I keep seeing news reports of calls from scientists to develop some system/method for detecting potential asteroid strikes and somehow deflecting them. I’m trying to figure out whether this is a real danger, or whether it’s something that people with a vested interest are promoting in order to advance their own agendas.
I saw a quote once to the effect that the likelihood of of major impact was X, and the number of people likely to die was Y, giving a probability of death by asteroid strike for the average human that was greater than the probability of death in an air crash.
For evidence, they point to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Is a once in 65 million years event sufficient cause for concern? I would have thought that the number of rocks passing through our orbit would have decreased due to past collisions to the point that this is not a major concern.
The resulting fire was as big as New York, but how big was the actual impact zone? Would a similar asteroid wipe out New York? And would it even hit New York? If 2/3 of the Earth’s surface is water then surely it’s more likely to fall into the sea? And if it hits the land, what percentage of the land area of the planet is densely populated? And what percentage of the Earth does New York actually represent? The chances of New York being hit by an asteroid seem to be so remote as to be not worth bothering about, yet here we have a bunch of people who take government money to do space research talking up the danger. Is this a bid for more money?
On the other hand, how many really big rocks are lurking out there looking for a chance to sneak up on us from an unexpected direction and do so much environmental damage that everyone in the world will be affected?
I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing.
Me & Bubba have already volunteered to go up in the shuttle and blast the Holy Living Jeez out of the sumbitch when it gets close.
All we’re asking in return is that the Orange County Sheriff’s pad gets wiped clean of both our names, Bubba gets free oil changes for life, and I get a shot at banging Steve Tyler’s daughter.
One is enough.
And a splash down may be worse than a hard landing: think Asian Tsunami on a still larger scale.
Self-serving? On a secondary level, yes. (People with an interest in the area see the danger, give warning, and benefit from action, rather than ‘giving warning to benefit from action’.)
[quote=“the chief”]I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing.
Me & Bubba have already volunteered to go up in the shuttle and blast the Holy Living Jeez out of the sumbitch when it gets close.
All we’re asking in return is that the Orange County Sheriff’s pad gets wiped clean of both our names, Bubba gets free oil changes for life, and I get a shot at banging Steve Tyler’s daughter. [/quote]
Dude I think the mission is off. My daddy just told me they got this cream that will clear this shit up. And if it is really bad they have an operation that will take care of them, and for some reason you have to sit on a rubber donut for 2 months and something about laxatives or some such.
Do we get to keep all that cool equipment the government gave us?
[quote=“the chief”]I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing.
Me & Bubba have already volunteered to go up in the shuttle and blast the Holy Living Jeez out of the sumbitch when it gets close.
All we’re asking in return is that the Orange County Sheriff’s pad gets wiped clean of both our names, Bubba gets free oil changes for life, and I get a shot at banging Steve Tyler’s daughter. [/quote]
And why would you volunteer? Because the money’s good, the scenery changes and you could use explosives!!
[quote=“Namahottie”][quote=“the chief”]I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing.
Me & Bubba have already volunteered to go up in the shuttle and blast the Holy Living Jeez out of the sumbitch when it gets close.
All we’re asking in return is that the Orange County Sheriff’s pad gets wiped clean of both our names, Bubba gets free oil changes for life, and I get a shot at banging Steve Tyler’s daughter. [/quote]
And why would you volunteer? Because the money’s good, the scenery changes and you could use explosives!! [/quote]
No nukes! No nukes!
I just wanted to feel the power between my legs.
Everyone knows Jesus is coming back in ten years anyway, which is why this, like all that global warming nonsense, is just an attempt by all these godless communists to get us to stray from the righteous path of fucking shit up and giving money to guys who touch our kids up. The only thing these “scientists” have to worry about is not having accepted Jesus Christ as their personal saviour.
[quote=“the chief”]I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing.
Me & Bubba have already volunteered to go up in the shuttle and blast the Holy Living Jeez out of the sumbitch when it gets close.
All we’re asking in return is that the Orange County Sheriff’s pad gets wiped clean of both our names, Bubba gets free oil changes for life, and I get a shot at banging Steve Tyler’s daughter.
[/quote]
Thank you for volunteering.
Here’s the deal:
You get one free oil change if you wipe the Orange County Sheriff’s pad clean.
And you’ll get shot if you try to bang Steve Tyler OR his daughter.
[quote=“Chris”]Real threat: Earth-crossing asteroids are out there. But very unlikely. But if it happens, it could destroy human life.
It’s what risk managers call a low-frequency, high-severity risk.[/quote]Indeed, you have more chance of being killed than an asteroid than by lightning.
In the unlikely event that one even looks at us funny, we’ll want to do something about it.
Don’t forget that the earth has at least 8 moons. One one of which is in a stable orbit.
You’re far more likely to be run over by a bus (or a blue truck) but if one does hit, or rather when one hits, it’s normally a pretty big event. Life-changing, one might say.
[quote=“the chief”][quote=“Namahottie”][quote=“the chief”]I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing.
Me & Bubba have already volunteered to go up in the shuttle and blast the Holy Living Jeez out of the sumbitch when it gets close.
All we’re asking in return is that the Orange County Sheriff’s pad gets wiped clean of both our names, Bubba gets free oil changes for life, and I get a shot at banging Steve Tyler’s daughter. [/quote]
And why would you volunteer? Because the money’s good, the scenery changes and you could use explosives!! [/quote]
No nukes! No nukes!
I just wanted to feel the power between my legs. [/quote]
Well if you get to bang the elf queen how about letting me at a chance at that blond chick in the above photo with the broken nose.
I think that the risk of a deadly asteroid collision with Earth in our lifetime is extremely difficult to calculate, as many past collisions have been erased through natural weather processes, or are buried deep in the ocean, thus giving us an unreliable data set. But if you extend the timeframe far enough, the chances become frighteningly high of a truly nasty event happening, based on what we do know. Thus, hype or not, it’s probably worth it to invest in asteroid detection / deflection / destruction technologies. Even if never used, these would create jobs, spin-offs, and also be really cool stuff for geeks to talk about, helping them get girlfriends.
