Actually, it's inertia that's a bitch. You only need a very very tiny change in momentum (actually, the velocity component of momentum.) But, these objects have a tremendous amount of inertia. (Inertia being the property that resists changes in momentum; it's equivalent to mass.)
:hmm:
Yesterday, my high school physics teacher died a little inside.
In Soviet Russia, space travels to YOU.
Sure as hell makes it a lot cheaper though.
Well government is reactionary. Look at our posture before 9/11 and look at it afterwards. Space rocks are going to be the exact same way. Government has limited resources and right now we're even looking at mandatory cuts and a lot of people being put out of work over the budget. Funding stuff like this is simply not going to happen. That's just the truth of the situation.
I agree with you that eventually it's a 100% chance that it will happen. Sometime. All things geologic and in astronomy eventually hit that point. Our planet will freeze over again, then it'll get really hot and do it over and over again. We'll get hit be a big planet killer eventually. The point is whether it's likely to happen in our lifetime or even anytime remotely close our lifetimes. The answer is highly skewed to the no side.
NASA's budget keeps getting slashed, it's a pittance of what it should be.
As it stands the risk isn't high enough to justify the expenditure from established science. We can't even fund our particle accelerators anymore. :|
I simply feel as things are right now, budget wise overall, scientific budgets and the odds of stuff like this happening more often and the methods we have for even defending against this stuff the money is better spent elsewhere on things that can further advance us and save more lives with that same money.
Oddly enough, it sounds like our objectives on this stuff aren't too terribly far off - we both want to see NASA funded, anyway. I'd
like to see more spent on asteroid defense systems, at least to get something started there. (Our Defense spending is currently with the objective of defending us against our own species...however pathetic that notion is in itself.)
Going against that reactionary trend would certainly be a welcome change, and embrace the notion of prevention.
"
Government has limited resources and right now we're even looking at mandatory cuts and a lot of people being put out of work over the budget."
One view is that those people being put out of work were given work unnecessarily. The private sector will lay off people when there is no longer a need for them - it's done (theoretically) for efficiency purposes, or just to net someone some nice paycheck increases for slashing expenses, and expecting the remaining workforce to magically pick up the slack.
That latter point aside, government, at least in the US, has a tendency toward bloat and inefficiency, which certainly tends to screw with the ability to determine what functions it should have.
"
The point is whether it's likely to happen in our lifetime or even anytime remotely close our lifetimes. The answer is highly skewed to the no side."
There have also been a number of expensive things done
before my lifetime that I'm glad we've got, and I'm sure you could say the same as well. For example, the space program itself: Started before I was born; or the interstate highway system; or even the simpler things, like the city I live in. I'm sure starting and maintaining a city is no cheap thing, but someone had to bear those costs at some point, and it wasn't me.
People not yet born may well appreciate the foresight of generations before who did decide to keep them safe from something with a high probability of eventually happening.
"
NASA's budget keeps getting slashed, it's a pittance of what it should be.
As it stands the risk isn't high enough to justify the expenditure from established science. We can't even fund our particle accelerators anymore. :|"
Also a pretty sad state. I'm sure if you ran a survey on what portion of their tax dollars go to NASA, most people would put it at a
much higher level than it actually is.
I tried an informal survey like this back in college as part of a project for one of my "arts credits" filler courses. Unfortunately, my wording of it caused it to be rendered useless, as I had presumed that people in the class would know the difference between million, billion, and trillion.
Yes, I did say "college."
Pure science has little regard anymore, as you've evidently seen as well.
To any who say that science with no immediate practical application in sight is useless,
Carl Sagan already explained it.
(The short, short version: Study of the electron, and how electrons interact with magnetic fields, was once one of those "useless" wastes of time. Good thing we kept studying those tiny particles and invisible fields.)
And for the heck of it, I'll throw in this testimony by
Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The Universe anticipated the vacuum that would be created by Sagan's death, so now we've got him.
"
I simply feel as things are right now, budget wise overall, scientific budgets and the odds of stuff like this happening more often and the methods we have for even defending against this stuff the money is better spent elsewhere on things that can further advance us and save more lives with that same money."
All it would take is preventing the impact of a
single extinction-level asteroid to seriously skew that "save more lives" figure though.
Facebook
Twitter