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NASA Planning Mission To 40-Meter-Wide Asteroid
FudRucker points out a story from The Guardian about NASA's plans to visit 2000SG344, an asteroid 40 meters wide and weighing roughly 71 million kilograms. The manned mission would take three to six months, and it would make use of the Orion spacecraft, which will be replacing to retiring space shuttle fleet.
"A report seen by the Guardian notes that by sending astronauts on a three-month journey to the hurtling asteroid, scientists believe they would learn more about the psychological effects of long-term missions and the risks of working in deep space, and it would allow astronauts to test kits to convert subsurface ice into drinking water, breathable oxygen and even hydrogen to top up rocket fuel. All of which would be invaluable before embarking on a two-year expedition to Mars. As well as giving space officials a taste of more complex missions, samples taken from the rock could help scientists understand more about the birth of the solar system and how best to defend against asteroids that veer into Earth's path."
NASA plans a large number of missions but political considerations affect their budget so much that I wouldn't bet this is going to happen, no matter how cool it sounds. Right now, Mars is officially high on the agenda, so stepping-stones toward Mars are hot. In 5 years the next administration might decide to take the unmanned direction and this will go to the back burner. For the moment this should be thought of as contingency planning.
What if they can't convince Bruce Willis to come along?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
They should have them bring a can of white and Black Paint to measure its affect.
And hopes that this happens. Personally, this is 'Cool shit' (tm) and I hope that this does eventualy.
Perhaps they could shave off some of that 3 Million slated for NASA MMO and slosh it towards this. Lets face it, a 3 Million dollar game would look like a uni science project, but it might get put to some sort of use here at least.
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Okay, so it's really really big. But not "too" big. And it just happens to be in an orbit that's very close to earth's orbit around the sun. So I'm guessing that with the right nudges at the right times, it'd be possible to swing that rock around the moon and park it in orbit around the earth. And having a million tons of raw material in orbit is something that both makes more sense than a manned landing, and is a lot more interesting and exciting, to me at least.
So that's why they were wondering about the effects of staying in bed for 90 days!
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Hopefully through their all research, hard work, and bravery they'll finally discover
what it's like to go out one side of the screen and come back in the other.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
However, when writing an article, is it too hard to call it 71,000 tons (or tonnes, or "metric" tons - they're all essentially the same unit - with a percent or two)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Unmanned missions may be cheaper and safer, but sending out real people to expand the horizons of human activity in space is much more important. It gets people excited! That brings in money and inspires young people.
Then, when NASA has a huge group of talented experts and tons of cash, they can do real science instead of worrying every day about whether the budget will get slashed before they can complete the current round of experiments.
Their new capsule design is basically Apollo again so the old plans are on the table. An asteroid mission is a stepping stone to missions to the planets. It is shorter, but interesting all the same.
The asteroids are a likely resource for Earth. Planets are only of use to us for colonisation or science. There is no way to export from Mars to Earth for example, but water could be exported from asteroids to the moon.
This is a great idea. I can't wait to watch.
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When the reporters start getting stuff right I start getting worried.
Any time I read anything in the press that I personally know about, I dispair at just how far wrong the reporters are.
It's the little things, like an order of magnitude here or there. We say 10,000 they say 100,000 what's a 0 between friends.
So I assume that anything I read is little more than an vague approximation of the truth.
I'm not even getting all tin hat.
Think Hanlon's Razor..
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
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"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Would somebody *please* think of the children???
I mean if NASA goes on spending recklessly on such projects, who is going to feed the poor kids in Iraq, and not to mention upcoming Iran, Syria and N.Korea (although in this case it would be radioactive S.Korean kids).
NASA is just literally throwing money away to send 2 girls and 1 man away for tax-payer-funded jaunts to the ultimate holiday-spot: Asteriod!
I say we snatch NASA's budgets and feed it to Cheney; er sorry, Halliburton so that they could prosecute this devastating War to its conclusion.
Of all the daring, reckless things NASA can do, this rates the 3rd worst: The first was the Hubble-Schubble telescope thingy that NASA claims can take photos 130 million light-years away, but can't take photos of my Pet Cat! I mean who wants to look into the past 130 million years ago? Didn't God say he created Earth 6,000 years ago?
Secondly they sent TWO stupid rovers to Mars and cheer loudly when their rovers cross 6 mph speed. I mean, come on. My Hummer easily tops at 112 mph on a Texas village road! Who the hell needs photos from Mars, when the money can be spent to 'assist' JP Morgan and Citibank so that the poor executives can support their children at harvard? Plus Mars has no oil or CNG. Atleast Venus and Europa have oil.
