From Slashdot:
"The Planetary Society invited participants to compete for $50,000 in prizes by designing a mission to rendezvous with and 'tag' a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid. The asteroid Apophis was used as the target for the mission design because it will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of geostationary satellites. The winning mission design is called Foresight, and calls for the use of off-the-shelf parts to undercut the price of other proposals. Here's a PDF of the winning proposal."
Closer than the orbit of geostationary satellites?!?! That's pretty freaking close. That's like getting a hair cut from a guy firing an AK-47 100 yards away.
Imagine how bright that's going to be! I don't think there's much atmosphere up there to burn it up, but the sunlight reflecting is going to be dazzling. I can't wait! I just hope no one forgot to convert the calculations into ft-lbs...cause I haven't built my bomb shelter yet.
Speaking of which, question to my readers: what would you put in your bomb shelter for entertainment? I guess you can assume you'll have a power source.
-SP
