JPL has started maintaining a status page on potential earth impactors.

I still think that we need to get the Corp of Engineers working on this.

[via emailer Paul Breed]

Rand, you may want to re-think this. Look at the Corps of Engineers performance during the saga of Kenniwick Man. They appear to be thoroughly politicized.

Now, my pick would be NORAD, as they are already charged with the responsibility for tracking man made things, let them expand the mission to track objects of natural origin.

Rich

As someone who has dealt with the COE, not no but Hell No!

The ACOE needs to be broken up and functions spread around. It is a vesitge of a bygone frontier day. Why the hell is the Army playing with dams, flood control and navigable waterways?

Split their functions to EPA, Dept of the Interior and US Fish and Wildlife.

"Now, my pick would be NORAD, as they are already charged with the responsibility for tracking man made things, let them expand the mission to track objects of natural origin."

And unnatural objects too - they have a tradition of tracking flying sleighs too.

Two days after I sent Rand the E-Mail the
odds have gone from one chance in 233 to one chance in 63....
Better than a 1% chance of impact and the energy would be about 1600 Mega Tons or 80,000 Hiroshimas.

Two days after I sent Rand the E-Mail the
odds have gone from one chance in 233 to one chance in 63....

I believe it's 1 in 45 now.

Why not really look ahead, and slow them down into near earth orbit, sort of like the Heinlein story that introduced Anderew Jackson Libby?

1 in 37 now.

How low till Congress gives us a blank check?

1 in 37. That's like betting on a number on a single zero r0ulette wheel.

Deliberate misspelling due to: Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: How are we supposed to talk about probablilty if the vocabularity is denied to us by spammers?

Fudge. We don't need a blank check - we need a true space faring capability so we have a variety of choices to make when/if we have to take action on junk that has our name on it.

Last minute slap-dash missions with a low chance of success make entertaining fiction but we don't need the drama in real life.

I'd bet my house that we can _get_ that by letting an informed citizenry of millions make their own descisions about space, junk the silly rules and not handing NASA or SpaceGaurd a blank check.