So for those of you whom don't know, a meteor, just recently, hit Russia. Now personally I am Russian and have many family members who live in and near the Moscow area (For those of you who don't know, Moscow is Russia's capital). So, what are your thoughts on it?

it caused millions of dollars in damage and hurt over 1,000 people.

Broke a bunch of windows and what not. There are a bunch of videos online showing the meteor falling and exploding and the resulting damage to buildings and businesses and such.

Hidden Phantom : It wasn't cool, it was horrible. As geoogree said, it cause TONS of damage.

did you see thd russian government member? He said it wasnt a meteorite, but a secret usa weapons test. Cue tinfoil hats.
Now to see how much money the government ministers embezzle from the relief funds.

thenumberone : I heard about that too. To be fair the images released of the cloud of smoke had 2 lines to it and I wouldn't be surprised that some people read more into that than is deserved. I'm not exactly familiar with how a meteorite smoke trail should look so I guess assuming it wasn't a meteor but the US attacking with a secret weapon makes sense somehow

thenumberone : That's something I have always feared-- America/ Russia attacking each other.

geeogree :
Whats kind of funny (in a weird, as opposed to humourous way) is a few days before a meteorite passed as close to earth without hiting as has been recorded and they said it wasnt a danger(and it did pass safely), yet only days later another came and hit.
Apparently that region of russia has been hit a lot, last time was 1908 i read.
And I saw the footage, im no expert either though so I cant explain it.
But they found the crash site, and a government mp shouldnt say things like that, it just provokes problems.

Some russian parliament member already sees it as an American weapons test, even though Kreml calls it as a total hoax. The reason is that suppousedly no large parts of the meteor were found. Reason for this is that it exploded in the atmosphere and the meteor was only 17 meters awide. But rural folk everywhere love their concipiracy theories.

And this happened far away from Moscow and this was not the first time a huge meteor explodes in the atmosphere of Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

But sure, it will be a bigger deal once these meteors hit Europe, Usa, Africa or anywhere else than some countryside of Russia where there wont be as much casualties or injured.

I read the explosions were caused by the meteor breaking up within the Earth's atmosphere, as opposed to impacting the Earth's surface. I didn't think it was supposed to be found in one big solid piece. If it had been big enough to actually reach the surface I do believe the damage would have been a LOT worse..

They say that the sonic boom injured almost 1500 people but so far I havent heard of any casualties. This would not suprise me since russian media is these days just as bad as it was in soviet times, but I sincearely hope that nobody lost their lives and all will recover. The material damgae is ofcource just material damage especially if nobody lost a loved one.

Clearly, some manner of evil is afoot...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRjvEVR1HwM

Just kidding. Seriously though, I hope everyone that got hurt is okay now, or at least getting better.

About the terrible vs. cool.... it is terrible.

But, it is so rare that we see this, that's you have to be sorta interested about what a meteorite hitting the earth is like. The Youtube videos of it coming down are amazing! You'd think you're watching something from Hollywood.

I think it was a wake up call, maybe we will invest more budget money into keeping an eye on the skies.

I am sad about the damage and those who were injured, but as a lover of science and history I think that is is amazing to be able to witness the event even though we are on the other side of the globe thanks to things like YouTube. I'm honestly surprised, given the evidence of meteor strikes around the world in the past, that we don't have events like this more often.

But I do agree with Light Knight that we really should take this as a cue to reinvest in our space programs and turn our attention back towards the sky.

Elara :
There would be a lot more meteor strikes if not for jupiter. It acts like a giant magnet pulling them away. There might notbe life on earth if not for jupiter. Not of the scale we have anyway.
A lot of money is put into the space program, the usa, europe, russia and china all have there own space programs and pump a fortune into them, including remote satelite telescopes. I belive the european space association currently has the longest distance one.
And theres new, bigger ground based telescopes being built. The usa stopped flights but apart from that its buisiness as usual.
And spoting the threat is different to spotting it.
There was a great program I saw looking at how best to do it.
The first sugestions are blow it up, either missiles or internaly like that movie (i forgot the name now).
Those are generaly shot down, for a big meteorite, there is no way that would do it, theyre generaly super dense rocks or metals. And in likely hood many parts would be big enough to make it through earths atmosphere meaning we now have multiple hits.
Then it looked at building a super nuke, bigger than a full size space rocket, which would disintegrate the entire thing.
This was shot down due to building and maintenance costs,the difficulty of launching such a goliath, and the fact that if deliberatly or acidentaly detonated on earth, it would take a good chunk out of it and the fallout would spread over the rest, pluswhatever unforseen effects may occur, such as orbital or gravitational shift.
The 3rd idea was a laser, that would burn off a tiny amount of the meteorite over a period of time, slowing it down (opposite and equal forces)and eventualy making it change direction.
The proposed method was mirrors angeled against the sun in orbit around earth. Still not exactly something we can pull off yet.
Light Knight :
The footage i saw reminded me of cloverfield. I couldnt help but think it was kinda cool.

thenumberone : The movie was Armageddon, and I hate myself for even remembering that.

Jupiter is an awesome planet, and always one of my favorites (the eye is just so cool).

I did here talk recently of an idea of trying to lure an asteroid into becoming trapped in the moon's orbit so we could use it as practice for destroying them with manned missions much like the above mentioned movie. I don't really think that is a feasible option, but it is interesting.

And I still think the US stopping manned flights sucks. Yes, the shuttles are old, but we should be designing and making a replacement. After all, we have to maintain our satellites and other things somehow, and it just seems sad that we have to rely on other nations to do it.

What would be cool would be a unified space program... not controlled by any one nation. Kinda like the Federation in Star Trek or the Alliance in Mass Effect. Yes, my geek is showing.

Elara :
I meant to say stopping is different to spoting inthat last post but I gather you realised that =p
How exactly would they lure the asteroid into the moons orbit?
On the space flight, private american companys are meant to be taking it over. Apparently it will save the government money. I dont really understand how though, because the companys will be after profits.
Lol, the alliance in mass effect was epic. It was funny how almost every alliance character was american though
The scottish guy was obviously best lol.
But yeh, that would be cool but nations are forever squabling over petty differences so I cant see it happening. The closest to a co-operaive space program isthe european space association. Its mostly britain, germany france and italy that call the shots though.
The international space station is also kind of co-operative. Although thts being scrapped soon and russia at least are planing their own station.
I think nations attempts to "get there first" somewhat impedes our potential development.

thenumberone : Yeah, I figured that is what you meant. As for the moon orbit thing... I still don't really get how they plan to do that... something about directed rocket bursts to nudge it into place? *shrug*

And I totally agree... we need to stop competing. Space exploration is important to everyone, so everyone should participate and work together to achieve our goals.