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A comment on Larry Page: I’d Rather Leave My Billions to Elon Musk Than to Charity. Parent comment

Re:Larry Page: I’d Rather Leave My Billions to Elon Musk Tha... by knappe on Thursday March 20, 2014 @04:22PM (#7438415)
No, no it is not.

Any asteroid that will be an Earth killer will have such a high velocity (due to its highly elliptical orbit) that it won't matter. Consider 2012 XE54 [0]. These objects are nigh undetectable as evidenced by the detection of 2012 XE54 two days before it passed half the distance between the Moon and the Earth. A close call by any account.

Moving people off a single point of failure (Earth) is a much better use of resources.

http://www.space.com/18854-newfound-asteroid-close-flyby-ear...

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Re:Larry Page: I’d Rather Leave My Billions to Elon Musk Tha... by lisper on Thursday March 20, 2014 @05:02PM (#7438756)
The reason 2012 XE54 was only detected two days before it passed the earth is because we currently are not flying the right instrumentation to detect such objects any earlier. Fixing that problem is the whole point of the B612 foundation's project. Also, an infrared telescope can be launched a hell of a lot sooner and cheaper than Mars can be colonized.
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