[ExI] The Sky is Falling--Atlantic article on space rock strikes

[Amara Graps]

Max forwarded the following article:

>by Gregg Easterbrook
>http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroids

>"The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth
>this century may be as high as one in 10. So why isn't NASA trying
>harder to prevent catastrophe?"

Dear Max, The first comment that I have about this article is that the
author assumes that the newly discovered outer solar system bodies (TNOs,
Kuiper Belt bodies) have the same impact probability to intersect the
Earth as the inner solar system bodies. They don't. It takes a lot more
energy (and time) to bring a body from 40+ AU to be on an Earth
intersecting orbit.

The author also missed that NASA _does_ fund, in part, some
observational campaigns, for example: SpaceWatch:

http://spacewatch.lpl.arizona.edu/
http://spacewatch.lpl.arizona.edu/funding.html

Observational campaigns _could_ fit in the mandate of several of NASA's
yearly offerings of grants:

https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/viewrepositorydocument/cmdocumentid=129172/TABLE%202%20Amend10.html

(I suspect Spacewatch is funded by one of these programs, for example)

But it's true that the focus of NASA research funding has changed in a
way that makes many planetary scientists unhappy. Moon and Mars gets the
chunk of attention. I doubt that it will change very much with a new
Federal government, however. What has been put in place since 2003 is
deeply entrenched now.


Amara
-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado