I wish I was talking about one of my favorite smartphones here, the HTC MTeoR, but I’m not. I’m talking about actual meteors. I was over at CNet where I read an article that is planting the seed of how we need to build some really expensive device to help save us from meteors. Here are some quotes and highlights:
“It is possible to save the Earth from something like an apocalypse” with this kind of spacecraft, said Edward Lu, an astronaut and a scientist with NASA‘s Johnson Space Center
“[a really big meteor] would destroy England if it hit, or Northern California, but not the world,” he said.
“Extinction can be caused by a large asteroid impact. But with an early warning system we can prevent this.
I’m not sure if I prefer the “blow it up while we run for the hills” strategy or the “drill a hole in it, then blow it up” strategy, but I cannot believe that a NASA scientist is making these kinds of statements. I typically leave it to my mainstream news show to try to make me afraid of the commonplace things in this world (“tune in at 11 to find out which type of toothpaste causes rectal cancer”), not NASA.
Seriously, we need to get more money going to privatizing the exploration of space, because I really don’t need my tax dollars prognosticating this kind of a future. That’s what my $10 movie ticket is for.