How Stupid Are We Anyway?

I’m cranky today. Very, very, cranky. I have a bad cold, and a cough which is trying to become pneumonia. On top of that the morning started out badly with one of my cats jumping up on a high windowsill where I had a tray of just-sprouted chive seedlings, knocking it into the sink below. I had to stand at the sink and pick teeny-weeny green sprouts out of mud. A frying pan had been left in the sink to soak and the tray with the seedlings had fallen into it. This was all before I could make coffee. Any time something interferes with my morning coffee making process it pisses me off. So, when I say I’m very, very, cranky, I’m understating it.

To add to my crankiness I’m under the influence of Jack Rebney. Who, you may ask? He is better known as The Winnebago Man. I watched the documentary of the same name last night. If you are unfamiliar with him, I suggest you look it up and watch it before you read on or at least watch the YouTube videos of him. I admire his no-holds-barred, highly opinionated openness. He is educated, erudite and cranky. In 1989 the Winnebago corporation employed him as the host of a video to be distributed to  their dealerships. Even then, more than two decades ago, he was cranky and to add to this the video was taped in the oppressive, Midwestern August heat. Due to his histrionics, the crew decided to leave the cameras rolling between takes and edited together a series of profanity – laced outtakes. Eventually someone posted this to YouTube and it went viral. 

Therefore; I’m going to rant.

Something has been bothering me for some time now. When I say “some time,” I mean decades. For me, it’s like a piece of irremovable shrapnel from a war wound. Every once in a while something aggravates it, lets me know that it is still there. I’ll start with the most recent incident and progress backwards.

An asteroid (2012 LZ1) passed uncomfortably close to the Earth a couple of days ago. This is nothing unusual. What is unusual and quite frankly terrifying is that we only spotted it five days before it crossed our path. It missed us by 3.3 million miles. You might think that this is a huge distance but on an astronomical scale it is tiny. I’ll put it like this: You are happily driving down a road, minding your own business, obeying all traffic laws when a car runs a stop sign. The driver just blows right through it, perhaps the driver is drunk or being chased by the cops – he doesn’t even slow down. He passes by your rear bumper at a distance of five feet. Five feet! That’s 3.3 million miles in astronomical terms. Lets add another factor to this; lets say that it is very foggy and you didn’t even see him until two seconds before he passed into the intersection. There would not have been time to make an evasive maneuver. Most people, after such an incident, would say something like “Wow! That was a close one!” Many would have to change their underwear.

This is pretty much what happened to the Earth on Thursday June 14, 2012. No one is changing their underwear because of it and few outside the scientific community are even saying “Wow! That was close!” In fact, most people are completely unaware that it even happened. The few news organizations that reported it relegated it to a small story in the science section. Sure, there was no danger of 2012 LZ1 hitting us but the really, really scary part is that we didn’t see it coming. If it’s trajectory had been off by that much (I’m making the really small gesture with my right hand) it would have plowed right into us at approximately 40,000 miles per hour. As asteroids go, 2012 LZ1 isn't that big – about the size of a city block – far smaller than the asteroid that is theorized to have caused the “TK event” - the mass extinction 65 million years ago but, this would have been no minor event by any means.

From what I understand this is what would have happened: As the asteroid entered the atmosphere the air in front of it would have compressed and superheated to thousands of degrees. Thus, anything directly under it would have simply vaporized just before impact. If it hit a land mass that includes all structures, trees, people, cats and dogs, everything. In the more likely event that it hit a body of water, the water would instantaneously vaporize, probably all the way down to the sea bed. Even if it hit the deepest part of the world ocean, the Marianas Trench, the water would barely slow it down at eleven miles per second – more than fourteen times faster then the muzzle velocity of the fastest bullet.

Upon impact it would gouge out a crater at least 1,800 feet deep and five miles wide. Anyone within fifty miles would be instantly killed by either the shockwave or heat. 200+ mile per hour winds would be generated that would flatten anything within a hundred mile radius and a magnitude 7+ earthquake would be generated for hundreds of miles. An ocean impact would kick up a tsunami that would make the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami look like a ripple in a duck pond.

