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Re: US DOD FIREBALL RELEASE

>   Went up to the hearing last Thursday and the 
>Representatives thought that they had given NASA
>enough money for this and that they had told NASA
>to do it 5 years ago but NASA had spent the money 
>elsewhere.  

News to me.  How much money did they say they put up?

>> The point is, the asteroid program has been >underfunded. Case in
>>point, a report was presented to >Congress by NASA in 1995 for a NEO
>>program that cost >only about $5 million year.  Congress did not fund
>>it. 

>That's the funny thing: the members of the House 
>Space Subcommittee thought that they had received
>this report, which they referred to as the "Shoemaker
>Report", in 1993, and that at that time they had instructed NASA to
>put more resources into this area
>at that time.

Then sounds we are talking different reports, as the NEO report I'm
referring to came out in 1995.  Also, note that instructing NASA to
put more resources into an area is not the same as funding the program.

>> I'd rather see a cooperative effort between the AF and NASA. NASA
>>has proposed such in the previously mentioned report.

>But that only covered NASA bumming time on the AF's
>telescopes, which the AF was generous enough to give to NASA. Either
>NASA should build its own 'scopes and let the AF go back to doing the
>kind of work that it needs to do with their own equipment, or the AF
>should be allowed to build some new telescopes and turn over its old
>telescopes to NASA.

Exactly. The asteroid detection with telescopes is the cheap part ($5
million/year).  The actual deflection with nuclear weapons is the expensive 
part (~400 million per launch, billions per year).  There is no real
need to do the expensive part until you've found an actual threat, an asteroid
or comet on an impact course with Earth.  But unfortunately in the real
world today, we are finding that the cheap part, the telescope survey,
is being underfunded.   Doesn't make any sense to fund the 
expensive practice missions, and continue to leave the cheap part underfunded.

Ron Baalke