[pdonis]

> we might just all be dead on impact

The asteroids in question are tiny. One of the links in the article under discussion is to a previous article about an asteroid that hit the Earth near Iceland 5 hours after being detected. It was about 3 meters wide. That's way too small to justify worries about global damage on impact.

[henriquez]

Suppose it was a 1km asteroid? How is knowing about it a few extra hours in advance going to help? To give everyone on the planet time to freak out and still not actually do anything about it since there’s nothing we can do?

[pdonis]

> Suppose it was a 1km asteroid?

Then it's a lot easier to see, and we would see it a lot further away. The seeing difficulty issues people are talking about in this thread don't apply to asteroids that large.

[henriquez]

Then who cares?

[throwanem]

Of course you're right. People who might have been warned in time to evacuate, but weren't because there was a Starlink constellation in the way, won't care at all! The dead, after all, are beyond such earthly matters.

[pdonis]

> People who might have been warned in time to evacuate, but weren't because there was a Starlink constellation in the way

This won't happen for an asteroid large enough to be a threat. Those asteroids are easy enough to see that the Starlink constellation does not impede their detection. That was the point of my previous post (the GP of yours).

[throwanem]

Are we sure there's no overlap between the range of impactors susceptible to occlusion and the range of impactors capable of producing a disaster if they strike a populated area?

(Granted it's multiplying small probabilities, but so is this whole discussion, so I don't feel too bad about it.)

[zardo]

Do we still have 1km NEOs left to discover?

[jjulius]

What we've found at the last minute so far has been small, but that doesn't mean that the only last-minute discoveries will be small asteroids always and forever.

[ghaff]

As others have said, so what are you going to do about this last minute discovery absent some sort of space-based planetary defense system, in which case this discussion is moot?

[adrianN]

If it's big enough to flatten a city but not big enough to kill the ecosphere you might be able to evacuate some of the people affected if you spot it sufficiently early to calculate it's trajectory with good precision.

[pdonis]

> that doesn't mean that the only last-minute discoveries will be small asteroids always and forever.

Larger asteroids are much easier to see, and the issues being discussed with difficulties in seeing in this thread don't apply to larger asteroids.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, but the bigger they are, the more light they reflect, which means the further away we should be able to see them... if we look in the right direction.

[freemint]

Well if a big problematic astroid needs to be 3 times brighter to be detected due to StarLink (made up number) it can come 9 times closer without being detected. O(n^2) is baked in sadly.