With all of the government spending and stimulus spending going on these days, this…

…is the program that doesn’t have enough funding.

Not the Send-the-Asteroid-into-the-Earth program.  The Find-Big-Asteroids-That-Could-Collide-with-The-Earth one.

I can already see Obama talking about this at a Town Hall meeting:

“You know, there’s a lot of people out there who say ‘this government isn’t protecting the Earth from major asteroid collisions, so it must want people dead.’  Nothing can be further from the truth.  We simply don’t believe in investing money in a program that has the potential to saves everyone’s lives.”

I’m a believer in some government – you know, a “protect me from invaders and protect me from fraud” kind of government.  Oh, and a “protect me from bleeping killer asteroids” government.  If the government isn’t always doing this efficiently, that’s forgivable.  But, for some reason, you’d think that something big enough like being protected from bleeping killer asteroids would be high on the list of priorities!  The U.S. government isn’t even funding the NASA program to identify the potential killers!

Says Wired:

Without more funding, NASA will not meet its goal of tracking 90 percent of all deadly asteroids by 2020, according to a report released today by the National Academy of Sciences.

The agency is on track to soon be able to spot 90 percent of the potentially dangerous objects that are at least a kilometer (.6 miles) wide, a goal previously mandated by Congress.

Asteroids of this size are estimated to strike Earth once every 500,000 years on average and could be capable of causing a global catastrophe if they hit Earth. In 2008, NASA’s Near Earth Object Program spotted a total of 11,323 objects of all sizes.

But without more money in the budget, NASA won’t be able to keep up with a 2005 directive to track 90 percent of objects bigger than 460 feet across. An impact from an asteroid of this size could cause significant damage and be very deadly, particularly if it were to strike near a populated area.

No wonder private space exploration like Virgin Galactic is on track to open up the stars way faster and cheaper than the government can do it.

I guess the space lobby isn’t quite as loud or rich as the AARP or the environmental lobby, huh?

Some will say “Dan, you unreasonable boob, what if the chances are only .0001% we get destroyed in the next twenty years?”  Since the existence of humanity is on the line, I’d say we shouldn’t exactly take our chances.

The government will pay you $4,500 for a stupid hunk of metal it deems a “clunker.”  But when it comes to protecting humanity from annihilation, funds are low.