The immediate death toll estimate varies greatly depending on the point of impact.  If it hit close to a major city, it could exceed 10 million. If it hit in some unpopulated region such as Siberia or Antarctica the death toll could be comparable low – under 100,000. However, the long term consequences are far worse. The impact would  kick ash and dust into the atmosphere. Some of this would settle in a suffocating layer. If it hit land, the fireball would start wildfires that would generate vast amounts of smoke. The dust and smoke would block enough sunlight to effectively end the growing season and perhaps the next as well. Mass starvation would ensue. Panic? You bet there would be panic. Once food shortages start to hit hard, I can’t imagine how grocery stores could even operate. They would simply be over-run by violent mobs. Governments would have to seize all the food and ration it. It is not inconceivable that one third to one half of world population would die – that is two to three billion people – billion, with a B. It is also very likely – almost a certainty - that war would break out over resources. Most likely between small, third world countries which have limited resources to begin with, but the major powers could well become involved as a consequence.

Even if you are a bit hazy on the whole “good / bad” thing, this is a bad scenario. You’ll may well die and it won’t be pleasant. If you are lucky you’ll just get killed by the impact rather than starve to death, suffocate under the layer of ash, die from cholera or some other nasty disease that has run rampant or be killed by a mob or cannibalistic scavengers.

Yeah it’s bad, real bad, a bummer, ponderous. But not as bad as it could be. If a larger object hit the Earth – say something the size of the KT Event asteroid – it would be pretty much all over. It is possible that there might be some survivors, people in deep, government bunkers built during the cold war, but they would emerge to find a devastated planet. So what are we doing to prevent such a thing? Nothing. Well, almost nothing. There are a few astronomers, both armature and professional who scan the skies as best they can with the limited recourses available to them. And astronomical recourses are limited. It takes months, if not years, to get a slot on the major telescopes and to my knowledge there are no major telescopes dedicated to scanning the skies for possible threats. NASA operates the Deep Space Network; three large antennas used to:

 “support interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.”

If it detects an asteroid barreling towards the Earth, it’s a fluke. That’s not what the DSN was built for.

There is no such thing as “Deep Space Radar.” That exists only in science fiction. In fact, an alarmingly large percentage of the asteroids that have buzzed the Earth (Near Earth Objects – NEO) have been detected by amateurs. The sky is big. Scanning the whole thing is quite a task.

Obviously, as evidenced by the “well it’s too late not to do anything anyway” detection of 2012 LZ1 we are clearly not doing enough to find these things. Pretty stupid when considering the damage they could do. Think about it this way; Lets say, just for the sake of argument, that one out every 20,000 new homes is built with a high explosive bomb hidden within the structure that will go off at random. If you bought a new home, wouldn’t you look for it? Wouldn’t you hire a professional with a bomb sniffing dog to come in and check? Or would you just move in, sleep soundly in your bed, eat Count Chocula at your breakfast table each morning and sit comfortably in your living room watching America’s Got Talent knowing that at any minute you could be blown to atoms? No. I think you’d look for the bomb.

There is the argument that even if we could detect Earth threatening objects we couldn’t do anything about it anyway. The people who say such things are blithering idiots. We could do something about it if we weren’t so damn stupid and by “we” I mean society in general.

We dismantled our Space Shuttle program. We did so before a suitable replacement was ready. Incidentally, there was no suitable replacement in development. Every project to develop a Space Shuttle replacement was cancelled. Smart, eh?

