NASA: Due For Extinction Event

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Yeah, I attended a talk about this once. Basically you take the odds of it happening and the resulting damages it would cost such as valuing the life of an individual which is done all the time when it comes to car crashes and airplane crashes, once you divide it up, the risk/reward ratio isn't high enough. You're better off spending the money on higher risk projects like maybe preventing flooding or anything else.

People and things are valued pretty high these days, $200+ trillion globally for realestate alone. But even a large city is 10's of billions. So to have something that could deflect a city destroying size meteor, which costs a couple billion a year to run probably would be a net benefit anyways. The R&D for such heavy lift capacity could help us colonize our solar system atleast.


Right, but the key thing you're missing is that you divide that cost by the odds that it will happen once in 60 million years. Even at trillions, it's not that much spread over 60 million years.

 

[Blueskies123]

Originally Posted By: turtlevette
If there are extinction level events that often, how did man evolve from the amoeba?



Actually it has happened 4 or 5 times. It is how the dominate life forms were wiped out and evolution slowly favored us until we became what we are today. It is hard to say what will survive the next ELE, probably AI and we will be toast.
PS, why do you think all the billionaires want to go to MARS - just sayin.

 

[Ihatetochangeoil]

Originally Posted By: Claud
Originally Posted By: Ihatetochangeoil
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Those who laugh at this expect us to believe we came from amoebas; or, goo to you by way of the zoo.


Quite so. When you have eliminated all but what you have evidence for, evolution is a given. The putative deity joke used to be the accepted truth back when most of us were wallowing in unenlightened ignorance.

Claud.


Kind of funny Claud. I see evolution as unenlightened ignorance (or, the King isn't wearing any clothes). You are free to laugh until you wake up dead. BTW, I hope you have a Merry Christmas.

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: Ihatetochangeoil
Originally Posted By: Claud
Originally Posted By: Ihatetochangeoil
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Those who laugh at this expect us to believe we came from amoebas; or, goo to you by way of the zoo.


Quite so. When you have eliminated all but what you have evidence for, evolution is a given. The putative deity joke used to be the accepted truth back when most of us were wallowing in unenlightened ignorance.

Claud.


Kind of funny Claud. I see evolution as unenlightened ignorance (or, the King isn't wearing any clothes). You are free to laugh until you wake up dead. BTW, I hope you have a Merry Christmas.


So what's your take on dark matter, dark energy, black holes and other aspects of technology that's the basis for the very computer and cell phone that you use every day?

 

[Ihatetochangeoil]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: Ihatetochangeoil
Originally Posted By: Claud
Originally Posted By: Ihatetochangeoil
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Those who laugh at this expect us to believe we came from amoebas; or, goo to you by way of the zoo.


Quite so. When you have eliminated all but what you have evidence for, evolution is a given. The putative deity joke used to be the accepted truth back when most of us were wallowing in unenlightened ignorance.

Claud.


Kind of funny Claud. I see evolution as unenlightened ignorance (or, the King isn't wearing any clothes). You are free to laugh until you wake up dead. BTW, I hope you have a Merry Christmas.


So what's your take on dark matter, dark energy, black holes and other aspects of technology that's the basis for the very computer and cell phone that you use every day?


The definition of science is man's discovery of God's Wonders. Thanks for asking.

 

[ls1mike]

IBTL...

I hope it is quick and dirty no matter how it happens.

 

[DuckRyder]

Originally Posted By: gonefishing
Better start hoarding .22 LR!


Not an effective caliber for self defense....

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: Al

NASA has become a useless organization like all gov. Private sector has shown they can do things cheaper.

And seriously what are the odds that a catastrophic meteorite will strike considering one has not happened in 60 million years..effectively zero!


NASA inspired grade-school kids to pursue STEM educations and while 1 in 10,000 goes to work for NASA the rest might invent a cure for cancer or something more down-to-earth.

The money we're spending on rocket development keeps the nerds employed, so they can pass these skills on within our own borders.

 

[KrisZ]

We have enough nukes capable of destroying every major city in the world and then some, yet we worry about an asteroid that nobody knows it's destructive powers yet, if any. Fear sells, it was the eclipse in the past, now it's asteroids and CO2.
What's next? NASA will start warning us about the sun going super nova and wanting us to do something about it?

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: KrisZ
We have enough nukes capable of destroying every major city in the world and then some, yet we worry about an asteroid that nobody knows it's destructive powers yet, if any. Fear sells, it was the eclipse in the past, now it's asteroids and CO2.
What's next? NASA will start warning us about the sun going super nova and wanting us to do something about it?

No. The sun is too small to go supernova. It's actually going to be a red giant. But it'll be in about 5 billion years so we've got plenty of time to find some funding to move to another world before then. When it becomes a red giant, it will grow to such a size that the sun will engulf the earth, but it will be uninhabitable long before that.

Also we don't have as many nukes as we did before, the US is down to about 4500 now, it had over 30k at it's peak in the 60'a.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Yeah, I attended a talk about this once. Basically you take the odds of it happening and the resulting damages it would cost such as valuing the life of an individual which is done all the time when it comes to car crashes and airplane crashes, once you divide it up, the risk/reward ratio isn't high enough. You're better off spending the money on higher risk projects like maybe preventing flooding or anything else.

