This is the best summary I've found so far, and links to lots of videos and images. He also clarifies something I've been wondering about: 'This is almost certainly unrelated to the asteroid 2012 DA14 that will pass on Friday.'"
If a missile did try to intercept, that makes me a WHOLE BUNCH more confident. I mean if a missile system can't tell the difference between a meteor and an actual missile we are essentially SOL. Forget about itchy fingers, watch out on Mother Nature.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
And even if we multiplied out current space program's budget by ten times... it still wouldn't be enough. A thousand times? That might be enough for a half ass program with a slim-to-none chance of survival.
We could roll twenty Falcon 9's and fifteen Dragon's off the assembly lines and launch them every hour if we really wanted to. It's just a matter of writing a big enough check - but it wouldn't be enough. The space program isn't the problem. The problem is that building an off-Earth colony that can survive the loss of the Earth indefinitely is a Very Very Hard Problem - a problem whose shape and scope we have only the faintest ideas of the outline of and filled with known unknowns and even more unknown unknowns. And pretty much none of those are in any way related to the current space program.
Grow up and stop using cosmic impacts to fuel your fanboi masturbatory fantasies.