Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MIT Professor Advocates Ending Asteroid Redirect Mission To Fund Asteroid Survey

Posted by samzenpus on from the identify-the-problem dept.

MarkWhittington writes Professor Richard Binzel published a commentary in the journal Nature that called for two things. He proposed that NASA cancel the Asteroid Redirect Mission currently planned for the early 2020s. Instead, he would like the asteroid survey mandated by the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act of 2005, part of the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, funded at $200 million a year. Currently NASA funds the survey at $20 million a year, considered inadequate to complete the identification of 90 percent of hazardous near-Earth objects 140 meters or greater by 2020 as mandated by the law.

15 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. But where are the potentional profits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no profit to be made on determining which asteroids may or may not kill us all. There IS profit to be made on mining asteroids.

    It's hard to get an idea pushed forward if you can't show people the money.

    1. Re:But where are the potentional profits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "There IS profit to be made on mining asteroids."

      That's absolutely ludicrous. Go find out the spot price for mineral ore that's available by the tons right here on Earth.

      Tell me how you intend to make a *profit* by going into space with massive amounts of technology and resources???

      To get the same things we already have here?

    2. Re:But where are the potentional profits? by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Informative

      Water on Earth is cheap and plentiful

      Water in Earth orbit on the other hand is neither.

    3. Re:But where are the potentional profits? by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 3, Informative

      From February 2013:

      "The 150-foot-wide (45 meters) asteroid 2012 DA14 — which will zoom within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of Earth on Friday, marking the closest approach by such a large space rock that astronomers have ever known about in advance — may harbor $65 billion of recoverable water and $130 billion in metals, say officials with celestial mining firm Deep Space Industries."

      http://www.space.com/19758-asteroid-worth-billions-2012-da14-flyby.html

      Yeah, that's petty expensive water and any value it may be said to have relies on there being a market in space. There is not.

      Let's say it's essentially solid ice. That would be about 15000 cubic meters of ice, so they're pricing it at at least 4.3 million dollars per cubic meter, or 4.3 dollars per liter. So yeah, pricey water under the best assumption. More likely it's mostly rock like other near-earth objects.

      Now let's say it's mostly rock. It would have to be some pretty damn special rock to be worth $8.6 million per cubic meter.

      These numbers were simply made up by people who are interested in doing it for the sake of doing it as long as somebody else pays for it.

    4. Re: But where are the potentional profits? by Chatterton · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ask De Beers, they pretty much nailed the problem...

    5. Re:But where are the potentional profits? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 2

      Do you know how much you could sell virgin primordial untouched by humans without any terrestrial pollutants water for? This seems like something that you could dupe people into paying at least $10 a liter for.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    6. Re:But where are the potentional profits? by Ecuador · · Score: 3, Funny

      It is actually very inexpensive to send water in space, as long as, like other food & drink, you send it up dehydrated.

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  2. Congress by dkman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... inadequate to complete the identification of 90 percent of hazardous near-Earth objects 140 meters or greater by 2020 as mandated by the law.

    This is the problem with Congress. How the hell do you make a law saying you need to identify 90% of something we can't validate at all? Who's going to say when you reach 90%? If we get clobbered by a rock it's clearly part of the 10% we didn't know, gee sorry.

    --
    I refuse to sign
    1. Re:Congress by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      How the hell do you make a law saying you need to identify 90% of something we can't validate at all?

      It's called a survey, you systematically search a given area with instruments that can detect what you're looking for, it's not done until the survey is complete.

      If we get clobbered by a rock it's clearly part of the 10% we didn't know, gee sorry.

      Someone gives you nine lives and you're bitching about not having 10?

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    2. Re:Congress by morgauxo · · Score: 2

      Usually it's people trying to reform human society that CAUSE those things.

  3. Completely Missed the Point by Egg+Sniper · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps intentionally, the blurb above completely ignores that Prof. Biznel's entire point is that we should be going after the asteroids that already pass close by. He wants us to play with these things, he just thinks it's a waste of money to send a probe far away to grab one when we could much more cheaply grab one that's already passing through. In order to have a decent chance of planning such a mission, we need to have a more complete survey of the asteroids that do pass close by which, he mentions, is already mandated by law (and we're not going to reach that goal at current spending levels).

    1. Re:Completely Missed the Point by green+is+the+enemy · · Score: 2

      I think the cost is in delta-v, not distance. The asteroid survey would probably not make the asteroid redirect mission cheaper, but may identify an asteroid with a more interesting composition.

    2. Re:Completely Missed the Point by mbone · · Score: 2

      And the NASA HEMD guys say that to do that, you first need to have a deep space flight "with training wheels," i.e., one to something like high retrograde lunar orbit (far away to be serious, and actually test the deep space parts of the mission, but close enough you can meaningfully abort) and that, in practice, to both get the money for the test AND to make the test more realistic, the astronauts need some goal for spending 2 weeks orbiting outside the Moon, and the ARM provides that.

      If the Earth had a well placed "mini-Moon" at the present, we could go to that, but as of right now, we don't appear to.

  4. No Community Consensus Here by mbone · · Score: 3, Informative

    He has been saying this for a while, most recently (to my knowledge) at the recent Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) meeting in DC. I was there and have to say that the community (at least, the sample of the community in that room) did not come to even rough consensus on his proposal, and was in fact split roughly 50-50. There is, however, a pretty strong consensus on the funding of a asteroid survey mission, an infrared telescope on an interior orbit to the Earth to find most of the possible "city-buster" NEA. This is pretty much what the B612 foundation is proposing, but they haven't raised the money yet, nor is on any NASA funding plans.

    My own personal opinion, FWIW, is that Binzel is wrong and that the ARM mission is a first good step to Mars.

  5. How dare he threaten NASA pork? by Squidlips · · Score: 3

    The Asteroid re-direct mission is a pork mission to push money for more pointless manned missions. Binzel is 100% correct; the money would be much better spent on robotic missions, but, alas, NASA is run by pilots and beholden to the manned mission lobby.