Vehicles like the Space Shuttle are what is known as “Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles – HLLV.” The Space Shuttle could lift almost 50,000 Lbs (22,400Kg) to low Earth orbit (LEO). The only other comparable HLLVs are the Delta IV-H (USA, 50,596 Lbs to LEO) and the Arianne 5ECA (French, 46,297 to LEO) rockets. But they are just that; rockets. Neither is currently configured for manned flight nor do they have the versatility of the Space Shuttle with it’s garage–like payload bay with manipulator arm (Canadarm), ability for extended flight (the record was 17 days) and it’s ability to be configured to a wide variety of specialized missions. It was also a reusable vehicle. This is important,  considering that what we are talking about here is intercepting an asteroid on short notice. It doesn’t have to be built from scratch every time. Conceivably, we could keep one ready to go all the time. We could also have more than one “in the air” at a time as well. There are two launch pads for the Shuttle at Cape Canaveral. On several occasions both of them had fully assembled shuttles sitting on them. Also it is conceivable that more than one shuttle could have been used on a mission to intercept an Earth threatening object. One could have carried the crew and a specialized NEO diverter with another carrying the extra fuel for the mission. Such a mission would be preferable to having either part of, or all of the mission relying on unmanned, remotely controlled / robotically controlled vehicles. But the Space Shuttle is gone. And that’s that. The Soviets developed a space shuttle, The Bruan. It flew a few test flights, one unmanned to LEO, then the soviet union collapsed, they parked the vehicle in a hanger, it sat neglected and then one day after a heavy snow fall the roof collapsed on it. It is even more gone than the Space Shuttle. 

I should point out that The Space Shuttle never left the confines of Earth orbit. Only one type of manned vehicle ever has; the Apollo missions. It’s pathetic actually. Only during those missions did we ever attempt to leave the Earth. And then, after a few missions to the moon, we just quit. That was forty years ago. Absolutely pathetic. One might say that we deserve to be completely wiped out by some huge space rock.

Apollo used the Saturn V Rocket which had the honor of being designated as a Super Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (SHLLV). It was a whopper. Nothing even came close with to it’s 7,684,000 lbs of thrust and the ability to deliver 262,000 lbs to LEO and 100,000 lbs to the moon. Actually, something did come close – sort of; The Soviet N-1. It was about the same size as the Saturn V but was a completely different design. It was a huge disaster. There were four launches. When it didn’t explode on the ground, it exploded in the air. Lots of people died and one of the launch pad explosions is said to have been the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time. There are no more SHLLVs.

I once heard a rumor that NASA kept a fully functional Saturn V prepped and ready to go at all times. It couldn’t be true. First of all, where would they keep it? It would have to be near the launch pad and the only building big enough at that location is the Vehicle Assembly Building and during the shuttle Program, it was full of shuttles. But it isn’t a bad idea. In concept anyway. Impractical though when you consider that some parts would degrade over time and would have had to be constantly replaced as well as the fact the technology gradually became obsolete and upgrading it would have involved considerable testing.

My point is that not only do we have a woefully inadequate system to detect Earth threatening objects but we also have a woefully inadequate system – possibly nonexistent – to neutralize them. For the life of me, I don’t know why people won’t wake up to this fact. I guess it is because humanity has never been wiped out by something falling from the sky before. At least not on a grand scale. There is a strong case for the theory that Sodom and Gomorrah were wiped out by a meteorite. But that was an awfully long time ago and it was attributed to the Hand of God because we didn’t know anything about meteorites or asteroids. We thought the Earth was flat and didn’t even know there were seven continents. Perhaps it would have been better for us if that meteorite had hit a little later and in a more conspicuous spot. Say, sometime after the Age of Enlightenment, 1720 for instance, on Vienna. Isaac Newton, for one, would have been smart enough to have said “Something just fell out of the sky and took out Vienna. Bummer!” Of course we couldn’t have done anything at the time to prevent such a thing from happening again but it would have woken people up to the fact that occasionally things do fall out of the sky and cause mass destruction. Look at the moon. It’s pockmarked with craters. It has craters IN craters. There is no air or water there so they are not obscured by erosion. When images from satellite cameras became readily available we started finding impact craters all over the Earth. It was a bit of a shock – at least to the scientific community. The general public (including political leaders) didn’t really notice. We were (and still are to an uncomfortable extent) in denial. Meteor Crater Arizona is a perfect example of this. It is also a perfect example of an impact crater. It is in an arid environment so the elements have not significantly eroded it. Since it’s discovery in the 19^th century it was universally considered to be of volcanic origin until Gene Shoemaker proved otherwise in 1960 and even then it took quite a bit of convincing. If the name Gene Shoemaker is familiar to you it is because he (and David Levy) discovered a comet which subsequently slammed into Jupiter. There’s all kinds of shit flying around out there. Still in denial? Anyone with a computer can find impact craters on the Earth. Lake Manicouagan in Quebec is a real obvious one. Google Earth has a nice shot of it. Now, it is a circular lake but 214 million years ago it was hell on Earth. Lake Manicouagan is one of the oldest known impact craters. There are 182 confirmed impact structures in the Earth Impact Database. This takes into account the impact structures that are still recognizable as impact structures and those which can be confirmed as impact structures. The Earth has been hit by sizable objects way more than 182 times. Most of the evidence has been obliterated by the very active atmosphere and crust of the planet. In fact there was a time when the Earth was positively bombarded with all kinds of crap falling from the sky. Appropriately, this is known as “The Period of Late Heavy Bombardment.” It was an awfully long time ago, at least 3.8 billion years and is theorized to have occurred when the big planets did a sort of square dance and knocked all kinds of stuff out of the asteroid belt. 

