A few days ago, I watched a program about things crashing into the Earth. It was mentioned that even if we found an object, comet or asteroid, that was big enough to do real damage and was calculated to hit us, we wouldn't have time to do anything about it.
We have already gone to asteroids and even crash landed onto one. Plans are to soft land on one. We have done close fly-bys and are planning landings on distant planets. It seems that with enough time and calculation we can place a payload at any point in space we choose. The problem with comets and asteroids seems to be time.
I have no personal knowledge about this, but I would imagine that our government and the Russian government have a few defunct silos laying around unused. We have time now. How about finding a few solid boosters, say ten, and developing them into "generic" lifting vehicles capable of getting a payload out to a comet or asteroid and designed with a standardized payload envelope capable of being modified to carry any sort of device (explosive, propulsive, explorative) that could be developed in the future, and have them standing by until needed. (Yes, I am aware of the possible misuses, but a lot of that could be eliminated by proper monitoring by a well designed bureaucracy. We would have to work on that since we don't have anything like that now anywhere.) That would at least cut back on some of the time factor. It would be better to have SOMETHING in our back pocket than to be running around screaming THE SKY IS FALLING.
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