I am not usually a fan of government spending, but I think that it is critical that we have the best possible understanding of potential species-killing asteroids. We are on the verge of a technological leap that will make a species- or civilization-killing asteroid almost impossible, we just have to make it for another few decades. Gathering all of the potential information we can is a great first step, and I fully back the expenditure of whatever is necessary to get the maximum amount of information from these close asteroid approaches. Hell, just fire another few thousand federal “workers” and that’ll pay for it.
Cannot we blast it to bits now? Why wait.