Tunguska! X-Files!
Not one of my favorite episodes, though.

No funding. It's been cut.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/republi…

This is just about the only legitimate reason for NASA to exist - yet it wallows around at the bottom of their priorities.

We can't even get a international, national - or even regional - consensus on global climate change (which is actually technologically easy to solve - just stop dumping carbon into the air and water).

You think that anybody is going to want to raise taxes for the Herculean (both politically and technologically) efforts of spaced based planetary defensive grid? No way. A city in a rich country will have to be obliterated first.

@3 It 'wallows' in the bottom of their priorities because no one in Congress would be caught dead suggesting we should be preparing for asteroid doomsday.
And no, that's not 'just about the only legitimate reason' for NASA to exist. That is an ignorant statement.

Interestingly enough, the rock that blew up over the Urals the other day was only about 50 feet wide. If it has exploded over Moscow, or London, or New York... or godforbid, Islamabad or Dehli.. that would have been a major, possibly nuclear, catastrophe. And notably a 50' asteroid/meteor is virtually undetectable at present.

You know, if a meteor is on course to hit the earth, so fucking be it. The amount of hubris in the idea that we should try to deflect such an occurrence is appalling.

@ 4: they're private

@5--I wouldn't say it's at the bottom of priorities; it isn't even on the list at the bottom. But this year we are spending at least $633,000,000,000 to "protect" ourselves against other humans. Our defense policy makes the NRA look like a beacon of rational thought.

Grant,
Happy President's Day. What fazed me about last week's cosmic events were that they coincided within a few days of each other. That was extraordinary! I realize earth is indeed vulnerable to meteors, asteroids etc. We get hit fairly often in astronomical time. What I think we can do (NASA, European Space Agency etc.) is be better able to predict when & where they may fall. That should be a top priority for those agencies for the sake of all humanity.

@9 When is relatively easier than where. It's that damned spinning, the Earth always turning, at over 1000 miles an hour. Plus, the atmosphere and the exact angle of attack, not to mention the composition of the rock in question and how many cracks it's picked up in its travels, makes it a little hard to guess where most of it might come to rest, even if you have its trajectory.