During the Golden Age of American Space Exploration, we clever monkeys made huge leaps and bounds in a wide arrange of technologies. From simple features for clothes, aka Velcro, to long distance communications (NASA to Cape Kennedy to the freaking moon). Countless other inventions and innovations also occurred that are still being integrated into daily life as we know.
And speaking of daily life, as we know it, wouldn't it be great if it continued?
Asteroid heading our way
http://www.russiatoday.ru/...
Astronomers are battling to work out the trajectory of an asteroid that will cause havoc if it hits the Earth in 2036. Called Apophis, the giant meteor is hurtling through space at 10km per second. Scientists are warning that an impact would be far more devastating than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2.
I have always said it would take something phantasmical to reignite the public passion for the space program. Culture guilty pleasures such as these are not cheap, and we can pretty much shelf any exo-terra adventures until we extract ourselves from Caesar's Wars and stop baking Marie-Antoinette' cake.
But having a civilization-ending asteroid on the way just might do the trick.
From the article above:
Astronomer Sergey Barabanov explains the predicted course of events: "The critical moment will be in 2029, when Apophis passes so close to Earth that it will be visible to the naked eye. The consequence of this fly-by will tell us whether it will come back again and collide with us in 2036," he said.
If Apophis passes through a particular point in space called a keyhole the Earth's gravity may change its course for the worst.
In ancient Egypt, Apophis was the spirit of evil and destruction, a snakelike demon determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness. A fitting name, then, for a menace that could potentially cause devastating global damage.
Nasa estimates the blast caused by Apophis would be a 100,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2.
They just had to name Apophis, didn't they?
Anywho, we cannot expect to throw something together at the last minute if Apophis does hit our keyhole to retract to an impact trajectory. In fact, it would be even better if we politely pushed it off course in 2029.
Blowing up asteroids of this size would be a very bad idea. Instead of just on monster in the sky, we could create an army of them. Plus in the realm of space, a simple nudge goes a long way in the path of objects, especially when their routes are based in years, decades and millennium upon millennium upon millennium.
So we really ought to look into a space platform that can properly track all objects for collision paths to Earth. Plus a compliment of spacecraft that can be dispatch to nudge them off their kill routes with our planet.
Because there are countless unknown or unidentified objects in our solar system. There are also countless more objects in the Kuiper Belt on the edge of our solar village. And we don't know what desperados just might ride down our main street wrecking the place and tying young maidens to rail tracks.
That's the happy way to put, the ancient Indians would have gone with "Destroyer of Worlds", which will happen, unless we set up a global defense.
Because Super Happy Fun Asteroid might already be on its way to Earth, and taunting it will be a bad idea.
From Termite in the comments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
99942 Apophis (pronounced /əˈpɒfɪs/, previously known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a relatively large probability (up to 2.7%) that it would strike the Earth in 2029. Additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029. However there remained a possibility that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole, a precise region in space no more than about 400 meters across, that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036. This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006. It broke the record for the highest level on the Torino Scale, being, for only a short time, a level 4, before it was lowered.[5]
Additional observations of the trajectory of Apophis revealed the keyhole would likely be missed, and on August 5, 2006 Apophis was lowered to a Level 0 on the Torino Scale. As of October 19, 2006, the impact probability for April 13, 2036, was calculated as 1 in 45,000. An additional impact date in 2037 was also identified; the impact probability for that encounter was calculated as 1 in 12.3 million.
At the end of the dayz, I am more concerned about objects we aren't tracking. What we don't know about our solar system could fill a galaxy.