U.S. Congress is dealing with Killer Asteroids

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Mjr. Whoopass

Mjr. Whoopass

<FONT color=lightblue><B>I was going to say someth
I just saw this article describing how Congress is assembling a blue-ribbon panel of scientists to determine how to deal with potential killer asteroids: especially one called Apophis which is scheduled to travel close to Earth in 2029. http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/12/29/news/doc495907c30eead745518100.txt

Wingnuts already know the solution: build Arrows, Rapiers, and/or Broadswords and arm them with tachyon cannons.
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
I just saw this article describing how Congress is assembling a blue-ribbon panel of scientists to determine how to deal with potential killer asteroids: especially one called Apophis which is scheduled to travel close to Earth in 2029. http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/12/29/news/doc495907c30eead745518100.txt

Wingnuts already know the solution: build Arrows, Rapiers, and/or Broadswords and arm them with tachyon cannons.
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I misread that as '2009' and was going to make an elaborate and foolish 'EEEEEEEEEK! We're all going to die!' rant, but now I have to wait 20 years to do it.

*sigh*
 
..........Wait............20 years you say?! And I was all set to head out with my crowbar and smash stuff up. :(
 
McGruff said:
We definitely need to start developing bigger better nukes.
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I think instead we should invest in a universe wide colonization plan, so that when we run into a race of empirically driven killer cats or intolerable insect cults we can survive after they ravage earth.

Seriously, though, isn't the ability to kill the world population 10 or 12 times over enough?
 
NO. We need more.

You either support splitting the atom or going home a loser. There is nothing in between. :D
 
I don't support splitting the atom.

I support mashing atoms together... and that only because antimatter powerplants are even farther off than fusion ones. :p
 
Jason_Ryock said:
Seriously, though, isn't the ability to kill the world population 10 or 12 times over enough?
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Not if it can't even handle a big rock. Since killing the world population ten times is no worse than one time, I say we don't stop until we have Behemoth power for a special occasion. There's a number of planets in Sol system to use for testing, start with the less useful ones like Mercury.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
I think instead we should invest in a universe wide colonization plan
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That's not a bad idea; I wish we could re-direct most of our government money that's going to weapons and social programs. If it's even possible, we probably have centuries to go before we could even colonize our system in self-sustainable city size populations. We have problems like radiation, different gravities, where would we get our food, where would we get our power supply, etc. Regardless, even if mankind wasn't meant to live on other planets, we would still learn a lot that would help us on this planet.

McGruff said:
Not if it can't even handle a big rock. Since killing the world population ten times is no worse than one time, I say we don't stop until we have Behemoth power for a special occasion. There's a number of planets in Sol system to use for testing, start with the less useful ones like Mercury.
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Confed and the Kilrathi already had the ability to kill the population of planets 10+ times over with bio or nuclear weapons, yet Confed still felt the need to develop a huge gun that would blow up planets. So maybe you're onto something. I guess the Empire did that too in Star Wars, so apparently a huge planet destroying gun is valuable. I think we should try colonizing planets before we blow them up.
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
That's not a bad idea; I wish we could re-direct most of our government money that's going to weapons and social programs. If it's even possible, we probably have centuries to go before we could even colonize our system in self-sustainable city size populations. We have problems like radiation, different gravities, where would we get our food, where would we get our power supply, etc. Regardless, even if mankind wasn't meant to live on other planets, we would still learn a lot that would help us on this planet.
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Well the way I've put it is that we're one incurable disease, asteroid strike, natural disaster, or nuclear war away from complete extermination as a species. The only way we're going to avoid that is by spreading ourselves so far among the stars that we can never be completely killed off.

I don't remember what book or movie it was that I heard this line, I think it was Armageddon, I think he said something about how...for the first time in history a species had the ability to prevent it's own extinction.

I think the line about spreading ourselves out comes from Ender's Game, but I haven't read the end of the book in a long time so I could be wrong.

Mjr. Whoopass said:
Confed and the Kilrathi already had the ability to kill the population of planets 10+ times over with bio or nuclear weapons, yet Confed still felt the need to develop a huge gun that would blow up planets. So maybe you're onto something. I guess the Empire did that too in Star Wars, so apparently a huge planet destroying gun is valuable. I think we should try colonizing planets before we blow them up.
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I believe there is a justification written somewhere in the Kevin J. Anderson series of Star Wars books (I think they're called the Jedi Academy series?) from Qui Xux, one of the designers of the Death Star, that it was meant to be used to break up dead planets to harvest the natural resources from the core of the planet.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
Well the way I've put it is that we're one incurable disease, asteroid strike, natural disaster, or nuclear war away from complete extermination as a species. The only way we're going to avoid that is by spreading ourselves so far among the stars that we can never be completely killed off.
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Also, you're one piano-falling-out-of-the-sky away from complete death. And believe me, you are much more likely to be killed by a random piano falling out of the sky than mankind is likely to be wiped out by disease, asteroids, nuclear war or any other such disaster.
 
Confed and the Kilrathi already had the ability to kill the population of planets 10+ times over with bio or nuclear weapons, yet Confed still felt the need to develop a huge gun that would blow up planets. So maybe you're onto something. I guess the Empire did that too in Star Wars, so apparently a huge planet destroying gun is valuable. I think we should try colonizing planets before we blow them up.
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Technically those were simple planets in their orbits, not gaint rocks in high speed flight, our best bet would be that some alien force tried to blow our planet apart and got hit in the back by the onstorming rock thingy solving all our problems.
 
Quarto said:
Also, you're one piano-falling-out-of-the-sky away from complete death. And believe me, you are much more likely to be killed by a random piano falling out of the sky than mankind is likely to be wiped out by disease, asteroids, nuclear war or any other such disaster.
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I would say that the odds of him dying in his lifetime is much more likely with the piano. However the odds of mankind meeting their end by one of the other mentioned disasters at some point in the vast future is 100%.
 
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