Armageddon games

WHY does NASA show the movie Armageddon as part of its management training programmes? We’re talking about the thriller in which Bruce Willis saves the Earth by nuking an asteroid the size of Texas into dust just moments before it wipes out the home planet. If your first thought was that they’re training NASA managers to put the proper PR spin on any doomsday asteroid, the door to the paranoid ward is on your right.

In reality, the screenings are just a game for NASA’s space geeks: who can find the highest number of impossible things in the …