On to the Asteroid
Page 32
“I can’t get this damn bowtie right.” Paul fidgeted with the thing as he looked at himself in the mirror. Carolyn stepped in behind him and gently pushed his hands aside.
“Hold still. You’re doing it all wrong,” she told him.
“I save the world but can’t figure out how to tie a dang bowtie,” he grunted.
“You’re just nervous,” she said as she straightened it out and pulled it tight. “There, see. I’ll make a deal with you.”
“What’s that?” Paul turned and pulled her close to him.
“You fly the spaceships and I’ll tie the ties.”
“You have yourself a deal, Mrs. Gesling.” Paul kissed his wife and held her tight against his body. All was right with the world.
AFTERWORD
We are not against asteroid mining. In fact, we believe that we must mine the asteroids if were are ever to be a prosperous, interplanetary species. We just believe that we need to be very careful when we start moving space mountains around, especially when they are near the Earth. Can it be done? Yes, and this book only looks at a few of the many ways asteroids can be safely moved to new orbits. And you never know when you might want to move an asteroid…
As Tunguska and, more recently, Chelyabinsk, have taught us, the solar system can be a dangerous neighborhood. There are thousands of near-Earth asteroids, some of them will eventually be in the wrong place at the wrong time—at the same time and location as the Earth—and that day will be catastrophic. (Just ask the dinosaurs.) Fortunately, we are now mapping the population of these asteroids and will soon have a good understanding of which pose a risk of collision. But can we do more? What if one of them is headed our way?
If we have enough lead time, then we can move the mountain—the space mountain—literally. All it will take is a small nudge using one of many promising and technologically doable techniques and an impact can be avoided. But it will take time and a space access infrastructure that we currently lack. We need to do more than map asteroids; we need to make sure we can move one of them to a slightly different orbit should it be coming our way. The time to build this infrastructure is now, not when disaster is imminent—for then it might be too late.
Remember, the dinosaurs did NOT have a space program.