This from the guy who wants to spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars to send a few Americans to Mars when America is knee deep in debt, 40 million Americans would starve without government assistance and the middle class is dying...talk about bizarre.
I am thinking of what's best for America. You - and many others - want NASA to go space exploring no matter how broke America is. Fine...then do it on your own dime - not mine.
I am 100% for privately funded space exploration. And 100% against public space exploration.
If you are really so selfish and short-sighted that you cannot see how ridiculous sending people to Mars on taxpayer dollars is...then stop replying to me as you are too far gone on this to waste my time on.
But first...
the above it's called cynicism. I simply do not trust NASA.
They know money is tight and these are very smart people. They also know that if they claim a rock they want to look at may hit the Earth (long after most of us are dead, btw) that they will get all the money they want.
Prove I am wrong and please stop being so incredibly naive and trusting.
'Oh...NASA is wonderful and they would never lie to us to finance their projects'.
:roll:
Could this be legit...sure.
But I need more proof then go-fever-NASA to convince me.
And so should you.
Even if this rock definitely isn't going to hit us, the rendezvous, attachment, and study of an asteroid would provide extremely valuable information for potentially deflecting one in the future.
See, we don't really even know anything about asteroids or comets. Until the 2014 Rosetta mission, nobody had ever gotten a close look at either. We're not even really sure how solid they tend to be: are they a solid piece of rock or do they tend to be a loose, gravelly clump that only sticks together because of gravity and a general lack of anything breaking them up? Important to know in case we ever want to smash into one, or blow it up with a missile, or try to grapple it to deflect its course.
We need to know this stuff before we
need to know this stuff, ya know? We can't wait for an imminent impact to start learning what the damned things are even made of. Oh ****, the grapple plan isn't going to work because we just broke off a tiny piece of it instead of latching on. Sorry,
Ohio. Enjoy the 3 gigaton-equivalent impact event.
Sorry, I'm not going to play your little "prove a negative" game. It's not up to me to prove or disprove your allegations for you. Plus, I don't care. The mission itself is sufficient for me to support regardless of whether this particular rock has a chance of hitting us. The information they gather is valuable in of itself.
I like how your anti-Mars screed has escalated to "hundreds of billions," to "send a few Americans," and has now decided to imply going to Mars would literally cause 40 million people to die of starvation. Jesus Christ. No, I'm not going to stop calling you out on that tremendous pile of bull****.