These were the factors then, which initially led to my suggesting a NEO detection system based on the Moon: the Terrestrial Planet Finder was the most powerful system that I had ever heard of; two, compared to the cost of damages in any small impact event affecting an inhabited area, the price of implementing such a system is trivial. At that time enough small impacts were suspected to justify the construction of such a system; since that time, the number of suspected recent small impact events has grown by an order of magnitude.

When I initially presented my proposal, two other factors became apparent. First, while the public enjoys fantasizing about running around on Mars, they don't like to consider death by immolation, blast, or drowning. Thus articles on manned Mars missions recieve wide public play, while the NEO hazard is usually ignored by the media, barring unusual circumstances.

What my proposal does is that it allows dealing with the NEO hazard to be raised every time any proposal for manned Mars flight is given public play. For that matter, it allows dealing with the NEO hazard to be raised anytime any proposal for any unmanned Mars research is put about.

A second factor then also comes into play. Given their fixation, those obsessed with manned Mars flight would ignore the impact hazard entirely, if it were possible, but with Moon based systems proposed as alternative to manned Mars flight, this becomes impossible. The result is that those obsessed with manned Mars flight will willingly advocate the expenditure of billions of dollars for NEO detection, as long as it does not threaten the object of their fixation, manned flight to Mars.

EP