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NASA's Garver Proposes Carving Piece Off Big Asteroid For Near-Earth Mining
MarkWhittington writes "According to a July 26, 2013 story in Space News, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver mused about what appeared to be a change to the space agency's asteroid snatching mission at the NewSpace 2013 conference. Apparently the idea is to send a robot to a larger asteroid than originally planned, carve out a chunk of it, and then bring it to lunar orbit for an crew of astronauts to visit in an Orion space ship. Garver's proposed change would widen the number of target asteroids and would test technologies important for asteroid mining. But it would also increase the complexity and certainly the cost of the asteroid mission. There are a lot of unanswered questions, such as what kind of mechanism would be involved in taking a piece of an asteroid and moving it? At the same conference Garver had hinted at a willingness to consider mounting a program of "sustainable" lunar exploration, as some in Congress have demanded, concurrent with the asteroid mission."
The first step is probably going to be hunting down mini moons where all the delta-v is provided by gravity. Once the fundamental technologies are in place we can go hunting for bigger fish, but first we have to start with the minnows.
Moving asteroid chunks into Earth orbit.
Given that, to be a threat to Earth, such asteroids would have an orbit that almost intersects Earth's at Earth's position at the near-intersection, and risks being perturbed onto a collision course, I hope they're really careful when "carving off a chunk".
It would be ironic if, in the process of trying to avoid a potential "rifle shot" of the whole asteroid, they perturbed the rest in exactly that way, or broke it up into several large "shotgun pellets" and ended up hitting the Earth with one or more of them when the original would have missed.
It would be a good idea, as well, to be sure the towing orbit of the sample, had no points where (if the tow vehicle lost power or the load broke up) it was on a collision course.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
When do we get enough technology out of this to play pool with planets?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
about sustainable lunar exploration
> (though not remotely as powerful)
Only magnitudes greater than nukes... Whatever.
An image is worth a thousand word. It's worth more if you've seen the movie to understand my comment, however.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Nonsense
I suddenly have this XKCDesque notion this is actually the start of a RubeGoldbergian scheme to write some esoteric Perl script.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
What the heck is a 'teroid' and did you really have to use profanity to describe how big it is?!
This is how they seduce us into sending pork to places with senior senators.
The asteroid belt?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
TFA is light on details as to *what* mineral would be mined and how it would all be economically viable.
I'm guessing that the stuff we're running short of would not be readily available in asteroids.
And bringing in an asteroid-load of other stuff might make the prices plummet, which might have a big impact on the economics of fetching it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's a ring of truth to that.
While we've landed on the moon physically, technologically we just aren't there yet. It isn't currently practical to commercially exploit yet (i.e. where the gain of doing so outweighs the losses.) While landing on the moon is surely a neat thing to do, and I myself am a big fan of NASA, doing so on the government dime just doesn't make sense right now. We're not in a space race with the Russians anymore and communism died in the 80's (save for a few select groups still in denial,) so we don't have anything to prove.
The private sector is currently in a race of its own to make getting to space more practical daily, and I think we should let it continue on that course. Space continues to see more and more commercial exploitation all the time, and the private sector will take us to the moon in the appropriate time. I think NASA's resources are probably best spent on the theoretical - the mars rovers for example are a good place for NASA to be.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Yes, mining asteroids sounds like a nice plan. But much like flying cars, I do not see it happening any time soon. But fuck, it's great to talk about, isn't it?
Be seeing you...
This seems to be adding a lot of complexity to a proof-of-concept that should start as simply as possible. Just the tech involved in sending a robot and carving up a chunk seems to be putting a lot more variables into the first mining-asteroids effort than is necessary. I don't see the justification for this, unless it's just because someone wants the entire effort to fail (by design), and put an end to the idea entirely.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Sure, when someone gets self-sustaining colonies, they will have a need for raw materials but that seems to be decades or hundreds of years away. By then the technology to move people and thngs around in space will have developed further (evidenced by the self-sustaining colonies they will have enabled), so using our tech, today, to do this is both inefficient and far too early.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I don't see whatever it is you replied to, so I don't know what the 'nonsense' is that you refer to but it's not at all clear that Eminent Domain has any relevance - before E.D. can be relevant it must be established that a nation has de jure control over space activities (which gets into the question of whether an entity in space is still a 'person' under national law).
I have just returned from a very interesting panel discussion on Saturday afternoon (yesterday as I write this - video should be available on the website soon if not already) at NewSpace 2013 regarding the question of 'ownership' and right of use, mining claims, etc. This is an area of vigorous debate, and it will continue to be for the next 50-100 years. Most of the questions will end up being settled in court rather than in legislation, using rules derived from common and maritime law as much as the law of individual nations.
It's worth noting that the original attempt to control slots in Geostationary Orbit, which created a global monopoly called IntelSat, was eventually (and fortunately) overturned after 20 years of poor use. Now those slots are managed more effectively without government control, by a cooperative and competitive process among players. (IntelSat is now just one of those players, and does a good job.) One of the big risks of space exploitation is the potential for an attempt at a huge governmental central planning bureaucracy, which would almost certainly delay the benefits for decades, and would very likely kill the potential for space exploitation entirely.