I’m not suggesting that this sort of thing will or can happen again. The big planets are pretty stable in their orbits. But after all that ranting my points are:

1.       We, as an intelligent, technological species, are not sufficently aware that a cataclysmic event, possibly an extinction level event, could be caused by an object hitting the Earth.

2.      We have not taken adequate steps, even though we are capable, to detect such objects early enough to be able to neutralize such objects.

3.       We have not secured the means to neutralize such objects and in fact have abandoned technology which could neutralize them.

What went wrong? First of all, it’s all about attitude. There are too many idiots and nuts running around. There are the doomsdayers. Don’t think for one nanosecond that I’m one of them. I do not believe in prophesy. Period. Because the Mayan calendar ended on a certain date doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. It just means that it’s time for the Mayans to start a new calendar. And by the way, where are the Mayans now? They got wiped out. Why didn’t they see that coming? And don’t get me started on Nostradamus either. His quatrains are written in a language and style that can be interpreted as anything you want it to be. I could interpret one to predict the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series next year however unlikely that may be. Then there is the “chicken little” syndrome. An asteroid or comet hitting the Earth is too close to “the sky is falling” and you get accused of being a panicky kook. The sky has never fallen before therefore it never will fall. Just as I have never dropped dead from a heart attack therefore I never will drop dead from a heart attack. This is why I state that it probably would have been better for humanity if a significant impact with great loss of life and property had occurred within the last few hundred years. It would have been a wake up call. Unfortunately there would be those who thought of it as a one time event. “Lightening doesn’t strike twice, can’t happen again.” Which is, of course, bullshit.

However I believe the event would have awakened enough educated people, particularly scientists, to the danger. The more recent the event the more serious the danger would be perceived to be. The Tunguska event, for example occurred in 1909. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, Tunguska is in a very remote part of the world; Siberia. The swampy, mosquito-thick taiga of southern Siberia to be specific where, even now, the human population density is very low. Therefore the event went almost unnoticed by the outside world. People in London noticed a strange light in the night sky but were more concerned about whether they would be able to get tickets for the next performance of The Mikado. In fact, it took the Soviet Government thirteen years to send someone out there to find out what had happened. Granted they were kind of busy what with the Russian Revolution and World War One and all. But despite all kinds of wacky theories about alien space ships exploding and Nikola Tesla’s death ray it is generally accepted that something fell out of the sky and exploded, in the air, with the force equivalent to 10 to 20 megatons of TNT. Had this airburst occurred over London instead of an area inhabited only by trees, mosquitoes and a few scattered nomadic tribesman, not only would the 1908 revival of The Mikado have been a complete failure but comparatively modern scientists would have been shockingly and suddenly made aware of the danger of shit falling from the sky and killing vast numbers of people.