Thirdly now this stupid honeymoon jaunt for 3 months!!!
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Some Physical information about the asteroid and Orbital Information. The first link mentions the diameter to be 30-70m, hopefully they are gonna land on the 70m of the asteroid yea?
No - I'd worry about the several million tons of rock heading towards the atmosphere first.
Once that's dealt with, then we can start the interstellar finger pointing... it's probably just them damn terr'ists anyway, and what better incentive to go to Mars then to invade?
This is a coverup of the fact that 2000SG344 will hit Earth as was originally reported in year 2000. What is a more perfect cover than to actually plan out the whole mission under the guise of advancing science or preparing for Mars? Then, once independent scientists wise up, public can be reassured that NASA developed the technology to deflect the asteroid with a series of controlled, directed pocket nuke type charges.
Just a technical note. With an asteroid this tiny, you don't land on it, you dock with it. The gravity will be practically non-existent.
Probably best to go nose first, nose down. Then you'll be able to see it so you don't hit it so hard.
Does anyone who knows anything about solar physics know whether or not you could use a small body like this as a solar flare shelter? If you are in deep space or in a hard-to-change orbit around a large body (like the moon), if a solar flare happens you're out of luck. If you're on the surface of a body with little or no atmosphere I guess you're still out of luck. But with a small body like this could you just zip to the side in the shadow? Could this make long-term trips like this safer than say going to the moon?
The idea is reminiscent of an Arthur C. Clarke story about a trip to Icarus.
On a more sinister note, while the delta-V for CAPTURE of this body around earth might be prohibitive using todays technology, what about for IMPACT? Not the U.S. would want to do such an obvious war provoking act but wondering if it could be done with just chemical propellants. Of course it depends on how far in advance you have to alter the course, orbital parameters etc.
Now if we were really good at orbital mechanics we could possibly have it skim the atmosphere to lose some delta-v for capture. Don't think anyone's gonna try that though.
I am genuinely descended from the ecosystem, therefore I'm congenitally predisposed to live in a natural state. I could reach such an altitude that I would wish to be immortal!
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
... what will be the affect of the next election on NASA and NASA's budget. According to this chart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NASA_budget_linegraph_BH.PNG), it looks like Democrats tend to roll back NASA's budget whereas Republicans tend to increase it, ignoring of course the Apollo years (arguably that money was looked at as Cold War defense expenditures, not space program expenses). To summarize the chart, during the Carter years, NASA's inflation-adjusted budget went down. During the Reagan years it went up a little. During Bush I it went up dramatically, and then it went down quite a bit during the Clinton (I?) years. During Bush II it also went up a little. Now what will happen should a) Obama b) Clinton II c) McCain become the next president? My guess would be a) down a lot, b) down a little, c) up a little.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
no radioactivity, only damage. Put a few small one in huge orbits around the earth....
I hope people are prepared for the day when we first lose someone outside of the play pen that the shuttle has been in. I hope everything goes well but what happens if something goes wrong and someone floats off in to forever so to speak? How are people going to handle that? What do they do to prepare the people going on the mission in case that happens? Do they offer them a quick and painless option so to speak? I'm kinda curious.
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Although "71 thousand tons" sounds a bit better to me, it still doesn't quite ring true. I prefer "71 kilotons".
That said of course, it's a matter of preference, and the great thing with the metric system is easy conversion.
(as an example of preference: mainland Europeans use "centilitres" a lot for liquid measurement (a standard can of Coke here is 33cl), but in Australia and New Zealand which are use metric, that's quite unheard of. They prefer to give it in millilitres (a typical can of Coke there is 375ml))
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Well of COURSE you can't create energy from cracking water! You will NEVER be able to do that.
However, electrolysis is nice and easy and solar cells are often used in space....
Think BEFORE you type.
Acccording to the article, if this 40 Meter, 71,000 Ton asteroid hit earth it would release the energy of 1.1 million tons of TNT.
Lets change the units...
1.1 Million Tons of TNT == 1.1 Megatons
The governments capable of getting to this thing have weapons WELL in excess of that strength on hand. They don't even have to spend hundreds of Millions of Dollars to get to the asteroid, move it (also probably with a nuke) and target it.
