[ExI] Planetary defense

[Samantha Atkins]

On 05/12/2011 12:12 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> John Grigg wrote:
>> I'd like to think the Pentagon will get involved with planetary 
>> defense, at least where nasty asteroids are concerned.  And "economic 
>> defense" from the exploitive and criminal individuals in Wall Street 
>> & Corporate America, might also be added to on their list... 
>
> It is fun to watch the different cotteries in this community. There is 
> a laser gang, thinking about how to ablate asteroids. Then there is 
> the kinetic impact gang and the gravity tractor gang. And then there 
> is the nuke gang, running hydrocode simulations of big explosions. You 
> can guess who have ties to military defense labs.

I have lately come to be really fond of cheap gravity tugs pulling small 
asteroids to GEO and/or LaGrange points to build larger space shelters 
and to be mined.  Pull enough of them (long time scale) together and you 
have a tremendous boost to local space activity.  Even one of them about 
100 m in diameter could be worth trillions in contained materials.   
Worth doing even with slow robot tugs.

I am much much less concerned with asteroid protection as the 
probability of such is utterly minuscule compared to the certainty of 
material shortage on the ground and other problems if we do not 
establish a space beachhead soon.  I am dismayed at the amount of brains 
that are dedicated to this tiny possiblity versus exploiting such 
opportunities.

- s