Stop the asteroids!

Former astronaut. Dr Ed Lu sees a clear and present danger.

“The next great space mission, in my opinion is protecting the planet,” says Lu.

Dr. Lu is the CEO of the B612 Foundation. Named after the asteroid in the children’s book “The Little Prince.” And he’s revealed that since 2001, nuclear bomb sensors have detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions. But they’re not bombs, They’re asteroids.

“And right now, if you think about what our current strategy is for dealing with the problem, we’re basically relying on blind luck.”

He says they’re hitting the Earth all the time. NASA already tracks the monster asteroids. But Lu says we ought to do more.

“Something that’s capable of destroying a large city we ought to find and track,” Lu says. Which aren’t that big – only about 150 feet across.

So he’s traveling the country to raise the money to find and intercept those asteroids that are big enough to destroy a city, yet small enough that we could alter their course by smacking them with a missile.

Now admittedly, all of the action would be so far away we’d just have to take the scientists word for it that it was even happening. But it occurs to me that is exactly what the human race needs.

As we splinter off into ever narrower interest groups and social tribes, constantly on guard against each other — we need a common threat.

Global Warming sure isn’t working. But defending ourselves from asteroids? Defending ourselves from the caprice of an uncaring universe that is constantly threatening to blow us up? It might be just the thing to stop us from doing it to ourselves.