This is headline-worthy? Mars?? 4%?? Do people not have better things to do with their time? Based on the following quote from Don Yeomans, a space man at NASA, no.
"I think it'll be cool," said Don. "Usually when an asteroid is headed toward Earth, I'm not rooting for an impact."
Usually? So, sometimes you do hope for asteroids to collide with Earth? As long as it hits your house and not mine.
Those of you long-time readers are familiar with how I feel about NASA in general (hint: it's a pointless waste of money and I don't like it) so I literally laughed out loud when I read this quote:
"Should a collision occur, it would likely blast a half-mile-wide crater north of where the rover Opportunity has been exploring since 2004."
They've got to be kidding. What are the odds? We send a rover to a distant planet to do what, I'm not sure (look for life? There's plenty of life here we haven't discovered that's being systematically destroyed by the systematic slashing and burning of the rain forests) and now that little rover, that's probably no bigger than a car, worth tens of millions of dollars, is sitting on a planet and an asteroid could land on it. The irony cracks me up. Seriously, I'm laughing right now. I would LOVE it if an asteroid the size of a football field landed on the Mars Rover. I'm envisioning it happening over and over again in my mind and I can't stop laughing.
Original article from USA Today.
Photo courtesy of here.
