Thanks to sequestration, we'll never see it coming.
Look toward the heavens in fear:
The Air Force says it can no longer afford to scan the sky for extraterrestrial threats that could doom the planet, all because of the sequester cuts Washington forced on itself when it failed to rein in the exploding national deficit.
Called the Air Force Space Surveillance System, it's "critical" to defense, the Air Force has said. By October 1, they'll have to pull the plug.
In all seriousness, the doomsday scenario here is less
Independence Day and more
Deep Impact or
Armageddon (translation for the pop culture illiterate: asteroids); just this year, a meteor injured more than 1,000 in Russia, and:
NASA announced this June that more than 10,000 asteroids and comets are near Earth (NEO) meaning they will approach uncomfortably close within 28 million miles.
About 1,000 of these are the right size, about half a mile, to potentially unleash global catastrophic devastation to the planet upon impact.
That made enough of an impression that even some House Republicans took a few minutes to give
lip service to the value of science. Though since within weeks they went on to make sequestration go into effect rather than close some corporate tax loopholes, apparently they weren't actually all that concerned. With this announcement that the Air Force Space Surveillance System is endangered, I guess we'll find out where asteroids rank compared with Meals on Wheels or Head Start.