Replies

You mean like the one about being a cockeyed optimist?

OK, so "cockeyed optimist" is an "ignorant personal attack?" And the equivelant response is "a-hole?"

Well, that about sums up a 12 year olds mental capacity. So I guess I'll stoop to your level, but just this once.

Things hit us? Agreed.
They always have and always will? Agreed
They haven't killed us yet? Agreed

- HOLD UP THERE QUIEN NO SABE -

I don't buy that last one. There is lots of evidence that the Tunguska was a 60 meter fragment of the Swift-Tuttle debris field that we know as the Perseid meteor shower. That event happened less than 100 years ago and has been measured as a 10 to 15 megaton blast. And Apophis is over 300 meters.

If we only assume that human being have been on Earth for 250,000 years that's .04% of our time here. What are the odds that it has never resulted in "killing us?" And most scientists put the odds of objects of that size hitting us at one every 50 to 100 years. That means we're due for another. What if it's over New York? How about Beijing? How well do you think human civilization would do in those circumstances? Of course we'd have time and the foresight to convice the Chinese that we hadn't fired at them. Yep. And I've got a bridge to sell you, too.

Have you bothered to learn anything about the Apollo 1, Challenger or Columbia tragedies? I assume, given your posts, that you are anti space program. Given that I would safely assume that you view those as "proof" of the foolishness of spending money on "funding" those things. Are you familiar with Frank Borman's testimony before the Senate hearings on the Apollo 1 fire? He laid out the reason for that tragedy. It was a "failure of imagination." We didn't think that it could happen. Anyone who raised the risk was an "a-hole." The Morton Thiokol tech who was over ruled on the Challenger launch used the phrase "this is away from goodness." Get the point?

I'm not an optimist. I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist. I don't care if the glass if half full or half empty. I only care is it contains POISON! I'm smart enough to know that that is a reasonable question. Folks like you aren't.

And as to your closing comment "donate." I do. I'd rather that my tax dollars go to NASA and the study of NEO threats than to bridges to nowhere or rebuilding Gomorrah (New Orleans) or providing milk, corn or soy bean subsidies. And I contribute time, money and expertise to expanding human knowledge and towards our ultimate survival in several other ways. I doubt that you can say the same. In fact, it appears that your greatest contribution to the species would be to insure that your genes are not spilled into the pool, even by accident.