Finally, all of the other realms are embedded within the vast extra-planetary environment - i.e., the our solar system and galaxy and the larger Cosmology. Most of this will seem to be remote from daily living; but, in fact, there are some tangible considerations, and astronomical exploration certainly expands the imagination and can be a source of wonder and even theological inspiration.

The Skylab mission is developing methods for living in space, and that will be important for monitoring and managing the Earth's environment and resources and for using a zero gravity environment for certain industrial processes. However, more critical is the prevention of "asteroid and comet impact hazards".

In 1999, an amateur astronomer observed that a meteorite had just passed the Earth in what was determined to have been a near collision. While our vast, muti-billion dollar military and intelligence surveillance agencies were busy paying close attention to every move of our potential enemies and while our multi-million dollar astronomical groups were occupied in discovering the outer edges of the expanding universe, we were almost destroyed by a simple rock that had been careening toward the planet for years. The ludicrousness of this situation does not have to be emphasized.

The surface of the Moon is pocked with thousands of imprints of past meteorite impacts; and in fact, the Moon itself is know to have been a chunk of our planet that was torn off by the impact of an ancient asteroid that happened some 4 billion years ago. On June 30, 1908, a comet exploded over Siberia in what is called the Tunguska Event; and it is estimated to have been comparable to 100 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. In 1980, Louis and Walter Alvarez demonstrated that an asteroid impact caused the mass extinction of species which occurred some 65 million years ago, terminating the dinosaurs and the existence of over 90% of all other species; and the crater of that asteroid was subsequently discovered in Chicxulub, Mexico off of the Yucatan Peninsula. On July 16-22, 1994, the world watched on television the Shoemaker-Levy Comet as it broke into a cluster of over 20 fragments and exploded upon hitting Jupiter. Several of those impacts were larger than the entire earth.

On June 17, 2002, investigators at Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (a program at MIT and funded by the United States Air Force and NASA) discovered, three days after the fact, that an asteroid had come within 75,000 miles of the earth. Designated "2002 MN", with a velocity of about 6.2 miles per second and the size of a football field, if it had struck the Earth, it would have been comparable to a large nuclear weapon with a destruction zone of some 77 miles in diameter. The nearest miss was in 1994, when the asteroid "1994XL1" passed within 65,000 miles of our planet.

Here are some statistics. As of April 2002 there are:

For additional details - see: NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office and Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards. And there are organizations that are attempting to monitor the various objects - Space Guard Foundation.

What is required is a well funded, dedicated agency that maps the positions and trajectories of meteors, comets, and asteroids and that has command of some of the arsenal of over 6,000 Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles which can be used to redirect dangerous objects well in advance of their proximity of Earth. This and other issues are the subject of Chapter VI of the Manual.

Photo of Skylab, courtesy of NASA and the American taxpayer. Depiction of asteroid impact {http://www.astro.uva.nl/encyclopedie/images/chicxulub.gif.}. Titan -ICBM.