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NASA Proposes Manned Asteroid Mission
eldavojohn writes "NASA has proposed a manned asteroid mission to a near earth object. They mention this being viewed as a "gap-filler" to keep the public's attention between a lunar exploration & manned mars mission. The article also cites these goals as in line with the Constellation Program. From the article, 'Furthermore, a human venture to a space rock may well accelerate precursor robotic surveys of asteroids, Schweickart observed. "Early unmanned visits to asteroids ... it's the same pattern as we did with the Moon and we're doing right now with Mars. It's all pretty logical," he told SPACE.com.'"
It's so great NASA has the right goal: entertaining the masses.
Fleur de Sel
What's the basis for NASA's planning, here?
Science, or entertaining the public to keep the space budget healthy?
What happens when the public start to wonder why exactly we're sending men to the Moon and Mars and asteriods, just to have them come back again? what exactly did we get for it, except the bill? saying "it's for science" or "it's advancing towards men in space" is getting *old*. We don't have an off-planet base, we're not getting one in the next ten or twenty years.
When you consider that reality, statements like "for science" and "men in space" are ring hollow and people basically go "well, I can't see why we're doing this" and then your public support goes away.
And no bad thing if it did. NASA has been an unmitigated disaster for space travel and exploration. It's almost entirely prevented enterprise and investment into the field and substitued expensive, slow, bureaucratic, political-football State-run snails-pace development.
What have we got to show for the last thirty, fourty years of NASA?
We got men on the moon and then...
What?
One exploration satellite every year or two? Skylab for a bit, then that came down and after thirty years, we FINALLY have the ISS...and it's in low Earth orbit. What's the point, exactly? it's a frickin' expensive way to get into space.
Where's the innovation?
State run companies *DO NOT INNOVATE*.
And by God, if there's a field which needs innovation to get off the ground, it's space travel.
We need solutions to fundamental problems. You don't get that from a committee.
The Moon is too far away and has too deep a gravity well to be really useful as a source of raw materials. An asteroid that we could break up and use to build really big spacecraft, satellites and space stations could kick start the commercial space business into high gear.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Doing manned missions for PR purposes seems pretty silly.
You must've missed the whole Mercury - Gemini - Apollo era of NASA. Science aspects aside, it was just a cockfight with Russia.
Doing manned missions for PR purposes seems pretty silly.
Not doing PR will guarantee that the entire Space Program ends up being nothing but a bunch of expensive lawn ornaments and a theme park in Florida.
It's only because of the public interest in space, and their willingless to spend a shitload of money on it, that there is the opportunity to conduct scientific research up there at all. Private industry isn't going to pay for it; at least not on anything like the scale that we've come to enjoy today.
The primary goal of the space program should be to ensure its own future existence, and that means keeping the public interested. If that means going and sending some guy up to stand on an asteroid for a photo op next to a flag, so be it. It's that sort of thing which will keep the money flowing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
For 40 years, NASA has been sending astronauts into low Earth orbit and calling it "spaceflight". Dinking around in LEO is not space travel.
OK, there was the Apollo program. That begins to count. But the Apollo astronauts were still, at all times, within the Earth's gravity well (the moon is gravitationally bound to the Earth).
But now ...
"That kind of early demonstration mission might last no more than 60 or 90 days," Durda said, "and take the crew no farther than a few lunar distances away from Earth."
Finally. A human being is going to travel in space. Not very far. But it's a start, after decades of pitiful pretence.