3 Former Astronauts: Earth-Asteroid Collisions Are a Real But Preventable Danger 71
Three former astronauts — Ed Lu, Tom Jones, and Bill Anders — say that reassuring figures about the rarity of asteroid collisions with Earth are perhaps too reassuring. The B612 Foundation, of which Lu is a director, has been established to draw public awareness to the risks of a large asteroid hitting a population center -- which these three men say is a far more serious public danger than has been acknowledged by NASA and other agencies. And beyond awareness, the Foundation's immediate goal is to raise money to " design and build an asteroid-finding space telescope and launch it by 2017," and then, Armageddon-style, to follow that up with technology to divert any asteroids whose path would threaten earth.
Re:Astronouts are experts? (Score:5, Informative)
but why is something important because an astronaut says it?
As the summary points out, Ed Lu isn't just "an astronaut." He's a director of the B612 foundation. This aren't just three guys who used to work in space, recently got drunk in a bar and decided someone should do something about all these asteroids they keep hearing about on the news.
Aren't astronauts usually pilots who received advanced training for going to space?
No. Ed Lu is a physicist (and was one before he became an astronaut), and Tom Jones was working on remote sensing of asteroids before he became an astronaut.
Re:Astronouts are experts? (Score:4, Informative)
Not all astronauts are trained as pilots; these days, a lot of them have scientific background. In this case, Ed Lu [wikipedia.org] is a former astronaut who studied physics and published key papers about using a gravity tractor [wikipedia.org] to deflect asteroids.
Arkyd are already doing this. (Score:3, Informative)
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
Lets hope everybody shares the same open source database.