In some more enlightened timeline there's a spirited competition between institutional and amateur astronomers towards predicting these, and some amateur is sitting on a $10M this-person-told-us-so-and-we-bet-against-them prize, which gets bigger every year (no prizes for the institutional side, they get a salary).

In that timeline's future we're then competing over who can most reliably prevent them.

The winners of such frivolous competitions over protecting the moon get funding for the more serious job of protecting Earth.