In 2012, a meteor blast over Russia injured 400 people just from shattering windows. That explosion was equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT… and there are plenty of more rocks where that came from. So, a new NGO is crowdfunding a solution: Get them before they get us.
The Emergency Asteroid Defense Project is actually pretty simple in overall execution. They want to build what’s called a HAIV, or Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle, an unmanned spacecraft that’s designed to reorient or destroy any city-threatening asteroid at a moment’s notice. In other words, they want to just send something screaming right into the giant rock and blow it to hell.
Lest you think these guys are just being paranoid, in the last 15 years, there have been at least 26 impacts from 1 to 20 or above on the kiloton scale, mostly hitting the ocean. So far, we’ve been lucky, but eventually, our luck’s going to run out and one of these things will nail a populated area.
Besides, if you give them $50, you get the plans to build your own asteroid-smasher. That’s well worth the cost, especially since it might make you your city’s only hope against the asteroid menace.
(via PopSci)