Since the last report our ship Earth has journeyed 33 million kilometers, alongside its mothership Sol, in the direction of the G Cloud. In that time your reporter used his spare time to build up his new website (which you visit now) instead of writing a shiplog.
Nevertheless, I wondered who is keeping an eye out for debris along the route of our ship. Generally, Iike many fellow shipmen I turn to Google to answer my questions. But this time, I wanted to turn to something else.
(Why? Probably the corona crisis makes me petulant. And a bit sad. But do not let it sadden you too much. Think of the other fellow life forms (mind you, millions of species) that still fly, swim and run around as they like. Probably even more so and more happily ever since we withdrew from that daily life. That thought cheers me up big time. Like the stone marten that is now happily squatting under the hood of our car. It has discovered it has become a non-moving object.)
In my petulant mood I decided to ask the question to bol.com instead of Google. Bol.com has answered recently quite a lot of my questions. So I was curious to find out how far I can push them before they stop answering. Bol.com is a team in my area of the deck that taxis between producers and consumers. Bypassing regular deckshops. Their answer was that I should pay eur5.52 to read how a bunch on the western half of the deck, called NASA, are putting in quite some effort to ensure nothing shatters “Earth’s windshield”. Being Dutch, I could not resist to check what price Google asked for the answer. Turns out they give it for free: “NATIONAL NEAR-EARTH OBJECT PREPAREDNESS STRATEGY AND ACTION PLAN”
Enjou reading for free.
Gijs A. Verdoes Kleijn, astronomer 