Any astronomers or statisticians that can chime in here so I can know what my level of concern should be? Let's say on a scale from 'whatevs' to 'drop all hobbies so I can prep'.
That's not a convincing argument. Jupiter is regularly hit by stuff that's been avoiding it for billions of years. (But "this trajectory doesn't ever cross Earth's orbit" is what we want here.)
What's interesting is that we can search and find stuff in that direction. Previously searches only looked outward away from the sun but theoretical earth grazing asteroids that spend most of their time less than 1 AU from the sun would not be picked up.
There have even been suggestions to send an asteroid searching telescope satellite to some lower orbit around the sun and use that vantage point to look outward towards earth and find anything there. Personally I still think we should do that too.
OK, a better version of my argument is that the fact that we've discovered these new asteroids doesn't mean the risk of disastrous asteroid impacts have gone up.
They were always there, and the trends of the last N million years will continue.
My concern would be that while the issue isn't with these specific asteroids, but rather that our ability to observe asteroids in general. How many other asteroids are we undercounting?
Way more efficient to go up the well to get materials than down the well and have to haul them back up.
Either way space mining is so expensive nobody has done it. Whenever space mining does happen it will be use insitu or bringing things closer to the Sun.
to what end?
Its not cost effective to mine and bring it back to earth... the best bet is to mine for usage in space. I'm yet to see any RnD into technology for that sort of behavior.
Something I'm grumpy about. before we talk about placing humans on mars we should definitely have some sort mining technology expansion.
