And Neo was its name-o!


Neo

Not no that Neo, Near Earth Objects., i.e., dino killers, city busters, Siberian dynamite. The House and Senate finally had a hearing on the danger posed by NEOs. THey weren’t half bad, a round of bipartisan agreement almost broke out, and there were some quality comments mixed in with the noise and a plan in the works:

The Silicon Valley-based B612 Foundation’s plan to send an asteroid-hunting space telescope called the Sentinel into space in July 2018 would solve that problem, Green told the senators. “We have discovered 10,000 near-Earth asteroids thus far…. Sentinel will discover roughly that number every two weeks,” said B612 chair Ed Lu, a former astronaut and another witness on the panel.
“Assuming that we found one before you got your satellite up … what would an asteroid that is a kilometer in diameter, what would it do if it hit the Earth?” asked subcommittee chair Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) …. “That is likely to end human civilization,” Lu responded.

Best of all, imo biased opinion, we were mostly spared the spectacle of a bunch of imbeciles who pissed away over a trillion dollars and counting on non-existent Weapons of Mass Destructiontm lecture the experts and the nation about “wasting” a thousandth of that on WMDs we know exist to a 100% certainty. The full House Hearing on NEOs is here, the Senate version is here, the B612 Foundation and the Sentinel Telescope are described here.

Comments

  1. Trebuchet says

    Cue Bobby Jindal. If monitoring volcanoes is a liberal waste of money, this has got to be worse.

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