People and things are valued pretty high these days, $200+ trillion globally for realestate alone. But even a large city is 10's of billions. So to have something that could deflect a city destroying size meteor, which costs a couple billion a year to run probably would be a net benefit anyways. The R&D for such heavy lift capacity could help us colonize our solar system atleast.


Right, but the key thing you're missing is that you divide that cost by the odds that it will happen once in 60 million years. Even at trillions, it's not that much spread over 60 million years.

The odds of a "city killer" size one hitting the planet are alot higher though, maybe 1 every 500 years, although one of those actually hitting a city is another thing. Anyways, its a relatively cheap project that could help start some global cooperation.

 

[Nickdfresh]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: CT8
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
It likely won't happen in my remaining lifetime, so it's not something I'll spare a concern over.
Most morons don't realize they are closer to death every day they are alive. At 63 years of age I realize there is more rope behind me than in front of me. N.A.S.A. may want more funding ? What about the huge Earthquake? Volcano? the heart attack, plane/car/motorcycle/boat wreck? We also can slip walking down some stairs and hit the back of our head and that is the end. some disease would also put us down.

NASA has become a useless organization like all gov. Private sector has shown they can do things cheaper.


Maybe we should privatize the military, then?

And which "space companies" are there? How cheap are they?

I mean gov't funding has only given us the digital age, the web we're on, and actual hope for the future. None of which would ever have happened with privatization...

Quote:
And seriously what are the odds that a catastrophic meteorite will strike considering one has not happened in 60 million years..effectively zero!


Wasn't that the point of it all? That it hasn't happened in a while?

It's either sad or funny that people here only will spend billions on tech designed to kill others, yet not save everything. Oh and the technology used to deflect an asteroid has massive economic and duel-use implications anyways. Much like the space program did!

 

[MolaKule]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359




So what's your take on dark matter, dark energy, black holes and other aspects of technology that's the basis for the very computer and cell phone that you use every day?


Dark matter and Dark energy are unproven theories, and there are better theories out there that don't require DE or DM. See previous threads.

Black holes I think were proven by LIGO. See previous thread on LIGO and Gravity Waves.

Furthermore, what technology from DE or DM gave us cell phones and computers?

DE DM and other frivolous stuff

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: MolaKule

Dark matter and Dark energy are unproven theories, and there
are better theories out there that don't require DE or DM. See previous threads.

The overwhelming number of top notch research scientists believe it as of yesterday. Other explanations leave holes bigger than DM and DE.

To those who say that NASA was responsible for many many advances in this country..quite true. But they are now mostly irrelevant....except for Hubble and Webb Telescope...but...it is multiple times overbudget/time and still won't be launched til who-knows-when.

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: CT8
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
It likely won't happen in my remaining lifetime, so it's not something I'll spare a concern over.
Most morons don't realize they are closer to death every day they are alive. At 63 years of age I realize there is more rope behind me than in front of me. N.A.S.A. may want more funding ? What about the huge Earthquake? Volcano? the heart attack, plane/car/motorcycle/boat wreck? We also can slip walking down some stairs and hit the back of our head and that is the end. some disease would also put us down.

NASA has become a useless organization like all gov. Private sector has shown they can do things cheaper.

And seriously what are the odds that a catastrophic meteorite will strike considering one has not happened in 60 million years..effectively zero!


This "private sector" you write of has zero interest in either planetary defense against alien objects or in exploratory probes.
You want to get a payload to a given point on the cheap with maybe 50% reliability?
Go for a private sector launch. The fact that they only exist because NASA enabled the technology is but a side note.
You need man rated reliability and you want to actually send probes to explore alien worlds?
You need NASA for that.
I find your assertion of not having seen a planetary killer in 60 million years a little silly in that it's happened before and it'll happen again, as they said in the opening parts of a movie.
It's coming, we just don't know when and your commercial providers could neither know nor care less.

 

[surfstar]

The whole reason Elon Musk is pushing to get to mars, is so that we have a secondary backup of humans.

We won't be around forever unless we expand to an interplanetary and eventually further, species.

 

[KrisZ]

Do some of you even realize what exactly we are discussing here, energy wise? It all looks easy and doable in Hollywood movies, but in real life, deflecting an asteroid is nearly impossible. We are talking here about objects traveling at about 40,000 MPH with the kinetic energy at impact ranging from 4 megatons for the little guys to 46,000 megatons and this is at impact, in space these things have a much higher kinetic energy because they would not have been slowed down by the atmosphere.
And don't tell me we will use the freaking lasers.

 

[DuckRyder]

Cant we just send an imperial star destroyer?

 

[Rick in PA]

Time. Given enough lead time and a sufficient lever, Archimedes himself could deflect the asteroid.

 

[KrisZ]

Originally Posted By: Rick in PA
Time. Given enough lead time and a sufficient lever, Archimedes himself could deflect the asteroid.

His analogy was for a stationary Earth. In this scenario he would have to be able to swing the lever, like a baseball bat, and be able to hit the ball.