Easterbrook in Atlantic Monthly - NASA Not Preventing Possible Space Rock Catastrophe

[Keith]

In typical Gregg Easterbrook fashion, this article is was too long for it's own good, but given we live in Space City, I figure more than a few us would be interested and have an opinion on it (or Easterbrook ).

Snipped from the middle of the article:

Wouldn’t shifting NASA’s focus away from wasting money on the moon and toward something of clear benefit for the entire world—identifying and deflecting dangerous space objects—be a surer route to enhancing national prestige? But NASA’s institutional instinct is not to ask, “What can we do in space that makes sense?” Rather, it is to ask, “What can we do in space that requires lots of astronauts?” That finding and stopping space rocks would be an expensive mission with little role for the astronaut corps is, in all likelihood, the principal reason NASA doesn’t want to talk about the asteroid threat.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroids