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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?
Well... It works in Kerbal Space Program.
Actually, they do. I recall seeing an interview with the people at NASA behind this project on CBS. They said that the goal would be to mine captured asteroids for two things: valuable metals (they specified platinum, but there are probably plenty of others) and ice. The ice is particularly important because it can be used to obtain hydrogen and oxygen, which most rockets use for fuel. The NASA guy CBS interviewed had a vision of miniature space stations orbiting asteroids that would serve as the space equivalent of gas stations for long-range spaceflights, but who knows how viable that is.
Assuming the "pile of rubble" is pretty much solid iron, a six meter pile masses around 860 tons.
Which would give the "pile of rubble" about 6 micro-G surface acceleration.
Which, effectively, means it's a bunch of rocks falling in the same direction at the same place....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
While I don't have a high opinion of the SLS stack or of Congressional pork... One of the problems NASA is faced with is justifying their existence, which in the public eye (i.e. our representatives in Congress) has to include some form of manned spaceflight. This while not having the funding wherewithal (as provided by the same Congressional representatives) to complete a flagship manned planetary or lunar exploration program.
You can't completely discount manned spaceflight as having absolutely no scientific value; because, there is scientific and technical value in performing a manned mission to an asteroid parked in orbit. There's a quote that goes something like: "A geologist with a rock hammer could learn more in an hour than the robotic probe learned in a year." It's a gross oversimplification but there's some validity to it. By putting people on the site, we can learn quite a bit about the makeup and structure of the sample asteroid that might not be possible with a single pre-designed robotic probe, regardless of how well designed. A human in-situ can make observations and connections based on experience that a robot might not be equipped to make. Said human could then make decisions based on that information, which might be different than decisions made by a remote operator.
In addition, in the process of designing and flying the vehicle we gain valuable technical information necessary to support various human. We get improved engine designs for vehicles, human or robotic. We get better life-support designs which can be applicable to terrestrial applications as well as space. We get better harsh environment suits. We test the ability of our systems to support "long-endurance" human spaceflight outside the cozy protected orbit ISS resides in.
Now, if your argument is simply that we shouldn't be putting humans into space at all, as it's too dangerous and/or expensive... I don't know that I have a counter argument that you'll find acceptable. Sure, we can do some things more cheaply using robots and automation. That's true with many human endeavors. McDonalds is working on automating food production in their restaurants, for example. Agriculture can be largely automated. Manufacturing can be automated. Art can be automated. We use human labor because humans are cheap(-er) than using machines or humans introduce artistic / cultural variation, or humans can make observations and connections based on experience that machines cannot (yet) make, or we just have a surplus of humans looking for something to do...
Sending people to space is expensive because of the energy cost (boost out of the gravity well) and life-support cost. There's no getting around the energy required to boost out of the gravity well; but, we can improve the vehicle and drive costs down. Life support costs we can reduce through infrastructure improvements. If we're ever to have any kind of presence in space, we have to start somewhere; and, that's going to require putting humans into space to obtain experience that cannot be obtained remotely via robotic telepresence. If we're going to reduce the cost, we have to build infrastructure, which is largely going to require some human supervision. We're going to go there eventually; the root technology is available now.