Politics May Deny Us Asteroid Defenses

In the long run, asteroid impacts are one of the main challenges to our species' survival on this planet. While we are in no immediate danger, it's more than certain that massive impacts are imminent. Still, politicians apparently find it hard to agree that this is the case, and that we need defenses.

If we know that a large space rock is heading our way, then we may be able to muster up some defenses. These may include methods of deflecting it away from its dangerous course, or even vaporizing it when it enters the atmosphere.

However, in order for this to happen, we need to be prepared to face such a scenario. At this point, this isn't by far the case, since our detection methods are still not dedicated to this purpose exclusively.

In other words, we are discovering near-Earth objects (NEO) and potentially dangerous space rocks while conducting studies of other objects or cosmic phenomena. Lately, one or two space missions have taken some time to look for such objects, but they could not cover the entire sky.

Analysts agree that the technological challenges associated with finding and destroying asteroids are monumental, but pale in comparison to the political and geopolitical realities the world is faced with.

Government funding is at this point the most severe challenge astronomers seeking to catalog NEO and dangerous asteroids are faced with. However, things are unlikely to change until scientists actually demonstrate that a space rock is about to impact us.

By that time however, it may be too late to do anything about it. In these circumstances, politicians would have done us all a great deal of harm through bickering over costs. Feasibility studies show that two infrared telescopes built on opposite sides of the world would cost less than $50 million.

For the United States, the figure is nothing next to the tremendous budget the Pentagon and the war effort, plus associated multinational corporations, are receiving. So the excuse that politicians here make, which is that they have no money, is simply a lie.

Other countries are in the same situation. Unfortunately, it is the nature of the current political system not to foster multinational cooperation in such a field of study, even if if has the potential to save us all.

In the worst-case scenario, we have no early-detection and defense methods and an asteroid brings about the sixth extinction event. It is preferable to any rational humans to lose some money in the short run, but be prepared in case such a calamity occurs.

“Human beings can solve any technical problems that are put in front of us. It's the social and political issues that we struggle with,” Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) senior planetary scientist and asteroid collision expert Daniel Durda says.

“The geopolitical realities are daunting. The technical issues are easy by comparison,” adds former NASA astronaut and B612 Foundation founding member Rusty Schweickart, as quoted by Space.