The Asteroid Scare

[The Jedi Master]

Found this, it's pretty interesting, thought I'd share: http://rense.com/general50/asteroidscarepromptsNASA.htm. It's about how NASA thought an asteroid with enough power to wipe out a small city was going to hit within days.

One of the things I'm confused by is that they never seriously considered contacting Washington. Is it just me, or is an asteroid that could destroy a good chunk of Manhattan a good reason to call the POTUS? In fact, I would also want them to contact the UN, all the major space agencies and companies, major world leaders, the B612 Foundation and possibly the military. Yes, I do think that it would be worthy of that response.

[Brotoro]

That article (from 2004) says that NASA did create protocols for contacting officials after this incident.

[The Jedi Master]

EDIT: Whoops, read wrong. Sorry.

[Accelerando]

A google search for the article title reveals no results from major news vendors and plugging the article into Space.com yields only these finds. Rense is also apparently a conspiracy theorist. It reminds me of those "official news articles" you can find only on scattered websites around the net that tell you about how scientists found A-bomb-irradiated skeletons at Mohenjo-Daro. How are you sure this stuff is legit?

EDIT: Looks like I misread, myself. Seems the article was there but is now a dead link. Still, curious that there aren't any major repros of it.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Accelerando
Forgot to add the right link

[The Jedi Master]

A google search for the article title reveals no results from major news vendors and plugging the article into Space.com yields only these finds. Rense is also apparently a conspiracy theorist. It reminds me of those "official news articles" you can find only on scattered websites around the net that tell you about how scientists found A-bomb-irradiated skeletons at Mohenjo-Daro. How are you sure this stuff is legit?

Search "2004 Asteroid Scare" into Google. The EXACT SAME ARTICLE appears on the USA TODAY website.

[Accelerando]

Search "2004 Asteroid Scare" into Google. The EXACT SAME ARTICLE appears on the USA TODAY website.

I see. Sorry, my ego was speaking up there.

[magnemoe]

That article (from 2004) says that NASA did create protocols for contacting officials after this incident.

Sounds a lot like the tsunami in Indonesia, US geologists measured it but had no channels to contact Thailand where fast communication would save lots of lives as nobody thought that US earthquake centers should need direct communications with other countries.