B612 Foundation Believes NASA can Defect Nearth Earth Objects with Current Budget

The B612 Foundation has written a report on how to devert a NEO and points out the difference with to NASA's 2006 Near-Earth Object Survey and Deflection Study.

They believe that a Gravity Tractor or Kenetic Impactor on the scale of the Deep Space 1 mission, which cost NASA ~$150 million, could handle 98% of NEO cases.

The GT concept, as presented in NASA's NEO Workshop held in Vail, Colorado in June-July 2006, is adaptable to any size spacecraft and was specifically presented and evaluated in White Paper 42 (the only professional paper presented on the gravity tractor) based on NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft flown successfully from 1998-2000 and costing (based on the official NASA website, http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/quick_facts.html) $149.7 million (FY 95-99). Given that the presentations at NASA's Vail Workshop explicitly presented and evaluated the GT concept based on the Deep Space 1 mission technology, and not on the cancelled Prometheus, it is mystifying why, in NASA's Report to Congress the GT was presented as technically immature and extremely costly.