Asteroid Defense Essay, Research Paper

Asteroid Defense

When it comes down to developing a way to defend the entire planet from

destruction I am all for it. A large asteroid or comet hitting the earth is not

a common occurrence. But it has happened many times before and when it does

happen again the asteroid may wipe out all life, including humans. If our

government did develop an anti-asteroid defense system, it would not only have

to protect our country, but the whole planet.

If we had such technology we would first have to be very sure it would

work. We wouldn?t want to shoot a nuclear weapon at an asteroid just to have it

break into multiple pieces and have those pieces raining down on Earth. One of

the most important parts of defending our planet would be to find and chart

every asteroid that could threaten us. That would be a very tedious and never

ending job, but is necessary for the defense system to work. It would do us

humans no good to have some sort of defense against asteroids if we don?t know

when they will strike.

So after thinking about an anti-asteroid defense system, I think that

our government should look into constructing one. When one thinks about what an

asteroid could do to our planet it is usually a very scary thought. In the past

we have been very lucky with where asteroids have hit our earth. Back in 1908

in the Tunguska region of Siberia, an object from space hit there causing miles

of forest to be devastated. If that same object had hit New York, it would have

probably been like a 20 megaton bomb going off in Times Square. That would have

completely altered history. What makes it worse is that it is thought that a

small comet hit in Tunguska. What if a huge comet had hit there? These

examples are very good reasons why I think that humankind needs to come up with

a way to stop asteroids or any other type of object that could kill off all life

on earth.