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Re: starship-design: Am I missing something?



Steve VanDevender wrote:
> 
> Curtis L. Manges writes:
>  > The following quote was taken from the article, >>"Richter Scale" of
>  > Asteroid Impact Threats Announced<<  released on Spaceviews, here:
>  > http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/08/
>  >

> You can obtain the approximate historical probability of the
> Earth being struck by asteroids based on geological evidence of
> previous impacts.  So it may not be as silly as it sounds to talk
> about the probability of the Earth being struck by undiscovered
> objects, although it would be nice to know more about how they
> came up with the numbers.

I would assume you count all the impacts made and date them.
Add in a fudge factor for the ones you missed and try to sort them 
by impact size and age. Since the last big impact was 65 million years ago
I think mankind has a very small chance of death by impact as opposed to other
things. This does not count mankinds stupidly like mining asteroids and trying
to 
place on in orbit.
Ben.