The escape velocity on this asteroid is 1.5 cm/s. Yes, centimeters. One small step for man, one giant trajectory for that same man.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
If this asteroid hits the earth it will release about 1.1 million tons of TNT worth of energy.
Put it another way, it is equivalent to a 1.1 Megaton Nuke (with little or no radioactivity)
I believe minimum safe distance for a megaton nuke (WITH radiation) is 20 kilometers...so 20 miles is perfect
They'll quit if the Astronauts don't come back from that mission which is likely to happen more as we explore further out.
A stepping stone to Mars? Perhaps, but this should signal more than that. Given that we have a better chance to be productive by sending missions, manned or otherwise, to Venus (aerostatic drones or ships in the upper atmosphere) or Titan or Enceladus, is there any hope that for missions like that instead? It seems that a mission to Mars is simply misguided. Yes, it would be a great achievement. Perhaps I am biased here, but after reading about the subject more, it seems fairly obvious that better long term gains could be made through other types of space missions beside a Mars mission. Mars is in the spotlight, but how hard would it be to shift America's short attention span and inform them that Venus is now the most promising frontier? I hope this madness (?) over a Mars mission will segue into more useful missions on the clock of what I hope is a more intelligently visionary administration. Call me biased, though.
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"The asteroids are a likely resource for Earth."
A resource for what? What is there that can be more efficiently gotten from asteroids than from somewhere on Earth?
They could land on the asteroid right before it smashes into the Earth
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Why not actually use the SI prefixes and units?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
No, I don't mean by causing a nuclear winter through an impact. Instead how about putting it into a "halo" orbit where it circles (in a halo) between earth and sun. (As a previous poster indicated, it'll take something like like 1.37km/s delta-v, you'll need a mass driver/ion engine or something like that. Then, with a solar powered grinder, take the asteroid which may already be largely rubble and make it into a powder, spewing it slowly into space (with a 1.5cm/s escape velocity it'll be hard not to).
The (very fine) dust from 71K tons of asteroid might be able to cast quite a shadow. Of course, the solar wind will eventually blow it away (which is probably a good thing, we don't want a permanent solution). But it might buy us some time at the relatively cheap cost of single (big) space mission.
(this idea is a cheap variant of something I heard a space scientist propose, launching trillions of small actively controlled refracting lenses/films to block out the sun. His idea was expensive but permanent. Mine is cheap but temporary).
Bonus: Put a special nozzle on the dust ejector and you might be able to form patterns. Companies might pay to see their logo's silhouetted against the sun that everyone on earth could say every day. (How about Ray-Ban?).
(this comes from another Arthur C. Clarke story where someone causes the ionosphere to light up by shooting up a cloud of particles from the moon. Unbeknownst to the scientists performing the experiment a company had put a special nozzle on the ejector).
I don't know about anyone else but anytime I hear compound SI units or units with both scientific notation and metric prefixes bug me. It's 71 billion grams, 7.1 x10^10 grams, or better yet, 71 Gigagrams.
... a couple of nukes and a boring machine they just *happened* to have lying around.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Don't know but lets look at the math...
This asteroid is close to earth so we will assume insulation like earths. Roughly 1500 watts/ meter ^2. Current cells used by NASA operate at about 45% efficiency. Therefore they will produce about 750 watts/ m^2, at 24 hours a day that is 18 KWH per day per M^2. Therefore a 3 month mission each solar cell can produce about 1620 KWH PER M^2.
Finally, remember that you don't need a huge amount of fuel to get moving in the right direction. You can then use gravity to assist.
Finaly, this looks like it is intended to be a proof of concept. I doubt the mision will depend on any fuel from the asteroid...
Well, to be fair, you can't *ever* create energy, right? All you can do is use naturally occurring resources to extract some energy by converting some resource to a lower-energy state by increasing entropy. Which is to say: if you could find a reaction that resulted in products more thermodynamically stable than water, and you had a large excess of the starting materials, you could extract energy from water.
It's just that after 15 billion years, a lot of that has already happened and that's why we have a lot of water. But it's not impossible. There are plenty of things that'll burn water and release energy that you can then extract.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Point conceded....barely
There are only a few reactions that would react with water to release hydrogen. Florine for instance.
However then you have excess Hydrogen and no oxidizer, unless you bring it with you. But you could always use your Flourine with your oxidizer directly and get more energy.
Short of nuclear reactions (fusion) you are not going to be able to get more chemical energy out of water than you put in. Therefore you MUST provide an external energy source and crack water to store it.
