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NASA Funds Projects For Asteroid-Capture Plan
An anonymous reader writes: NASA has announced funding for 18 different projects aimed at developing an asteroid retrieval mission. "The agency is working on two concepts for the mission. The first concept would fully capture a very small asteroid in free space and the other would retrieve a boulder off of a much larger asteroid. Both concepts would redirect an asteroid mass less than 10 meters in size to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft launched on the Space Launch System (SLS) would rendezvous with the captured asteroid mass in lunar orbit and collect samples for return to Earth." Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope have also identified and measured the size of a candidate near-earth asteroid. It measures roughly six meters in diameter, and seems to be held together lightly, possible as a "pile of rubble."
Now we're all going to die of an alien disease.
Doesn't NASA watch any sci-fi?
They won't know what to do if they catch it.
This yet another lame attempt by the all-powerful manned-spaceflight lobby at NASA to supply pork to politically powerful districts such as Houston. The SLS has been called the Rocket to Nowhere and this is an attempt to justify it. All this fooling around with an asteroid could be done for a fraction of the cost with robotic probes. And there is little gain scientifically from this mission. The NASA administrator Bolden, a big-time manned spaceflight guy, has said that there will be no more flagship planetary missions (such as major missions to Mars or Europa), but he is more than willing to fund this asteroid capture stunt. So he wants to sacrifice science for pork. Next year NASA/JPL will have robotic probes reach Pluto/Charon and Ceres, but all the administrator can talk about is this stupid asteroid stunt.
All the exciting missions lately have been robotic such as the Curiosity (MSL) Mars Rover, Cassini, Voyager and next year the Pluto/Charon and Ceres missions. NASA management, all ex-astronauts and fighter jocks, hate this because they want to push their manned pork such as the SLS and Orion, but the public just does not care; there is no science or excitement there. This asteriod missions, which has no scientific value, is intended to get the public excited about manned missions.....snore...
How much gravitational attraction does a six-meter pile of rubble even have?
This sounds more like a bunch of rocks that happen to be falling/floating in the same direction...
We heard you the first time, brah.
All this fooling around with an asteroid could be done for a fraction of the cost with robotic probes.
Yes... and no.
A significant portion of the proposed project is technology development. This mission puts together and demonstrates a large, high power solar-electric propulsion system, which would be a valuable tool for many missions, including human missions to Mars, or to anywhere. Then it gives us a target for a short-duration human exploration mission, testing the spacecraft concepts that could be accomplished,with a much less complicated mission than a Mars mission, or even a Mars fly-by.
In terms of step-by-step development and demonstration of technologies for exploration, the program makes a lot of sense.
You may or may not be in favor of human exploration of Mars, but if this really is a long-term goal of the space program, it is greatly beneficial to have technologies developed and tested first on missions that are somewhat less ambitious than the human Mars mission.
Well... It works in Kerbal Space Program.
Remote control cars on Mars are boring. They do nothing to advance anything except some mild bickering over how common bacteria is in our solar system.
Asteroid capture does not do much by itself, but would serve as a meaningful proof of concept for the feasibility of extraplanetary construction. Many issues would still be unresolved, but it would show the availability of resources and provide a workspace to start testing ideas of how to extract, process, and manufacture with metals in a negligible gravity non-atmospheric environment.
What, exactly, does this mission get us?
The composition of asteroids is fairly well-known, both from the numerous meteorites we've recovered, and from the numerous spacecraft missions, including a sample return (Hayabusa). Unmanned probes can't do nearly the same scope of exploration as a manned mission, but asteroids are small. Does one even deserve a manned mission, much less several manned missions?
What is there to be gained from an asteroid capture and manned exploration? I'm all for manned exploration, but it seems like Mars or Titan or something might be a better target.
Extra-planetary construction doesn't do much by itself either. What's the purpose of construction, if not exploration ? And exploration can be done best with boring remote control cars.
Now we're all going to die of an alien disease.
Doesn't NASA watch any sci-fi?
I think in two ways worst than an alien disease, that can be a huge problem if in wrong hands. The FIRST CASE SCENARIO is about miscalculation: capturing near Earth Asteroid is a complex challenge. One thing wrong and you could bombard Earth and cause serious problems (and billions of victims). The SECOND CASE SCENARIO is hypothetical: what about finding a lot of tons of one or more of the 8 most expensive elements in the periodic table: Au, Ag, Pt, Pd, Ir, Rh, Os and Ru (or the worst case scenario: only Au and Pt) in the captured asteroids. And what if the company wants to "integrate" its achievement in the Earth economy? :) I know that, if used with wisdom this entrepreneurship can help humanity take a long leap in good, technology and expansion (and establishment) to other orbs in our Solar System, but things can go wrong (or intentionally wrong) and we need some guarantee.
My idea was to use a nuclear powered craft that once it latches on to its first asteroid, it then extracts small pieces of it, and fires them out like projectiles to move it to the next asteroid. You could even launch asteroids back towards earth if you're feeling lucky :P I don't hear anyone talking about using Asteroid rocks as the kinetic matter for propulsion. I just thought it was a unique thought to share with the community.
God spoke to me
don't believe that space exists, expect more irrational and stupid posts from their kind. That is their way. It is tiring listening to them whine and how they try to make everything about politics.
The landing of the "boring" remote control car (the Curiosity rover) was a huge international event with more publicity than the ISS has ever had in its whole lifetime. It must have ticked off Bolden and the rest of the manned-spaceflight lobby at NASA to no end. You seem to forget that Star Trek was not a documentary; robots can do anything man can do and much better at a tenth or hundredth of the cost. The only science that the ISS, Orion, SLS, and this asteroid stunt will accomplish is be research on humans in space. Snore....
There is much to discover, I'm sure we don't know it all already. If we learn to manage and exploit a few asteroids, We might buy ourselves more time to establish an extraterrestrial presence at a lower cost. It makes more sense to me than going to Mars.
POSSIBLY.
POSSIBLY as a pile of rubble.
I think death by accidental asteroid impact is a more likely danger from this plan.
That asteroid may just be a collection of small rocks held together with a VERY small gravitational glue, not some single big rock. One may need a bag to caputure it and move it anywhere. Tyvec or some metal mesh may do.
robots can do anything man can do and much better at a tenth or hundredth of the cost.
Which robots can cover dozens of miles in a few days, while collecting the most interesting scientific specimens from that area?
The big disadvantage of robots is that they're damn slow. A human could cover the distance the Mars rovers have travelled in a day, but you could put a hundred or more rovers on Mars for the cost of putting one human there.
Is this the capture tag and release type, or Capture rendition and Gitmo?
You can use 100% of an asteroid's mass for useful items. After you extract water, carbon, and metals, the leftover slag can still serve as radiation shielding. Shielding is needed anywhere above low Earth orbit that you plan to spend much time at.
I don't really see your point in the second case. I assume you are alluding to the fact that the large increase in the supply of, for example, gold would cause a large drop in the price. Others have noted the difficulty of extracting the elements, but, even it were simple, so what? Some people who happened to be invested in those particular commodities markets would lose out, but everyone who needed to purchase, either directly or indirectly, the elements would benefit. We don't have a gold standard anymore (let alone an osmium standard), so massive deflation wouldn't be an issue.