NASA Smacks One Out of the Park

I was happy to see today that NASA had successfully crashed a vending machine sized satellite into an asteroid the size of a football stadium to see if it was possible to nudge an asteroid away from a potential collision with our planet. The astroid was not in any path toward earth. Far enough out into space, it only takes a very small nudge to make an object take another path. but of course, what are the Laws of Unintended Consequences? Today’s nudge, a few years from now, causes other objects in orbit to be nudged as well, this time maybe in a direct path with us. So now it’s going to take a lot of telescopes around the. world to focus on the asteroid belt in order to find any objects that might be a threat to us. Right now, about 3% of the sky is monitored. How much would it cost to add the other 97% if we had the telescopes right now to monitor, which we don’t. A huge building program on every continent would have to take place at a pace unknown before now. Of course, launch sites would need to be prepared as well, again on every continent with multiple devices at each site. Maybe we should just build a Death Star.

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