Indeed, it could have influenced such people as Werner von Braun, who would be born four years later in Germany. Von Braun, in case you don’t know, was THE rocket guy of the 20^th century. He had dreamt of flying to the moon since he was a kid but unfortunately got sidetracked by a guy with a Charley Chaplin mustache who wanted to conquer the world. The complete and utter destruction of a city like London (by an extraterrestrial impact, not Nazi V- weapons) might have planted the idea in his head that his rockets could be used to prevent such a thing (or if Der Fuhrer ordered it, to cause to it.) Thus when the disagreements of the mid 20^th century ended and Mr. von Braun went to work for NASA, a Near Earth Object Detection and Neutralization System might have been one of the things that he helped develop while he helped us win the race to the Moon.

Arthur C. Clark, another man who I admire greatly, proposed a similar scenario in his 1972 novel “Rendezvous With Rama.” I read this book as a teenager soon after it was first published. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I am so adamant about this subject. Yes, I read a lot of science fiction. Call me a geek. I don’t care. The story starts out in 2077 when an asteroid smacks into northeastern Italy. Among other things, Venice sinks. Glub, glub. This wakes up the powers that be enough so that they set up the Space Guard System. The system worked and many years later it detected a genuine alien spacecraft trucking past Jupiter. The exciting adventure continues from there. But that is not what concerns me. The point is that Mr. Clark illustrated that more often than not people have to die before authorities take action. Roads are a perfect example of this. Often a dangerous intersection gets a traffic signal only after a fatal accident occurs there. To be blunt, there is a definite danger that a large asteroid could strike Earth and wipe us all out before we could do anything about it. With the hardware we now have available, we very well may not be able to prevent such a catastrophe even with advance warning. We know for a fact that asteroid 9994 “Apophis” will make a pass at the Earth in April 2029. It is calculated that it will pass so close that it will be able to look up and see our communication satellites. It’s slightly smaller than 2012 LZ1 but if the calculations are off and it strikes Earth, that would be still be a very bad day indeed.

At this point what concerns me is that all of this is common knowledge and I don’t see or hear of anyone doing anything about it. What should we do? I’m glad you asked.

First of all we shouldn’t have put the space program on the back burner after we reached the moon. There were plans for a space station, a moon base and a mars mission with an eventual base there. We didn’t do any of that. The International Space Station is a far cry from the US Space Station that was planned and came about way later than the latter was supposed to. Skylab was a poor, short lived substitute. If we had continued with space stations and extraterrestrial bases we would be far better equipped now to both detect and neutralize Earth threatening objects. But that’s water under the bridge. We can’t do anything about that now.

For detection we need a series of orbiting, optical telescopes. A bunch of them. Enough to cover the whole sky full time. They don’t have to be big and elaborate, like the Hubble, but they need to be connected to a ground system dedicated solely to and designed specifically to detect possible Earth threatening objects.

We need deep space RADAR. I don’t know a whole awful lot about RADAR. I know the basics: A cavity magnetron emitting microwave radiation which bounces off objects and is picked up by an antenna. I’m pretty sure this requires a lot of power which means that it either has to be ground based or powered by some heavy duty generating equipment (probably nuclear) if we are talking about a space based system. It may have to be a space based system too. I’m not sure how far out RADAR can penetrate. We can easily bounce RADAR signals off the moon but that’s just down the block in astronomical terms and what we are talking about is spotting potential nasties when they are way out, past Jupiter. I doubt that a ground based system could do this. An ideal system would employ satellites. But not satellites of the Earth, satellites orbiting the sun, just as the Earth and all the other planets do. They would, by necessity have to be a bit on the large side and, as I mentioned, they would probably be power hogs. Perhaps large solar arrays would do the trick. I don’t know but if we have to go nuclear we should, despite what the “no nukes” crowd says. The biggest danger of putting nuclear materials into space is during launch. If the launch vehicle fails (explodes) there is a danger of spreading radio-active stuff all over the place. But I have seen footage of nuclear material container tests. It involved a rocket powered locomotive ramming into one of the nuclear container spheres. The sphere didn’t break. The locomotive did though. We have put nuclear materials into space plenty of times before. For fifty years, all but one of the NASA robotic space probes carried nuclear power units. Not one accident. Be that as it may I think I can say with some certainty that we have the technology to set up a deep space radar system.

