E

EADPhenrik

0 karmaJoined May 2016

Comments
1

Dear Effective Altruist community, Should we not put our money where they matter most, especially when the subject is very hard for most people to relate to? At EADP we need only $2.5-12 per life-year to save millions of human lives from death, and will on top save further millions from the destruction of their homes. How is explained in details in the link, and why there is so much bias against this – possibly also in you – is explained in the text below: http://asteroiddefence.com/#threat

We are a Danish based NGO called Emergency Asteroid Defence Project (EADP), in the process of establishing an asteroid defense in relation to short warning time asteroids - we have worked hard on this since 2011, full time since 2014. Statistically, these medium-sized asteroids have a far larger likelihood of striking us, than most people know and the risk of death can be said to be larger than for example death in an airplane crash. Read more about the threat, as well as our project and our massive scientific support in general, right here: http://eadproject.com/endorsements/

We are raising funds through various means to ensure that we can have one or more HAIV’s (Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle, to be used by a government with a nuclear explosive device in order to transfer enough energy, when we’re dealing with a short warning time scenario – it has been researched deeply by the best experts, and is internationally legal: http://eadproject.com/partners/frans-von-der-dunk/), ready to be used by a capable governmental agency, when an asteroid impact is imminent.

We started our outreach by raising funds through an Indiegogo campaign (https://www.indiegogo.com/…/help-defend-earth-against-aster…), where we ensured a portion of the amount needed for the study. Most of all, we made sure that we are known to the world as an organization, where we have received a lot of media attention and it enabled us to carry on our work: http://eadproject.com/eadp-in-the-news/ We have also gained a new partner, the economist and blogger Alex Tabarrok, who was interviewed by the Washington Post on why asteroid deflection is so hard to finance: http://eadproject.com/economist-alex-tabarrok/

Why such topics in general can be hard for most people to act upon is relatively quickly scientifically explained and documented in detail here, from University of British Columbia: http://www.gci.org.uk/…/BlockingSustainability%28Final0910%…

Now, this is the reason why I’m reaching out to all of you in the Effective Altruism society. Our crowdfunding campaign last year didn’t work as well as one could hope (due especially to human psychological limits in understanding these kinds of issues), so now we’re instead working to bind together industry partners, who might in some way gain from either the production of the HAIV or the fact that there would be an asteroid defense – you can see the business plan here, which all parties have by now mostly agreed to: http://eadproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/EADPbp.pdf This is going slow but steady, very slow really due to lots of bureaucracy and commercial nitpicking. It is a scenario we are very skilled in navigating, but we still need funds to keep going.

I am, in other words, writing here to you guys in particular because I know that you above all are the kind of people who would understand this kind of threat. You are the kind of minds who understand how most people don’t “get” the threat, and therefore don’t donate to it. And how these reasons are exactly the same, in regards to why governments are either not doing enough or not doing anything at all.

As we understand it, our kind of project is exactly the kind that should be communicated to this crowd, so I’m asking all of you to donate an amount, for example five dollars, to help us keep going. We will from now on keep you all updated on our progress and make sure you can follow it is going.

Thank you all in advance for your understanding and help – we only get anywhere when rational people help attain the critical support for the masses to follow: http://eadproject.com/donations/

Comments and criticism are always very welcome, but please check our documentation first.