I knew a guy who'd get asteroids so bad he could barely sit down.
In 2005, Congress gave NASA the job of spotting 90 percent of the asteroids and comets that might threaten life across the earth. These are, by definition, considered to be objects 1km or larger and NASA is getting close to fulfilling that responsibility. More recently, Congress also directed NASA to track any objects 140 meters or larger. However, the administration has not requested, nor has Congress provided the funds to fulfill this requirement. As such, NASA is not on track to satisfying that part of the requirement.
The AP article in the headline, derived from a report from the National Academy of Sciences, again brings to mind my first law of space operations: if it ain't funded, it ain't.
It next brings to mind another shortcoming in the congressional mandate itself: if you don't know how many objects there are, with any confidence, how can you task NASA to find 90 percent of them? Wouldn't the first job be to inventory these objects?
Ok, we'll skip that. NASA estimates there are about 20,000 objects in our solar system big enough to have a major "impact" (so to speak) for life on earth. They know where about 6,000 of them are.
For some reason, the U.S. is the only country with an active government-sponsored effort regarding the threat. I'm sure all the rest of the world thinks this is vitally important work, although it is apparently not important enough for them to spend money on. This raises another question: are we right in trying to solve this conundrum, or are they right in letting us serve as bill-payers and try and solve it ourselves?
Besides praying, what would we do if a comet or asteroid were to threaten the earth? Probably wish we'd funded some "space weapons."
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