If some space exploiters become trillionaires, they will do so in the process of improving the standard of living for the people of Earth, likely by a factor of 10.
What is pretty well established: under the Outer Space Treaty, a nation is responsible for the actions of 'persons' (corporate or natural) of that nation. Each nation is also responsible for any harm to the persons or property of other nations. No nation, and thus no person, may establish ownership of any celestial body, but there is some debate as to what a 'celestial body' entails, howerver the treaty does establish the principle that exploitation of the resources is part of the intent. So at this point some(most?) analysts believe that once you remove part of the body, that part is yours. This follows from 19th century mining law - a miner does not 'own' the mine - the government essentially licenses the miner to remove material, and the material removed becomes the miner's property. A smaller selection believe that once you 'move' a body, it's yours - what 'move' means is up for debate.
But one strong voice on the panel argued that in essence, the Outer Space, Moon and other treaties among Terran nations are de facto, and therefore in the long term de jure, irrelevant and without standing. Just as the American colonists eventually rejected the laws of Britain as applied to the colonies, 'spacers' will eventually if not sooner establish their own rule of law amongst themselves, which will be derived from existing common and natural law, and precedents as they might apply, probably primarily in tort (civil suit)). Her fundamental point was that the nations of Earth do not have, and are not likely to have, any method of enforcing their laws outside of some relatively small region around the planet, and this is as it should be - the laws of space should be based on the experience and needs of those who live and work there (and will be derived from applicable precedent here on Earth, such as maritime law.)
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Asimov in one of his novels spoke of sending crews out there , attaching rocket packs and sending chunks of ice to Mars .. ..Imagine a defect somehow in the procedure or .. but a simple accident may cause a great deal of damage if said asteroid was to enter earth's atmosphere .. Claims of infaillible plans have a tendency to send chills up my spine. .. A few fat cats will get richer , but it seems any public money would be better invested in health care , in schools etc before we finance ventures to make the fat a bit fattier.
he may not be all that far from what's to come. But about this , i got a few m hmm , questions
a false manoeuver and it's consequences for. Nice to get an asteroid close
Until we have safeguards in place that assures the asteroid's total destruction in case of need , i wouldn't play God and send asteroids close to earth for any reason . Such scenarios seem to be highly risky and the only ones who would profit from us being all at risk is again the companies.
What's the real benifit for mankind ? . none
I'm only giving better than even odds that we get NASA astronauts back into low Earth orbit again in a NASA spacecraft... forget about anything more dramatic than that. The culture, finances and governance of the United States would need to change significantly for anything more grand than that. A nation that, in its self-inflicted race to champion the lowest common denominator in any endeavour, consumes itself with re-defining its ability to succeed with phases like 'the new normal' is not the kind of nation that can seriously pursue spacefaring.
Science missions fair better if only because there is less public profile to capture both support and (more importantly) opposition.... in those cases the drive to get money to interested congressional districts outweigh the demands of contrary interests for other spending priorities.
So there is a collection of asteroids, whose orbits interact in such a way that they implement a stored-program computer that computes the lifespan of the universe? It would be interesting to see how one might number orbits so that they constitute values in a numeric system. :D Somehow Perl is the perfect tool for this - it's already far out there.
Whooo, this is pretty far out there! Thanks for thinking of it and inspiring some very weird ideas in my head!
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
The private sector is currently in a race of its own to make getting to space more practical daily
I read an editorial with the last few days that took the view that the privatized space industry is nothing more than a hobby for starry-eyed billionaires who are willing to sink vast fortunes into it with no prospect of an actual ROI.
Is there actually an in-the-black economy out there, beyond communication satellites?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Not so long ago, metallic aluminum was so rare that kings had jewelry made of it. Now it's in throwaway/recycled beer cans. At present there are many uses for platinum and other PG metals that are impractical when these metals run over $1000/ounce. And that cost is also why catalytics converters cost $1000s to replace. When (I say, not 'if') platinum costs drop below $10/ounce - just for one off-the-cuff idea - we might be able to put catalytic converters on entire utility power plants.
Disruptive technologies tend to disrupt existing businesses, but that is the essential value of technological advance. And (from Econ 101) in a mature economy, technological advance is the only thing that improves the standard of living. As you can easily see, reading this on your flat panel display on a laptop - or a cellphone - with the power of a supercomputer from not so long ago! :)
Cheap platinum will certainly eliminate the present degrading, deadly business of mining by hand thousands of tons of South African dirt for a single ounce of platinum. And IMHO that is a good thing. It may not even impact jewelry prices - there are presently two companies that are producing gem quality, and even better, diamonds of essentially arbitrary size but the gem diamond market has not collapsed. And synthetic sapphires and rubies have been around for decades but natural ones are still expensive. In fact the synthetic diamond process is probably more valuable for producing perfect single crystal integrated circuit chip substrates.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Please tell us who wrote the editorial. So we can forever ignore the idiot.
