And you say you’re laughing out loud?

I have for months been reading the regulars post here and been amused at their repeated displays of gullibility concerning commercial space schemes. You attack me like pit bulls every chance because my comments reveal what your real agendas are.

Sorry, but I don’t want someone so completely clueless about space technology, launch economics, and logic on my side. I’d rather you unwittingly sabotage the enemy, as you do with almost every comment.

I think you have an unhealthy fixation with 5 seg boosters. Why would you stick them on a Delta Heavy? To tear the core to pieces?

Well, let’s slap a pair of 5 segments on a Delta IV heavy making it an actual heavy and go kick some asteroid ass.

Sign me up Rand, I will work with you on this; as long as you allow for some kind of an HLV to put up the big pieces, and nuclear weapons/energy, I will be on your side in this.

False. Protection of the nation is a legitimate and necessary function of the federal government, not the planet. For instance, if we knew that a city in (say) China was going to be hit by a smallish object, there would be no constitutional responsibility for the federal government to do anything about it. Which isn’t to say that we wouldn’t, of course.

But there is currently no agency in the federal government with a charter for protecting either the nation, or the planet, from extraterrestrial events, and none that I would trust with the job. I would propose establishing a Space Guard for such purposes, under DHS (or better yet, Commerce, if we can get rid of DHS), attach it to the Air Force in the same manner as the Coast Guard supports the Navy, and restructuring federal space policy in the process. It would pick up a lot of what NASA and the Air Force (and Commerce, and DOT) currently do, and have that new responsibility as well.

A clean-sheet organization would be much more focused on the task than giving it to NASA or the Air Force (this is why, for example, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization was established in the eighties — because it was clear that the Air Force wasn’t interested in the job).

I did not thank you for replying to the questions to Rand. Care to take a try at answering them?

No, it doesn’t. Nowhere does it say NASA is going to defend the US against . It only tells NASA to look for potential objects.

The threat is in space- you have to leave earth to intercept the threat.