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To be clear, I'm not actually saying that a meteor defense system is a reasonable idea. I don't know enough about the topic to say anything interesting. My po
by wheels 14y ago
To be clear, I'm not actually saying that a meteor defense system is a reasonable idea. I don't know enough about the topic to say anything interesting.
My point was rather that you can't compare a catastrophe with disease / accidents simply in deaths-over-time. Catastrophes have dramatic economic consequences as well.
- jholman 14y agoOkay, fair enough. I like the "I don't know enough to speak" attitude, and I don't know enough either. (What do you mean, five minutes on Wikipedia doesn't make me an expert?!?! :P ) My reply to your core point is that you can so compare (not least because deaths-over-time have dramatic economic consequences too). Maybe we're just gonna disagree about this one. :)
- ANH 14y agoI believe that from a bang-for-the-buck perspective, Near-Earth Object monitoring is one of the better values. In the scheme of national budgets, it is CHEEEEEP to deploy a ground-based observatory capable of detecting threatening objects. To wit: http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/neo-grants/2012da14.html http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/neo-grants/2012da1... If we have the observatories in place, we should have enough time to come up with a reasonable defense. I believe if we're wiped out by one of these rocks, it'll be due to our own negligence.
- chakalakasp 14y agoUnless we knew about it literally decades in advance, there is little mankind could do (with today's technology) to stop a miles-wide inbound asteroid from hitting the earth.