Bruce Willis won't rescue you from the sky falling

Curmudgeons is excited about the remake of the film "When World's Collide." The story is that a gas giant is on a collision course with Earth. It was the first disaster story about cosmic collisions. Every other comet impact, or asteroid impact story is just a pale copycat. The novel was where the plot of a "lottery" was dreamed up to decide who would survive.

In this post-911 world it's to be expected that disaster stories are going to be the norm. Also, I'm told at least, that when society is in a war, horror movies and sci-fi movies become more popular. Right know the world is in War against terror, and so you're seeing movies like this one come out, along with the remake of the "War of the Worlds," and I wouldn't doubt that more are to come.

But Rand Simberg is right when he says that Nuking the flying rock in space Bruce Willis style won't do a thing. The truth is that if a giant rock was heading for earth we wouldn't have the capability to even save ourselves by sending people to another planet to survive. We are really powerless to stop a Dinosaur killer sized asteroid or comet. We have problems just building a space station on time and on budget how do we expect, even in a 100 years, to build something that could take down a celestial body?

The only way to ensure survival of the human race is to have a colony somewhere off this floating blue spec.