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Asteroid Whizzing By Earth 6 Times Closer Than the Moon (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a CNET report: The problem with asteroids passing near Earth is that they're often difficult to spot. Fortunately the hardest ones to see in our neighborhood also tend to be the smaller ones. Such is the case with 2017 BH30, which was discovered Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey just hours before passing by us at the creepy-close distance of only 40,563 miles (65,280 kilometres). This asteroid is estimated to be between 15-32.8 feet (4.6-10 metres) in length, making it somewhere between the size of a truck and a... big truck. That's pretty small by asteroid standards, but it's also the closest spotted asteroid to pass us since September when asteroid 2016 RB1 passed within 24,000 miles (about 39,000 kilometres) of our planet's surface, putting it almost as close as satellites in geosynchronous orbit. This is the third asteroid to buzz by earth closer than the distance to the moon this year. We don't expect a closer pass by one of these visitors until October, when asteroid 2012 TC4 could come more than twice as close.
What kind of english is that?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"even when there is no apparent value in going as deep as they are" = You think possibly preventing a cataclysmic asteroid impact in the next 50 years has no apparent value?
What is the value of your tautologist's thesis if nothing alive is around to lambaste it? Science is a process, breakthroughs are a result. Policy breaks and is reformed in the wake of it. Governments fall away like old paradigms. Priorities change, societies evolve or go extinct.
Preventing a civilization-ending impact in the remote chance that we can, with a TINY budget mind you, compared to just about anything else we fund daily?
You want to say THAT is the great waste. Gee. Spend trillions subsidizing fossil fuel dependencies and let the invisible market-hand absorb the asteroid?
Your only tacit point is that politicians/leaders in our era are no longer the wise sages or philosopher kings. Neither are you the educated Roman gentry.
Science is indeed wasted on you. I'd go one further and say preventing your thought-tree's annihilation via space objects seems a waste now also.
Unfortunately we share the same vulnerable space rock. Were your pure Libertarianism possible, I wouldn't have to worry about YOUR annihilation at all!
You forgot: 15. Create huge panic and looting.
Panics rarely happen, and happen much less with longer term warnings. During a crisis, people tend to cooperate and bond together. This is one area where real life diverges from the movies.
Looting tends to happen in the aftermath of a disaster, so greater warning will be unlikely to make it worse, and will more likely to improve the situation by giving more time to mobilize police and military resources. A warning will also give shop owners more time to get to their shops and exercise their 2nd amendment rights.