B612 Foundation Loses Partnership With NASA; Asteroids Not a Significant Risk

StartsWithABang writes: Yes, asteroids might be humanity's undoing in the worst-case scenario. It's how the dinosaurs went down, and it could happen to us, too. The B612 foundation has been working to protect us by mapping and then learning to deflect potential threats to our planet, but their proposed mission needed $450 million, a goal they've fallen well short of. As a result, NASA has severed their partnership, which is a good thing for humanity: the risk assessment figures show that worrying about killer asteroids is largely a waste.

Comments

The odds are very low...

[FlyHelicopters]

In a human's lifetime, the odds are unbelievably low, as in, almost nonexistent.

In the next 500 years? 1,000 years? A bit more, but still low.

However, while very low, if it were to happen, it makes everything else pointless and redundant. If we're wiped out, then our saving $450 million doesn't really matter much, now does it?

Stupid article.

[Anonymous Coward]

450 million is chump change for the knowledge that we need to eliminate a 1 in 100,000 risk for the entire planet. One single subway line for one US city costs upwards of a billion dollars.

The project was cancelled because NASA is underfunded, not because it's not worthy of funding.

The Last Darwin Award Will go to The Human Race

[AbsoluteXyro]

Myopia will be our species' downfall. The sad thing is, we will have known better. The universe has given us plenty warning, many truths stare us down, but short term profit and willful ignorance will blind us to the bitter end. I wonder how many intelligent (by human standards) species across the universe have been wiped out similarly?

Not like we can stop an asteroid anyway

[RubberDogBone]

So one program to find giant space rocks has ended. There are others.

But in any case, we don't have the ability at the moment to DO anything about it even if we found a rock heading for us. We'd probably need several decades to get our act together, and we have a terrible track record about responding to things like aging sewers where we can pay somebody minimum wage to fix it, versus tens of years of heavy spending (way beyond 450 mill) to come up with a way to stop the asteroid. I don't think humanity is capable of working together in the way it would need to happen.