Hi Rob -
> I guess my question is what would you have NASA do
> differently?
Build CAPS.
> NEO searches *are* funded, and I believe at a level
> commensurate with the risk.
I don't believe so. Of course, the difference between you and myself is in our
estimates of the risk. Mine is built on historical data... hell, I even wrote a
book on recent impacts in the Americas called "Man and Impact in the Americas".
> NEO searching doesn't exclude comets -- in fact at the time of
> discovery, telescopes can rarely differentiate a comet from an asteroid, > as
> evidenced by the growing number of comets that carry asteroid
> designations (e.g. C/2006 OF2, C/2007 VO53, C/2008 FK75, P/2008 QP20,
> etc.) The odds of us getting blindsided by a comet with minimal warning
> are already close to zero.
The odds of us getting blind-sided by a 75 meter carbonaceous chondrite
(dead comet fragment) Tunguska class impactor are 1 right now, and from the
historical record, the next impact event will most likely be of that type.
> Our worst blindspot used to be a comet approaching from the solar
> direction post-perihelion, but that gap is now closed by STEREO. From any >
> other direction, we'll have months or even years of warning,
Once again, it was a comet that killed the dinosaurs, not an asteroid.
Warning times depend on cometary injection mechanisms. Space based assets
provide you with the longest warning. You want the longest warning time
possible - ask any dinosaur.
>and when PANSTARRS finally comes on line that warning time will increase even
>further.
PanStarrs is getting built right now because of charitable donations by Bill
Gates and Charles Simonyi. God will bless them for these gifts, and NASA should
not try to steal credit for their charity.
Dealing with this is NASA's responsibility, and I'm tired of relying on private
charity.
> If your beef is in the fraction of the NASA budget set
> aside for studying past impacts, it really comes down to a question of
> public interest.
Actually, it really comes down to the NASA PR machine fobbing off bad hazard
estimates and bogus impact science. One more time, it wasn't an asteroid that
killed the dinosaurs, it was a comet. And I sincerely hope that when Griffin
leaves he takes Morrison with him.
> The public funds NASA, and I think they are more interested in
> planetary spacecraft missions, manned flight, weather, climatology,
> solar physics and cosmology,
Some of those are useful, some are interesting, some of them just have
interested scientists who are obsessed with their work for their clientelle. By
the way, Mars is not like the Earth.
But another factor in the public response is that NASA has been falsely
assuring the public that they have the problem in hand, when in reality they
don't. Hell, NASA couldn't even handle the impact of a small piece of foam...
> than they are in archaeoastronomy.
There's a difference between archaeoastronomy and the study of catastrophic
impacts.
> Yes, impacts are interesting to *US*, but it's hard to argue that their
> study pays any obvious dividends to the general public.
You have to know what the hazard is to deal with it, and demonstrably NASA has
let the country down. Speaking about what the people want, Administrator
Griffin is still standing in contempt of the George Brown Jr. Ammendment, and
the Ares 1 is the worst manned launcher I have seen.
The resizing of the CEV is the key there.
> --Rob
E.P.
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