Liberty's Blog: Planetary Defense Mission Becomes more Meaningful

Monday, December 27, 2004

Planetary Defense Mission Becomes more Meaningful

Worrisome Asteroid Underscores Planetary Defense Mission as the asteroids chances of striking Earth have increased the last couple days. Its at 2.7% or 1 in 37 as of this morning. There are programs in the planning stage that could be designed to intercept MN4.

Since its creation in 2002, the non-profit B612 Foundation has campaigned for the perfection of asteroid deflection skills.

Former NASA astronaut, Russell Schweickart, is Chairman of the B612 Foundation. The goal of the group of scientists, technologists, astronomers, astronauts, and other specialists is to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.

A candidate for a Prometheus 1 mission, Schweickart told SPACE.com, is a demonstration trek to an asteroid. It would gather critical engineering design information for a planetary protection system. That "D1" flight would dovetail into a D2, dress rehearsal deflection mission, to further refine and ready full-up, Earth-protecting techniques and technologies.

Schweickart notes from the start that, while the probability of a highly destructive asteroid impact on Earth in the immediate future is slight, the consequence of such an occurrence is extreme, and mitigation efforts should begin now.

In regards to the new observations of asteroid 2004 MN4, Schweickart added, the most likely scenario is that this object will disappear from concern in the next few days and/or weeks.

If it becomes likely that this thing will impact Earth, and we have certainty on where it will strike, should we attempt to change the direction of it? For instance if it is headed to Japan do we as Americans owe it to them to protect them for free? How about Communist Red China? They poccess nuclear weapons and are still threatening Taiwan. Would it not be in our best interest to let our enemy's get destroyed. How about France? I believe they have shown displeasure with us interfering in the fate of other nations. If the French would hire our nations service then surely we could do bussiness with them. We could help those who profess to be our friends. I think the Canadiens, Britts and Australians qualify. Life might be better for the rest of the world if large chunks of certain nations were to go away.