NASA is attaching a rocket engine and control booth and A astronaut will steer it back to earth where it will be safely allowed to strike the earth in Area 51, Halliburton won a no bid contract and is in charge of extracting 71 million pounds of gold for the Bush family...oh...err...I mean the federal government.
You're generally right, and I'm being pedantic, I admit. But -- and I'm positing something wildly unlikely, I admit again -- what if it turns out the asteroid's half elemental sodium? You mix sodium and water, you're gonna get lots and lots of energy out (as well as molecular hydrogen.) Very unlikely to happen, but hey, it's outer space. We don't know what asteroids are made of. We *know* that on earth water is a final reaction product of hydrogen, as sand is of silicon and rust or laterite is of iron. But in an oxygen-poor environment, if such a thing exists, maybe there will be reactive species that are more electronegative than hydrogen. Actually, now that I think of it, on an asteroid, with insufficient gravity to retain gaseous oxygen, there's a driving force towards reduction, that opposes the thermodynamic stability of oxides. If you have a reaction A+B = C+D, and your C+D is incredibly stable (like water) but you have something removing A (in this case oxygen) you'll drive the reaction to the left, to large amounts of B, even if it otherwise would be driven thermodynamically strongly to the right. So I guess it's *possible* that you might find an asteroid chock-full of highly reactive, unoxidized species. And, now that I think of it, we've found lots of iron and nickel-rich meteorites, where the iron isn't particularly rusted, particularly when it's cut apart and the insides, which weren't eaten by the Earth's atmosphere on reentry, are exposed.
Again: I admit I'm being pedantic, and there are lots of goofballs who just don't understand that you can't crack water for free and use the result to power some whizbang machinery, and that's what you're talking about. But there *are* circumstances where water might be useful as fuel, and it's (very very) remotely possible that we might find such a circumstance on an asteroid.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Very true...it always bugs me when people start talking about using Hydrogen as a power source...
But the one issue is that we are VERY unlikley to find things that react together on an asteroid.
Even in space on a solid object chemical reactions still take place. over the last few billion years any high energy reaction will probably have happened already. Since they are talking about using the water ON the asteroid for power, we won't find lots of sodium or other oxidizer on the same rock.
A lot of people don't understand the second law of thermodynamics. (It's nice that some people do...) I think that if we could find some way of representing it graphically, that's what we should be sending out on interstellar probes, because I think that's one of the unambiguous things that any race capable of any sort of reason would understand as a sign there are other reasoning species out there.
So I shouldn't argue with you since we're on the same page -- and there's a whole side-issue here that people over on the evolution/creation debate boards are discussing: should scientists have open debates about details, and strive to present everything as openly as possible or should they present a united front of "this is the Truth"? because people who don't really understand the second law of thermodynamics aren't going to get what I'm on about, they're just going to see that I appear to be arguing that it's viable to try electrolysis and then burn the H2 and O2 formed and get power.
Sigh.
But anyway: I was thinking about iron. We know lots of asteroids are iron-core -- and, more to the point, apparently mostly metallic iron. Iron's more electronegative than hydrogen. So, *if* you got yourself an asteroid that has a big ol' metallic iron core and a lot of frozen water on the surface, you could potentially build yourself something like one of those handwarmers that relies on oxidation of iron -- H2O + Fe0 going to Fe2O3 + H2 -- and hey, you've actually got an energy source. I've never read anything about this, and now I'm curious if that's ever been suggested. It's not much power, and it's likely that solar cells would be much more productive -- but it'd last indefinitely, given the size of the asteroid they're talking about.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Actually, the POWER comes from the chemicals used to create the battery or is supplied in the form of electricity when the battery is charged.
Saying you are using Hydrogen as a power source makes as much sense as saying I am using a rock as a power source.
Put the rock on the ground and watch it power something....you might want to get some food first since it will be a long wait.
Now pick up the rock and throw it at something...say a certain Rakishi and we will watch said rock make chunky salsa...
The rock itself is only a storage medium for the power NOT the source. Same with hydrogen. If you add energy to it you can later take it out but WHERE does the ernergy come from in the first place?
So in other words the only power source you acknowledge is the big bang? Saying you are using Hydrogen as a power source makes as much sense as saying I am using a rock as a power source.
Put the rock on the ground and watch it power something....you might want to get some food first since it will be a long wait.
Now pick up the rock and throw it at something...say a certain Rakishi and we will watch said rock make chunky salsa...