Then there is a dilemma of what to do if and when we detect something headed our way. There has been a lot of speculation about this. There have also been several completely ridiculous movies made about it. Therefore I won’t write much about it. Suffice to say though the popular idea of simply blowing up an asteroid with an H-bomb won’t work. There are several reasons why but the main one is that the asteroid will still hit us, it will just be in smaller chunks and will spread the damage over a larger area. The best idea is to simply give the asteroid a shove and change it’s trajectory so it misses us. Again, there has been a lot of thinking about the best way to do this but the long and short of it is that we need to get there to do it. Whether the mission is manned or robotic it will still involve getting a lot of hardware a long, long way from home. We need HLLVs (Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles, remember?) We might even need a SHLLV. I won’t remind you what that means. You should be paying attention. This is important stuff. We are trying to save the world for God’s sake.

If it were up to me, if I were the President of The United States, and at this point it’s pretty clear that I never will be but that is beside the point, I would order that all the Space Shuttle orbiters be recalled from the museums and other display locations and undergo immediate and thorough, refurbishing in preparation for return to service. I’d even go so far as to order two new orbiters be constructed to replace the Challenger and the Columbia. I would then order that the programs to develop a better, more modern replacement for the Shuttle be re-started and I would be damn sure to kick ass if something tangible didn’t come out of it within a couple years time. I would at the least have a long serious talk with the top rocket scientists and weigh all the options with the current operational launch vehicles.

I didn’t talk about this in the section about the Saturn V. But there were plans for a successor – an even bigger rocket. Werner von Braun proposed using eight of the Saturn V’s massive, F-1 engines for this rocket instead of the five used on the Saturn V. Nothing ever came of it despite many different proposals. It might be a wise to revisit this idea in case we have to get a really massive piece of equipment into deep space in a hurry. Just sayin.

Suffice to say that we need to get our manned, heavy lifters going again, be they modifications of operational rockets, recalled Space shuttles or new technology. We should not drag our feet on it though as this past week has shown us that something very bad can come out of nowhere with no warning.

I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t state that in my opinion the entire American space program with it’s “beat the Russians” attitude was a big mistake. Quite frankly rockets are a mistake. Sure they are spectacular and exciting but we were on the right track with aerospace planes way back in the late 1940s. If we had kept up their development instead of switching our best efforts to rockets we would be ahead of the game now and I probably wouldn’t be writing this. But in 1957 the Soviet Union managed to get a silver ball to orbit the Earth and go “beep” loudly enough so that anyone with the right kind of radio could tell it was up there.  It threw us into a panic and the race was on. Rockets were the quickest, easiest way to space. If you don’t know what an aerospace plane is, the concept goes like this: You fly off in a great big airplane and go way up high. Then you drop a little plane with rocket motors. The little plane goes up into space, does whatever you want to do in space and comes back down and lands just like a regular plane. Simple isn’t it? In concept it is but as you might guess there are a few technical problems to work out. These were “The X-Planes,” the most famous of which was the first supersonic plane, the X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager. By 1963, even though aerospace plane development was no longer a priority, the X-15 had climbed to a height of 67 miles -  the edge of space. Had we concentrated on this technology instead of switching to rockets, I feel pretty safe saying that we would now be routinely launching aerospace vehicles into space that take off from and land on a conventional airport style runway. I doubt that the Soviet Union would have beaten us to the moon either considering what we now know about their space program.

But like the Space Shuttle, it’s too late now. We dropped that technology in favor of rockets. If there is one ray of hope, there is new interest in aerospace planes. Spaceship One, the first civilian craft to enter space, is an aerospace plane. It flew to 367,000 feet – just above the “Kármán Line” - the accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Encouraging, but there is a long way to go before anything like that can intercept an Earth – killing asteroid.

You might look at my suggestions and think that they are preposterous because they are incredibly expensive. I know they are expensive – billions and billions of dollars. Ok. Keep the money. Don’t spend it. Die. However I think Lewis Black, the comedian, has the right idea. A project to stimulate the economy:

“What you do is build a big fucking thing. I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s big and it’s a fucking thing! And then the economy will explode!”

