I hope you're right. I really do. Because it took just one of those things less than twenty-four hours to kill my entire crew... and if just one of those things gets down here; well, all this, all this bullshit you think is so important -- well, you can just kiss all that goodbye !!There are a large number of things going on in the world, and we've developed ourselves technologically to the point that we can track and check in on most of them -- provided we have common sense, and make the budget to fund that tracking a priority.
-- Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)
Aliens (Dir., John Cameron), 1987
PRESIDENT: My God. How did we miss this?
TRUMAN: Sir, the entire budget for tracking near-earth objects last year was 20 million dollars -- million, not billion -- to look for everything that could hit us coming out of the sky. And excuse me, Mr. President -- but it's a big-ass sky.
-- NASA Director Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton)
Armageddon (1998)
But we focus on all the Stuff going on here, to the exclusion of the fact that our small planet is part of a much larger space -- which may be infinite, maybe not; for all practical purposes (so long as you're not a theoretical Astrophysicist) it doesn't make any difference.
But it's big, and there's a lot of stuff going on in that space, too. Some of it can affect us, directly and immediately. It's happened before. And 7,600 miles is nothing. It's less than the distance between Land's End near San Francisco (the Westernmost point of the Continental U.S.), and the coast of Japan.
The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.According to ABC News,
-- Quote Attributed To Robert Heinlein, 1967
NASA reported that on Feb. 4, Asteroid 2011 CQ1 zipped past Earth at a record close distance: a scant 3,400 miles away. It was discovered by NASA only 14 hours before the rock approached Earth [Note: 2011 CQ1 is three feet in diameter].Today's not very comforting thought is: We already know that the era of space exploration by the United States is over. We can't afford it, and no one thinks it's much of a priority when there are Freedom Bombs to be dropped and Freedom Wars to be fought against Teh Enemy.
Asteroid 2011 MD was discovered only four days prior to its approach on June 22 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research discovery team in New Mexico [Note: 2011 MD is approximately 16 feet wide and 27 feet long]
A larger, 1,300-foot asteroid, Asteroid 2005 YU55, is expected to flash past Earth on Nov. 8, 2011.
NASA said that an object the size of Asteroid 2011 MD is expected to come this close to Earth about every six years on average. Scientists say that when Asteroid 2011 MD makes another pass in 2022, an impact with Earth is possible.
President Boner and President Sessions say reaching for the stars is something we'll learn to live without. NASA's budget going forward will be miniscule, certainly compared with the sixties and seventies. But it also means a reduction in our capacity to locate and track Near-Earth Objects. It means that we wouldn't be able to staff and retool an aerospace industry quickly enough to respond to a real species-killing rock headed our way. Our plans to do so are only theories at this point; and without the technology and the trained personnel, our capacity to move from theory to action would be laughable.
But, we have to have our priorities. Sorry, Kids -- We had to ignore extraplanetary danger; curtail industries that create advances in technology; and abandon leadership of the greatest adventure of humankind (not to mention grandma's food and medical care) -- all to ensure that the Koch Brothers, and Little Lloyd Blankfein, and all Our Top Two Per Cent aren't cross and unhappy. We just have to learn our place. Their wants and needs are more important. And they're so much better than we are, and must be made safe and warm, and given all the treats they could ever imagine.
If humankind does make any attempts to get off the planet, it's liable to be done by persons speaking Chinese, or Russian, and possibly be an extension of some large mega-corporation's budget as they seek to take the Profit Motive to the stars.
But even so, consider -- how much of an effect will the Draconian budget cuts about to hit the United States have on programs designed to spot and track other things in that larger world that could hit us -- and that might be larger than a tour bus?
No comments:
Post a Comment