The rock itself is only a storage medium for the power NOT the source. So what is the source? It can't be the person throwing it because they only converting storage energy in food. The food in turn came from animals that in turn ate plants which in turn used solar energy. That solar energy is from fusion which in turn is only the releasing of energy stored inside of molecules. Same with hydrogen. If you add energy to it you can later take it out but WHERE does the ernergy come from in the first place? Hydrogen IS the energy storage medium and you put energy into it by MAKING it. It's no different from fossil fuels in that respect and specifically that it can be burned easily to produce energy. If you want to be pedantic you can say that it's the hydrogen and atmospheric oxygen which are the power source (the later is usually ignored since it's so common).
Everything we use is only an energy storage medium since all the energy originally came from the creation on the universe, period. Last I checked we don't create energy from nothing so all we're doing is moving it around. Since then it's been transferred through multitudes of medium which in most applications we don't give a damn about.
We only care about the last link in the chain or rather the one that makes sense in the conversation at hand. A radio controlled car uses a battery as the power source. A car uses fossil fuels as the power source. A train may use electricity as the power source. Another train may use diesel as the power source, we ignore that it converts it to electricity first it power an electric engine.
Absolutely, the only TRUE power source would be the big bang.
HOWEVER when I and most people refer to a power source, they are referring to the point at which the power becomes accessible to us.
So for oil, it is when we pump it up. For agriculture and photovoltaics it is when the photons hit the earth.
Batteries may be an immediate source of power but they are not the point at which it first becomes available to us.
Other than dictating the time before refills/recharges, we don't care anything about the last step in the power chain.
We care about when the energy becomes available and of course how expensive it is when it FIRST becomes available. If you can find me a battery mine...or even an electrolyte lake, or how about a natural H2 cavern I will be happy to include that as hydrogen as the SOURCE of power.
No, what people refer to depends on the context and conversation. It is quite common to use the last link in the chain, when someone says something is electricity powered or electricity is the power source they don't care if it comes from a coal power plant, a wind one or a nuclear one. Sometimes they don't even care if it's a batter or a wall outlet that proved the electricity. On the other hand someone who is talking about large scale policies cares only about the original source.
The context for the power "Source" is always "when it becomes availible for the application."
Therefore with a trully self-contained system that is disposable and time-limited to the very short term, under those conditions you MIGHT be able to call a battery a power source.
However thoes situations are exceptionally rare. Nothing quoted in our conversation comes close. Maybe the voyager probes would work...the power source being the plutonium on board.
But if you intend to use a device for longer than the initial charge, you can't honestly call the battery a power source.
You are correct that an electron with a specific voltage will act the same regardless of the motive force. But the electron is not the SOURCE of the voltage, it is only the carrier.
or asteroids could be dropped on mars, and then covered to trap the water .
We just need to get Mars core up and running again. simple~
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The stock baseline Orion only has 2 weeks worth of life support since it's a small craft with an open loop life support system. It also doesn't have much delta v only 1640 M/sec before orbital insertion some private vehicles such as dreamchaser actually have more delta V for example. Such a mission would also require launching a large habitation section likely a bigelow sundacer or BA330 for the crew to live in during those six months and a propulsion module likely a simple nevra type nuclear thermo rocket since this is the cheapest and easiest option. I find it unlikely they'll ever perform the mission and if they ever do go anywhere beyond the moon they will likely simply go directly to mars in some 800ton vehicle who's funding will nab a lot of money for contractors.
Orion by it's self can't go any farther then the moon since it only has two weeks of lifesupport. To reach said asteroid would also require recreating skylab so the crew has a place to live. Fortunately this is being recreated outside nasa by Bigelow Aerospace in the Sundacer and BA330 modules. The BA330 the larger of the two only weighs 55,000lbs less then the LSAM. You also might want something with a lot more total impulse then the EDS since it will not be up to performing the task with satisfactory safety margins. If the asteriod is close the old nerva NTR engine of the 70s would be more then up to the task of sending an Orion and a BA330 to the asteroid and returning them safely to LEO. Also it would be good for the NTR stage to also perform some breaking since the apollo conic shape really is only good for 21,000mph reentries faster then that you require a lifting body or biconic vehicle. Lift to drag and reentry gs go hand in hand and a .3 L/D may not cut it if you come in at 28,000mph esp after 6months of zero G and esp if you omit the BA300 since with out that space exercise in the crew will be in a lot worse shape.
"weighing roughly 71 million kilograms."
No, no it does not have that weight in it's current position. It may have that mass, however...
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