Posted 5/25/2007 04:47:00 PM by Douglas

Another "future of NASA" article, this one not so rosy. This one gets kinda silly:

Meanwhile, geologic studies increasingly show that catastrophic asteroid and comet hits were not confined to ancient times. In 1908, a small asteroid smacked Siberia with a blast impact equivalent to the strongest nuclear bomb ever detonated by the US; recent evidence suggests an enormous object struck the Indian Ocean a mere 4,800 years ago, causing global tsunamis that may have engendered the Flood referred to in the Bible. Yet NASA has no program to research ways of deflecting space objects, and the agency recently told Congress it could not spare $1 billion to catalog the locations and movements of potentially dangerous asteroids. But hundreds of billions of dollars for a moon base? No problem!

Well, no and no. NASA's job, regardless of what Bruce Willis told you in Armageddon, is not to blow up asteroids on that one in a trillion chance that Earth would get hit by one that could do significant damage. But, some of their criticisms in this article are fair. The Shuttle doesn't have anywhere to 'go.' The Station is being micro-managed like a glorified apartment building for seemingly no other purpose than to micro-manage it. Fair enough. Powerful political districts in Florida, Ohio, Texas and lets not forget California have dictated the continuation of this program. Again, fair enough.

But the question is where are we going and why? The other article I posted today really hits that one on the head, while this guy is just whining about it.

Look, in the words of my sweet little grey-haired mother, "shit or get off the pot." We're either going to have a manned spaceflight program, or we're not. If we are, then fulfilling mankind's quest for exploring the unknown should be enough justification. We need to "shoot down asteroids" about as much as we need to "inspire kids to study calculus." That's complete and utter horse shit.

But yet, for some reason, I love their patch: