I'm John Batchel with my colleague and co-host and co-pilot, David Livingston.

This is Hotel Mars, and we're speaking with the author Robin George Andrews, whose new book is

How to Kill an Asteroid, The Real Science of Planetary Defense.

We now give him an unlimited budget.

No cost too big.

What do you build right away, Robin? What

helps? Well, I think the thing that I would funnel as much money to as possible is a mission

that's kind of in development right now called Neo-surveyor. It's one of NASA's missions.

And this mission is awesome. I mean, it will launch into space and it

will have an infrared eye, which means it will be able to see any spec of any asteroid right

down to like the tens of meters of size, like anywhere in space very quickly. When you're using

visible light, you know, it's a bit of a,

it can give you a bit of an illusory like result. Like a big dull asteroid looks the same as a

a big reflective asteroid. Sorry, looks the same as a small dull one. So infrared, you'll just

see it if it's a big one, if it's a small one, even if it's in the glare of the sun. That mission will find 90% of the

city killers within 10 years of operation. So I think it's the most important mission that NASA has,

and I would make sure no matter what that that gets funded. If I had more money, I would probably

encourage space agencies, especially the Europeans and the Japanese, to try and test their own dart-like spacecraft or maybe a different method.

Maybe you could try something called a gravity tractor, which would, like, physically drag the asteroid out of the way.

Or maybe a different kind of impactor, you know, one with explosive tips has been suggested.

People are, you know, wondering if lasers could has been suggested. People are, you know,

wondering if lasers could be used to, like, blast a hole in the surface and cause an asteroid to

...