David W wrote:

Randall Clague wrote:
> it's never too early to fully fund The Watch.

Hmmm... doctors say that you should not subject a patient to tests which
will have no benefit in makeing treatment decisions; and that's a fairly
sensible position. Programmers have been known to say, "Never test for
an error condition that you're not prepared to handle." - that has a certain
ironic fatalism to it... it may do you no good to see it coming, if it's too
late (or if you don't have the means) to duck. 

One does not usually bother learning how to duck if one hasn't discovered
that he is in danger of being shot.  The more we put dollars into finding
earth crossing asteroids, the more accurately we can determine to what
degree we are in danger, which in turn could lead to the rapid development
of technologies to do something about it, including drastically reduced
launch costs.  My guess is that you would need to have a significant
presence in space (out around the lunar orbit, for instance) to effectively
detect and deflect incoming asteroids due to the delta-v's involved. 
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