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Asteroid Missions May Replace Lunar Base Plans
An anonymous reader alerts us to a story about efforts to modify the United States' space exploration plans to focus on asteroid missions rather than a lunar base. Scientists, astronauts, and former NASA division directors will be meeting next month to develop an alternative to the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration. We have previously discussed the possibility of a manned asteroid mission. Quoting:
"Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now fear a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the space program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars operations--the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions. The first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan. If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead be flown to an asteroid in about 2025."
Manned asteroid missions have little if anything to do with asteroid deflection strategies. If you want to keep the Earth safe from big nasty dinosaur-killers, you spend money on tracking every Earth crossing Asteroid in the sky, not on sending people to 1 or 2 of them. Early detection of potential dangers makes any deflection strategy (almost certainly unmanned, despite what your favourite movies might tell you) more plausible
The purpose of visiting asteroids is looking for something to mine or doing science to investigate the origins of the solar system.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Its fairly logical to think that if its so expensive to get stuff into space, just build it there. While manned missions to the moon and on to mars would certainly be amazing, I fail to see the point of a manned mission to an asteroid. Just send a probe and play around with altering a small asteroid's orbit and bring it into a lunar orbit. Creating an automated system that collects small asteroids (small enough that they'd burn up in atmosphere) and bring them to the moon to be processed would be a tremendous step forward in human expansion into space. Unfortunately, I don't think anything like this would happen until commercial space missions start making it further out there.
For anyone that hasn't heard of him, I'd strongly recommend you check out Bill Stone's TED talk. The whole thing is pretty cool, but its the last chapter in the video thats really amazing.
If true, this is very good news. Asteroids, the smaller and more numerous ones being undifferentiated bodies, have considerably more scientific value than the moon.
I am unqualified to evaluate what you say and so I will not quibble with any of it. However, can I come outright and say that I honestly do not care about scientific value at this point? I want to see a moonbase. I want proof it can be done on a small planetary scale. I want to see new settlements of humans off this planet, even if only to our nearest satellite. I want to see the whole thing shown to be do'able, not for study's sake, but because it should be being done. I want to see a practical application and a first step to living elsewhere. I think a base on the moon provides that in a way that asteroid exploration just doesn't.
Cheers,
Ian
It is not just NASA that wants the moon.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There are numerous alternative architectures that can deliver the hundreds of tons of supplies you need on the lunar surface within practical budgets. But they involve direct commercial and industry involvement. Until these players are fully engaged we will not be going back to the moon in a meaningful way. Most importantly these architectures provide the foundations for going to Mars in a meaningful way. Anyone who thinks you are gonna do anything meaningful on Mars with a handful of crew is simply wrong. It requires a bare-bones crew of at least 90 to support three science teams of 6 each. If you want confirmation look at Antarctic operations to get yourself calibrated. Furthermore on any real Mars mission at least part of the crew that goes does not come back on the first return opportunity. They are there for at least two cycles and transfer tasks and responsibilities to the second cycle crew etc etc. It is getting used to not coming back for 5 years that is perhaps one of the most important psychological barriers we must cross. The moon is a good place to start this- staying there permanently creates an enormous improvement in efficiency. You can finally forget about the retreat to Earth as the only safe option. Worth nearly 3000 m/sec delta V.
So the moon is worthy goal- but it is the practice of developing self-sustaining colonies that is the real barrier.
To address your point - for forty years or so people have dithered about what the main point is, so yes I rather feel that the "in my lifetime" bit has been wasted.
Another post sets it out clearly - this one. What is the goal? To my mind, the goal is colonisation. If that is the goal, actions which delay this is in favour of a different goal are to be considered counterproductive.
Now, you may well state that your goal doesn't match mine. That's fine, and fully understood. However, unless someone actually states what they want out of the research and what their end goal is then no progress towards it will be made. The thing to do is to define what "it" actually is, and that's what my post was about.
For me, I want to see efforts towards a moon base as it provides definitive proof that it is possible to live off the Earth. I'm aware of dependencies such as provisions and potentially even energy coming in the form of supplies from the Earth, but until we try it we'll never really know. My hope is that some of the solutions to those problems will be found after we're there - I'm a believer in proximity to the problem helping to focus minds, the "necessity is the mother of invention" situation.
And that's that. It's purely a statement of position by myself - I value progress towards an off-Earth settlement as being of greater value than increased understanding of asteroids. That's all the "I want" stuff was - statement of position. Not a waah waah waah give it to me now-type thing (and where's my flying car?), but a statement of what I believe the end goal should actually be.
Cheers,
Ian
Oh, we still dream. It's just that we've replaced aspirations with fantasies.
As an Apollo-era teenager I share my age group's frustrations that I don't have my jet car on Mars yet. Heck, we quit following the last few missions. Been there, done that. But all this smacks of back seat desperation. _IF_ by now we had created a huge space station that had learned to be self-sustaining with zero resupply/repair ferries for years, then it _might_ be reasonable to talk about multi-year manned missions around the inner solar system. But as it is, it's more than a little ugly. Sure, you'd get enough volunteers. But watching them die 30 million miles from earth because something and its backup broke is PR that would set your gamble back many years.
Been to the moon so why bother to go back? Why do we have a permanent presence in antarctica -- the favorable corn-growing season?
And, sadly, I also wonder whether this is likely to be some weird propaganda that costs nothing during any particular year of a presidency but keeps the Star Trek voter happy.
Flame on.
Dear asshole,
Americans are paying for it, so I'd say what we want matters a fair deal. And in this instance, the original poster was saying that he would prefer that we do the initial work of building a permanent presence on the Moon. In fact, so would I. I am more interested in starting that work now, using the money that *I* am providing, then on the scientific exploration of asteroids, given the choice. Sadly for the scientists, they will have to do a lot of convincing in order for me to prioritize their desires for knowledge over my desire for a permanent settlement on a second Solar body. They can always start their own asteroid-exploring scientific foundation, if they have troubles with the priorities I set for them. Or they can ask for both: I would in fact be quite willing to open my wallet if I could directly support their work. But I can't, they are SOL, and should get back to doing what I'm paying them to do.