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‘Here lies the body of poor John Brown, who worked quietly in the laboratory
until an asteroid struck him down.’

If you believe everything you hear at US Congressional hearings, composers
of epitaphs could get an opportunity to improve on the above verse. David
Morrison of NASA’s Ames Research Center told last week’s space subcommittee
hearing on near-Earth asteroids that ‘there may be a 1 in 20 000 chance
that it may say on your tombstone, dead of an asteroid impact’.

The real worry is probably not the asteroids, however. As an unpublished
NASA report recorded in 1991 (see This Week, 14 November 1992), hundreds
of orbiting rockets armed with 100-megatonne nuclear warheads are among
the defences proposed to deal with the asteroid threat – and researchers
who see the Star Wars programme approaching its end are among those keen
to promote them. Members of congress should be able to spot a boon-doggle,
even if it is out in space, and demand to know the risks of developing nuclear
interceptors alongside the risks from asteroid impacts. They’ll find John
Brown’s tombstone is far more likely to read ‘. . . worked in the laboratory,
until his warhead blew California away’.