New sensor data indicates that they’re from three to ten times more common than previously thought:
“The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’-sized asteroid is blind luck.”
…The Sentinel Infrared Space Telescope Mission is currently due for launch in mid-2018, with an estimated mission cost of $400 million.
But we spend billions in trying to reduce the amount of plant food in the atmosphere.
Once again, Planetary Defense is something that will gain board base support for both spending on space and space development.
The average person sees little value in looking for bacteria beyond Earth, understanding how Saturn’s rings were created or even space settlement. But protecting the Earth from a city buster is something they will identify with and support. Add to it that the flip side of the technology basically ends shortages of raw materials or the artificial hiking of their prices by cartels of third nations and you would have no problem selling it to the general non-space interested public, except of course the radical environmentalists who see technology as a plague and the science policy community that has monopolize space policy since Apollo.
By Arthur C. Clarke may be right again as he noted in “The Hammer of God”. Until a major city sits smoking from a NEO impact no one will do anything about it…
Interesting plot for a book? Company needs funding… quietly redirects city killing rock hitting city to gin (Jin?) up taxpayer support for company projects.
“But we spend billions in trying to reduce the amount of plant food in the atmosphere.”.
Brawndo: It’s got what plants need
I’d love to see an analysis of old DSP satellite data on this topic. DSP satellites have been able to detect objects entering the atmosphere for decades. There is legitimate sensitivity about revealing the capabilities of existing DSP and newer SBIRS satellites, I don’t think there’s an issue with satellite data from perhaps 20-30 years ago. Take a decade or more of relevant DSP data, strip off anything that might have national security implications, and release the data to scientists to study. I suspect they could learn a lot.
Fact or fiction?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10742854/Meteorite-narrowly-misses-Norwegian-skydiver.html#disqus_thread
I’m going with it being a fake, the chances of this actually happening are in the region of one in a trillion, the chances of someone faking it a lot higher.
Hard to say. While the odds of it being a fake are better than it being a real incident, sometimes very improbable (statistically) events happen, such as the sleeping woman hit by a meteorite.