NASA Planning Lunar Mining Tests, Other New Tech

FleaPlus writes "NASA has released the initial details on its ETDD (Enabling Technology Development and Demonstrations) program to 'develop and demonstrate the technologies needed to reduce cost and expand the capability of future space exploration activities.' The ETDD program is initially planning on funding small-scale demonstrations in five technology areas: in-situ resource utilization (with a robotic lunar resource extraction mission in 2015), high-power electric propulsion, autonomous precision landing (building on the success of the Lunar Lander Challenge), human-robotic collaboration (2011/2012), and fission power systems. More info on NASA's larger-scale Flagship Technology Demonstrations (FTD) program is expected in the coming month."

Comments

Re:Can't we do this for the coal mines?

[lul_wat]

Worth it to the people who would die? Absolutely. Worth it to shareholders? Hardly.

Perfect

[fadethepolice]

lunar mining: Cheapest way to build a moonbase. Just keep tunneling and put several seals to keep air in. There is no point in going to the moon, or anywhere else, if we don't have a cheap mining unit to get resources and build a base. Otherwise it' was a wasted trip. Powerful electric propulsion and fission power plant: Excellent way to overcome the limits of of carrying fuel up the gravity well all of the time. Great way to re-use the ship you build out of it from mars so you can get a ferry going every few weeks. I'm not going to keep the lovefest going for the other ones, but I definitely think this is a change for the better.

Misleading: nuclear is excluded

[cjonslashdot]

According to the RFI at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34056 nuclear propulsion is excluded unless it is used solely for heat generation or as a power source for electric propulsion. Thus, some of the most promising nuclear technologies for rocket propulsion such as micro pellet inertial confinement compression-induced fission are excluded.

Re:Misleading: nuclear is excluded

[SECProto]

using nuclear as a electricity source for larger propulsion systems (ie, higher than the small ion drives currently using RTG) would be a huge step up. whenever they launch VASIMR to the station, it will only be able to fire for short bursts, because the huge solar arrays on the station cannot power it continuously. If a similar system used nuclear electricity to drive it, it could fire continuously and be a viable propulsion system.

on the other hand, using "micro pellet inertial confinement compression-induced fission" would probably produce spectabulous Isp, but it would need years (decades? this is government after all..) of research before an actual construction proposal would arise. Far too distant to be a major selling point of any budget proposal.

Re:Misleading: nuclear is excluded

[cjonslashdot]

I cannot say for sure, but I do not believe that an inertial confinement system is decades away. In fact, there was a-lot of research into such systems during the 1960s. It was abandoned during the 70s when nuclear energy for space became politically untenable, but then it was picked up again during the 90s. During the late 90s it very abruptly stopped - or went dark. (Perhaps it was successful...)

In any case, it turns out that the energy required to compress fissile pellets (the size of a grain of sand) to critical density for fission requires particle beam equipment the size of a refrigerator - i.e., very achievable. The engineering challenges then are not related to creating fission, but rather to managing the high temperature plasmas to produce usable thrust without damaging the system. These engineering challenges are very similar to the challenges that VASIMIR has, and so if they can be solved for VASIMIR one would expect that they could be solved for a fission-powered system. I believe that the plasma temperatures for a micro pulse fission system (using water as a propellant mass source) are similar to those for VASIMIR, but I cannot say for sure.

Re:Can't we do this for the coal mines?

[khallow]

And maybe save a few lives besides? Sounds worth the cost, no?

No, it isn't. Otherwise it'd be done already. The problem is that human labor isn't that expensive and you'd have to put a huge amount of money in to develop a completely automated system. No coal mine will have either the incentive or the assets to do such a project.

Re:*yawn*

[khallow]

these are the holdover missions that NASA will have to be content with until there is an administration that is serious about space exploration.

Even if this is a stealth attempt by Obama to kill off manned spaceflight, it still means that he's more serious about space exploration than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson.

Re:*yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably don't know very much about space exploration do you? All the fluffy expensive bull shit like the ISS and manned space travel actually produce very little that will help space exploration. This is the one thing that will possibly provide humanity with usable resources from space, and make travel and construction in space a reality instead of a one-off dick measuring contest between super powers.

Re:*yawn*

[h4rr4r]

You mean like this administration?
They have given more money to NASA and killed a boondoggle that was wasting what little money NASA had.

Re:*yawn*

[fermion]

Anything we do in space teaches us something. The reason is that we live on earth, and space is not the earth. We might think we can extrapolate, but we can't. We tend to make big mistakes when we think we can.

Large masses are few and far between in space. Therefore to get anywhere we are probably going to looking at a series of space stations. The nice thing about this moon mining idea is that it may give the raw materials we need to build space stations, without falling to the 60's idea that the goal is to live on the moon. That is like flying cars. A neat idea, but what we really want are hover craft.

mistakenly thinking they understand

[flaming error]

> egotistical intellectuals, who mistakenly think they understand
> the real world.

You want national leaders with no ego? Lose your own, then run for office.

And if intellectuals bother you, you're in the wrong place.

As to "mistakenly thinking they understand the real world", how do you know you understand it better? Do you have broader experience? A better advisory staff? More resources? Greater access to NASA?

I agree with you on the X-Prize approach. You have good points in there, but they can get drowned in the ranting and hyperbole.

Mod parent up

[shadowbearer]

  If we don't have an active and funded unmanned space exploration mission, we can't do manned missions. Sending manned missions ahead without investigating the environment that people are going to have to deal with is tantamount to sending them on suicide missions.

  It's not "either or" it's "do both at the same time" and if we spend too much on manned we won't have anything to spend on the unmanned that should precede them.

  Of course we aren't spending enough on either, but that's because we have a lot of two and four year shortsighted idiots running our country. Reelection and quarterly profits are more important to them (and to many of the sheeples) than actually doing anything about the future is.

SB

Re:Can't we do this for the coal mines?

[Anonymous Coward]

When robots can climb, operate for eight hours in damp and mostly-dark conditions, and do elaborate things with ropes...sure.

So you want robots that operate in brothels?

Re:Can't we do this for the coal mines?

[FleaPlus]

Also, I did a bit of searching, and it turns out that basic robots already exist for underground mining:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12637032
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-00g.html