back to article Oz asteroid-hunt at risk as NASA cuts funding

A near-Earth object search described as the Southern Hemisphere’s only asteroid survey is under threat because of NASA funding cuts, according to The Canberra Times. The report (warning: contains infuriating Fairfax auto-play video segment) states that the Siding Spring Survey, which under Rob McNaught has identified more than …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Funding

    Three months ago Australia's federal politicians were given an annual salary boost averaging $44,000.

    There are 150 MPs in the House of Representative, and 76 in the senate.

    That comes to a total annual pay rise of $9,944,000.00. There's your funding, right there.

    Pass the hat around.

  2. Combat Wombat
    Boffin

    Why not bring it under the CSIRO ?

    After all their patent wins, they should have come cash floating around.

  3. Charles Manning

    Who cares?

    Can't do a damn thing about it if one of these asteroids goes postal, so why worry and why spend huge bikkies looking out for them?

    1. Robert Heffernan

      @Charles

      Yes, we can do something about even the big ones. Once they have been detected and the computer simulations of the orbit tells us it is going to hit, a mission will be launched to move the thing out of the road. It may not be so dramatic as hollywood would have you believe but the USA would get such a huge global surge in support that the cost of the mission would be well worth it.

  4. Steve Brooks

    "Can't do a damn thing about it if one of these asteroids goes postal, so why worry and why spend huge bikkies looking out for them?" Well with a bit of luck it will land on your house, while you are sitting your lounge chair watching foxtel and wondering why everybody left town several days ago. Hint, to be outside the kill radius, let us know how that works out for you...oh thats right not possible, you'll be DEAD!

  5. Martin Budden Silver badge
    Facepalm

    @Charles Manning

    True, we can't do a damn thing about the really big ones, the ones that will wipe out most species on the planet... but we CAN do a lot about the medium-sized ones that will take out only a single city... for example, evacuate that city. Even if we only get 24 hours notice most people will survive that sort of hit by simply getting out of the way - as long as someone like Rob McNaught has funding to give us the necessary warning.

    Which is what Steve Brooks was saying, in his own colourful way.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Yeah fuck it......

    Natural disasters like these are not the kinds of things that I'd like to be saying, "I told you so".

    Personally while all this political posturing and war profiteering goes on, I wish these idiot fucks would start developing their ICBM's and such like to be useful in longer range icy cold / stinking hot - deep space missions lasting anything up to a year or two, and to be designed for hyper velocity impacts / detonations...

    And to start launching these fuckers at all the flybys for target practice....

    "Like a bunch of kids lined up with stones, throwing them at empty bottles".

    "Ohhhh noooo we can't do that" - the officious dickheads reply....

    20 years later... one big fat 500 meter across ateroid pops out of the darkness of space, and sucker punches the Washington, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and NASA - in one HUGE........

    Ummm "most of the USA becomes extinct blast".

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