from Hacker News

NASA is tracking 93% of all giant asteroids that could smash into Earth

by danberger on 10/1/11, 6:44 PM with 4 comments

• by firebones on 10/1/11, 9:57 PM

  How do they come up with the estimated number of asteroids larger than 1 km? Is it based simply on sampling a volume of observed space and extrapolating? Or do they have some way of inferring based on gravitational effects and anomalies?

• by feral on 10/1/11, 11:33 PM

  Is 93% really an acceptable amount of the 'giant asteroids that could smash into Earth' to track?

  Clearly, its a better number than, for example, 50%; and its great that NASA is doing any tracking; but this is an species level existential threat that's being talked about.

  I'd really prefer to live in a world whereby a joint international effort (ideally; or just anyone) was tracking 99.9999% of such asteroids, as a matter of priority.

  I think that the LHC, or the moon landings, were great projects - but shouldn't we do this, first?