'They' tell us corporate types can't see past the next quarterly profit and loss statement, political types can't see past the next election cycle. Whoever wrote that is a walking, talking, editorializing example.
Commercial launch services aren't making fortunes, but they aren't generally subsidized anymore.
In any case, individuals with vision are about the only ones making really long term investments anymore. Sure they mostly lose their money.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I got really excited for a moment after reading the article, before I realized he's talking about this Orion, and not this one.
Did you just try to make a point by beginning with "I read an editorial..."?
Are you ill or something?
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
The trouble with sending a mission (manned or unmanned) to a very small (5 meter class) asteroid in the near future is that we don't know their orbits well enough. At all. Out of 374 very small near Earth asteroids known, exactly 2 have decently determined orbits. The chances of finding a candidate 5 meter asteroid in time to send a mission to it, and having a good enough determination of its orbit to have a mission get to it, is basically nill without a dedicated space telescope such as the B612 Foundations Sentinel mission. So, unless we are willing to wait for an extra 5+ years to build and fly an asteroid finder, that means we have to carve off a piece of a bigger asteroid (more are known, and they tend to have better orbit determinations). As it happens, that is also what the asteroid mining people want NASA to demonstrate, as that fits their view of how asteroid mining will be done, and it will make the asteroid geologists happier as well, so this seems like a win-win all around.
It would cost the same delta-v to rendezvous with an asteroid as it would to reach the same orbit without the rendezvous.
Sounds like a stealthy way of killing off the project, by piling on requirements until it's obviously too expensive or risky.
Moon seems does not have much.
Why we are so sure asteroids do?
I read somewhere all "heavy metal" stuff is mostly in Mercury/Venus/Earth zone, the further away, the lighter the "metals".
Are we so desperate for chondrite and iron?
Asimov in one of his novels spoke of sending crews out there, attaching rocket packs and sending chunks of ice to Mars ..
Yeah, but he didn't know about the reactor.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
FYI, communism hasn't died insomuch that it's on the waning influence. Given the massive amounts of debt in the US and Europe, disparity in wealth, lack of political leadership, and progressive liberal/socialistic trajectory path we've been on; the environment couldn't be more ripe for Communism to take hold and conquer the West from within. The tyranny will be self-inflicted much as it always is in a revolution. Once that happens, kiss NASA goodbye and perhaps SpaceX as well. BRIC nations will be taking over space exploration. The West BTW is in within one generation of all this happening.
Life is not for the lazy.
"The chair recognizes the gentleman from Vesta."
Or tell them an asteroid is the natural platform for manufacture and launch of kinetic weapons. Scary like a nuke (though not remotely as powerful) without the unpleasant radiation afterwards.
And since they've already set up the secret prison on the moon, we need only wait until the prisoners start 'throwing rocks at us'.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
The key comment is for the Orion spacecraft to visit the chunk. The pork-mongers in Houston are building the SLS which has been called the "rocket to nowhere" with no mission in mind. Here is a perfect, though far-fetched, justification of this pork. Pork is not so bad except for the fact they it steals money for the real science being done at JPL with this unmanned probes. NASA should split so that Houston will quit stealing money from JPL.
So the FAA controls aircraft regulations in every country of the world? Hardly. There are hoards of wealthy people who would buy one **IF** it were practical to use. So far they're less useful and more expensive than a private plane and a sports car combined.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You're thinking of a soft landing. I believe that they're thinking along the lines of harpoon the thing and let it give the spacecraft a big yank in the right direction. Not many rocks would have the right orbit to make that practical, and the attachment mechanism would probably mass more than a larger engine and more fuel. Better is a proposal that I remember from the '70s; launch a stream of pellets from the Moon in the right direction, and your spacecraft catches them for a boost in delta-v (kind of a physical version of a light sail). That proposal also included shooting the pellets back out again to reduce delta-v when the craft nears its destination, but then you end up with a stream of pellets floating around the solar system that needs to be tracked forever.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Why we are so sure asteroids do?
You're right. We should probably first send out, oh I don't know, say a robot mission to bring a small asteroid (or a sample from a larger one) back close enough for us to be able to run lots of checks. Hell we could even combine it with the manned program in order to gain some relatively safe but challenging experience doing work beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in 40 years; two birds with one stone, so to speak.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
"before E.D. can be relevant it...
It'll be hard. I hear that they're facing stiff competition, and have been likely to flip-flop when under pressure...
Somebody's never heard of the People's Republic of China!
... democracy.
They are only the second largest economy in the world, vastly considered the second largest superpower (much like Russia in it's heyday), considered to have the third most powerful military and they have the world's largest population. Some would even consider them to be THE new superpower.
So yeah, I would say that communism is quite alive and well.
Considering these facts, it even could be argued that communism has become more populous & accepted than even, say
Regardless of how either China or Russia operationally, ideologically & philosophically relate to "pure" communism - an issue easily considered by most to be highly debatable - China is ruled by a communist party & is officially communist state.