There is an awful lot of truth to this. If a Saturn V rocket doesn’t qualify as a “big fucking thing,” what does?! During the “space race” the American economy was robust and vibrant. It employed a hell of a lot of people. Not just “rocket scientists” who worked at NASA, there were hundreds, if not thousands of sub-contractors who made a mind bogglingly diverse assortment of products; space suits, space food, gaskets, nozzles, goggles, hoses, tanks, valves, zero gravity pens, zero gravity barf bags, zero gravity toilets, spray oil to keep seagull shit from sticking to rockets. The development of the Lunar Module alone kept thousands employed by Grumman in Long Island. But no. We don’t want to do this even though it could well save the world from total annihilation and get our stagnant economy going again. How stupid are we anyway?
Update 7-1-12:
Apparently someone was listening. I found this article on the national Geographic News site:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120628-first-private-asteroid-mission-sentinel-b612-nasa-space-science/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ng%2FNews%2FNews_Main+%28National+Geographic+News+-+Main%29
In case you can not access it, it describes a private mission to insert a satellite in an orbit approximately the same distance from the Sun as Venus. The satellite will scan the skies for NEOs, making a complete scan every twenty six days. However, In my humble opinion, this is still far too little. Judging by the way 2012 LZ1 popped up out of nowhere, twenty six days is not nearly a high enough frequency. It will also scan only the inner solar system. As I said, we need to be able to detect these things when they are in the outer solar system. Still though, this is s step in the right direction.

It has been said that one forgets a dream almost immediately upon awakening. People have tried various techniques to retain their dreams including keeping a voice recorder beside their bed. I've never tried that particular technique because I have heard that the results are less then desirable - the recording comes out sounding like: "I waa ina biii blaaaa groooo gwig ta blaaaa."

I'm fairly certain that such would be the case with me as when I awaken each morning, It takes me a considerable time to even remember who I am and / or where I am.

So, not too long ago, after a particular vivid dream I decided to make a conscious effort (involving about a half gallon of strong coffee) to remember the dream I had had the night before and write it down. This is the result:

Was This a Nightmare?

I've often wondered what the difference between a nightmare and a dream is. I suppose a nightmare is simply a frightening or disturbing dream. However, it can be a fine line between what is frightening and / or disturbing  and what is not. Quite frankly, I think that even my most mundane dreams would frighten or disturb the average person whose mind is not completely twisted. Then you get into the territory of night terrors. I, thankfully, have been spared these but I have known people who have experienced them. One of the guys who lived in the dormitory room next to mine in college experienced night terrors. He would wake everyone up in the wee small hours with blood - curdling screams. I asked him a couple of times what he was dreaming about during these episodes. He never wanted to talk about it. We was a nice guy (I suppose he still is) but a wee bit unhinged, I think. He once bolted out of his room and smashed an acoustic guitar to pieces in the hallway for no apparent reason. 
But I digress: The dream, or nightmare, call it what you will, that I had last night was bizarre in anyone's book. It went like this:

