Bus-Sized Asteroid Hurtles Past Earth

[kentonio]

Don't be fatuous. The likelihood that it will happen in any of our lifetimes, or our children's lifteimes, or grandchildren's lifetimes is vanishingly small.

Except it isn't. Here's a video showing a visualization of the asteroids that have collided with the planet since 2000. The largest was 600kt and happened last year. Guess what would have happened if that had hit say New York or Beijing.

http://www.space.com/25590-asteroid-...612-video.html

[BlackCat]

Description of a working tractor beam - though, it will be a bit problematic to get it to work on an asteroid

[Ben Kenobi]

then ~108 people die per year from catastrophic asteroid impacts. Don't you care that some of those 108 might be rich?

Given the average earnings that would put a price tag of about 108 per 13k or so, so only about 1.4 million a year. Any solution that costs more than this is a bad investment.