Venture capital space missions...
Category: Earth-Crossing Asteroids
Venture capital space missions are in the news a lot lately so why not this latest news from the B612 Foundation? Yesterday, as promised, it officially declared a goal to raise a few hundred million dollars for a space telescope. From solar orbit it would search for smallish asteroids, tens to a few hundred meters wide, with orbits that make it a bad bet to assume they won't hit Earth in the near or nearly near future. Such things could take out cities, lay waste to big counties, make trouble for much of a continent, maybe launch tsunamis if they splash into ocean, but not end or derail civilization. NASA and other agencies already have a handle on big bruisers a half mile or several miles and see...
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Yesterday at 1:18 pm Pacific I - and presumably a lot of reporters - received an email advising of something coming up from an outfit called the B612 Foundation. It said that a week from tomorrow it shall host a press teleconference in San Francisco to describe the asteroid-seeking telescope it plans to launch on private money into solar orbit and, it hopes, spot any large rocks on orbits that threaten to hit the Earth at a foreseeable date. Rusty Schweikert is involved. He's been fixed on this problem as one that needs fixing for many years.
Oh, well, that's interesting and my mind raced on. For one thing, I've no customer for such an article, but more important even...
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