I was an apprentice limousine driver. I don't even know if there are such things, if they train limo drivers this way, but that is what I was doing. I sat in the passenger seat and rode shotgun while the pro drove this gigantic stretch limo. The only problem was that this guy was a huge, fat, hairy, smelly guy who barely spoke English. I know, any decent limo company probably wouldn't hire a guy like that, they are kind of picky about who they hire as drivers but this is a dream (or nightmare) and it doesn't have to make sense. He wore the typical black, limo uniform but is was about two sizes too small and he bulged out of it in embarrassing spots. 
We were driving down the road, I had directions to a hotel where we were to pick up a bunch of pop-stars to take them to a concert - someone along the lines of Flo Rida, Niki Minaj or whoever is big in the top 10, real popular pop stars. I think my addled brain reasoned that was why they sent this gorilla of a driver out to get them, in case they got mobbed by teeny-boppers - for intimidation purposes. We arrived at the hotel and out came the pop stars with their entourages. The climbed in, ignoring us as their hangers-on fawned and giggled. There were something like a dozen people back there. They immediately rolled up the partition window without saying a word to us.
"I bet they stiff us." I said to my mentor.
"Asabet baddja kubatta."
"Um,... Stiff us...That means they won't leave a tip."
"Kumina numa buddakalibidda! Teep."
I gave up trying to talk to the beast, he put the car in gear and we oozed forward. I could tell the limo was clearly underpowered. I could hear the engine laboring under the hood as it tried to accelerate the vehicle's immense mass into motion.
I had directions to the venue written down by the dispatcher (I know what you are thinking. No GPS. This is my dream, occurring in my pre-digital age brain.)
"Turn left here."
He turned right and as he did so he sideswiped a utility pole. The car hung up on it so he put it reverse, gassed it and backed into the intersection. I could hear the crowd in the back making panicked, frightened noises.
"Pull over, pull over! I want to get out and look at it."
"Sheet! Knabulla teripidulleva! Shabidakmulla billidom!"
He just sat there shouting at me so I got out . The side of the passenger door was gouged and scraped. The mirror was hanging by it's wires. Cars in back of us started leaning on their horns. I started to get back in when he threw it in drive and lurched forward. I barely made it back inside when the still open door hit the pole and slammed shut.
"Are you nuts!? You almost killed me. Pull over! You can't just keep going! Pull over!"
He hit the brakes and started to pull to the curb. I could immediately tell that the brakes were undersized for the limo's huge bulk. We banged into the rear bumper of a parked car and came to a stop. I jumped out. The front of the limo was only slightly damaged but the bumper of the parked car was badly dented. The driver - the beast, (that's a good name for him - we'll call him that) came running over and started screaming at me in his indecipherable tongue.
"Why are you screaming at me?!?! Your the one who can't drive this thing!"
He shoved me and I fell backwards. By this time the entire celebrity entourage had piled out and was screaming at both me and The Beast. He turned around and screamed back at them waving his hairy arms and hands wildly. I picked myself up just as a guy in a ringmaster's costume came running out of one of the row homes that lined the street.
"Look what you did to my car! You @^%*&! I'll #$@!^%$#!!!" He pulled out a whip and started threatening me with it. Cracking it, making deafening pops as it's it tip went supersonic. I felt the wind it kicked up on my right ear. I ran around to the other side of the car and told one of the less panicked passengers that I was going to go find a pay phone and call the cops. (Remember, this is my dream and my pre-digital brain. No cellphones)
I ran up the street. I couldn't find a pay phone. I saw a bar around the corner and figured that there would be one in there. Just as I was opening the door the limo came around the corner.  One of the pop star posse people was behind the wheel. She looked like she was about 12 years old. The car stopped and I opened the driver's door. I could see that everyone had gotten back in except The Beast. I figured that was a good thing. Just then he came running around the corner stark naked. Somehow they had managed to subdue him and strip him. Perhaps the ringmaster helped.
"Shit! Slide over, I'll drive!"
But she didn't slide over. Instead she got out and ran to the passenger's side and opened the rear-most door to get back in with her entourage.
"Aaaaah! Hurry up! Here he comes!"
She opened the door and got in. At the same time, I jumped in, threw the car in drive and floored it. The Beast was right on top of us as the engine roared in it's pathetic attempt to pull the gigantic limo's weight into motion. It accelerated excruciatingly slowly. I could do nothing except hold the accelerator to the floor and shout "Come on, come on, go go go!" The Best frantically ran alongside, grasping for the still opened door, his hairy legs pumping, his hairy belly bobbing up and down, his hairy junk swinging back and forth. All I could think of was that if he managed to get in, those people were in for a hell of a ride. I'd just roll up the partition and lock it. But he'd probably smash his way through and it probably wouldn't be right to subject those people to his wrath so it would be better to stop and let them run for it. As I thought this, the car gained enough velocity to outpace him. I saw him in the mirror with a combination of stark panic and rage in his eyes. He made one last desperate, lurching attempt to grab the door handle. He tripped and fell on his hairy, bulbous belly.
Then I woke up. I've had nightmares that were so disturbing that I was unable to get back to sleep, sometimes they hung with me for days, keeping me in a funk. This one wasn't so bad. I sort of enjoyed it. So I went back to sleep.