The Best Near-Term Future of Space Exploration?

An anonymous reader writes "Much fanfare has been made about manned missions to moons and planets, but little has been done about travel to the asteroids — until now. NASA is working on plans for a trip to the asteroids by 2025. This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well. Yes, we should go to the planets, but we should master mining the asteroid belt for resources first because it is easiest. What do you think?"

Comments

Re:Why mining?

[Grishnakh]

Doesn't matter. They were a whole series of missions, not just one mission, and they were done with technology far behind today's (especially computer technology). After what we've learned there, and with modern technology, we should be able to pull off a single asteroid mission for a similar cost. The big unknowns are 1) how to deal with sending people that far away, especially in regards to radiation, though keeping the trip short should alleviate that concern, and 2) how to actually extract minerals from the asteroid and bring them back to earth in quantities sufficient to make it viable. Should we capture the asteroid (assuming a fairly small asteroid here) and bring it to earth orbit, or mine it where it is (allowing us to work with much larger asteroids)?

Obviously, the first mission probably won't be profitable, but we just have to figure out how to scale it up.

Re:Why mine the asteroids?

[CrimsonAvenger]

More or less, sure. Depending on the density, you could harpoon the asteroid with a retro-rocket and direct it back toward Earth for reentry. With low velocities, it could slam down in a desert area for safety. This would enable miners to excavate its resources with standard mining know-how that we have in place today.

Hmm, let's look at some numbers. In general, if it's coming in from outside our gravity well, it'll be hitting atmosphere at escape speed or a bit over. Or a whole lot over. But let's go with escape speed.

Let's assume we're talking a billion ton asteroid, just for round numbers.

So, escape speed, billion tons...impact energy is on the order of 40 gigatons of TNT.

So, which desert area will we use for safety?