What the YR4 Drama Tells us About Techno-Hype

The past several weeks have seen the danger posed to Earth by Near Earth Objects return to the news in connection with what, for a short time, seemed the exceptional level of risk posed by the asteroid YR4 (scientists briefly estimating an unprecedented 3 percent chance of the possibly "city-killing" object hitting Earth in 2032, since fallen to a 0.0005 percent level of risk).

I suspect that most of the public will forget all about YR4 in a short period of time, as the whole issue it represents passes out of its mind. Still, the prospect of a real threat was sufficiently well-publicized that some asked what could be done were the threat of a collision with such an object to prove genuine--and got an answer I suspect many found disappointing, namely "Not much." The reason was that the successful execution of such a mission might require as much as a decade's lead time, and an impact in 2032 meant that the "window of opportunity" might already have closed.

As is commonly the case when the "experts" tell the public that a very desirable thing cannot be done it seemed that the misanthropes and pseudo-intellectual snobs who people the web's fora had a big laugh at the expense of those who simply do not appreciate the complicated, exacting and unforgiving nature of such a mission, while sneering at those who get their notions about technical feasibility from Michael Bay movies (perhaps the more in as the was not exactly new information).

Still, it seems to me that those disappointed to learn this have better grounds for thinking so than the mockery would suggest. After all, the threat is one that has been well-known to the public for decades. They are told of the existence of "Space Forces," and even agencies devoted to planetary defense specifically. They are well aware that their governments, whose spokespersons endlessly tell them "There's no money" for anything that might improve their daily lives as they inflict austerity without cease upon them, officially spend well over $2 trillion a year on what is (usually euphemistically) called defense, and less officially much more, with much of the money going to programs that seem relevant--as they are devoted to watching the sky, putting things into space, making big bangs. And of course, they are always being told about "INNOVATION!" which will "CHANGE EVERYTHING!" After all, consider the miracles of space access and space development people were told "Newspace" would accomplish simply because the "entrepreneurs" that the George Gilders treat as God on Earth were now on the job.

On the basis of all that one is not entirely unreasonable to expect that with all that the capacity to protect the Earth against existential risks of this nature might at least be making greater strides than has been seen to date--and indeed to see in the "actually existing" level of planetary defense capability something not only disappointing, or worrying, but an indictment of the status quo in a way that makes worthwhile another mention of disaster movies like Armageddon. It is certainly true that such works have misled the public by giving them the impression that our technology is far more advanced than it really is, our means for generating needed new technologies more swiftly responsive than they really are, and above all the willingness or ability of "entrepreneurs" to "make it happen." (Contrary to the NewSpace fantasy so dear to a particular kind of strident web-permeating ideologue, what business, and government, have, in spite of a few interesting developments, like rockets that land themselves on their launch pads Golden Age sci-fi-style, mostly they have been retreading old ground, and even looking to reconstruct capabilities that we had a half century ago, exemplary of which is the struggle to build a new booster merely matching the lift capability of the Saturn V!) However, there is still a worse way in which such depictions have misled them, namely in making them think that the officialdom which oversees their lives consists of essentially intelligent, conscientious people sufficiently earnest about keeping the world in one piece that they can be counted on to rise to the challenge when presented with such a crisis. As government response to climate change, pandemics and much, much else shows--not least, the problem of planetary defense--that image could not possibly be further from the reality.