Journal of a Cosmic Anthropologist

Ed Lu interviewed the other day on NPR about the Near Earth Asteroid Defense system his B612 Foundation are constructing, in partnership with NASA.

I went into detail on that in a post on Grinding last year, after his Long Now talk. And the Overview Effect Enforcement Agency may have been mentioned.

He also talks about his time on the ISS right after the Columbia disaster. And how to deal with office politics when it’s just you and a Russian guy orbiting the Earth.

Listening to this after reading up again on the Kardashev Scale, it seems to me now that we’re only going to get to a Type 1 society by starting to build a Type 2 society. Aka: think global, act solar.

Because up until now we’ve been pretty shitty planetary engineers. There’s a lot of work to be done.

Building an asteroid defense system for the cost of a freeway overpass in the US… pretty good start.