Yeah, but we're not even building serious NEA tracking installations nor doing *unmanned* missions to near earth asteroids, not even the ones that are easier to get to than the moon. Why not?
Any proper exploration strategy would *start* with unmanned missions. We could do them on the cheap, too, to NEAs.
The purpose of visiting asteroids is looking for something to mine
Dude, the article was about looking at asteroid mission vs. moon mission, not moon vs. Mars. Even the summary was almost completely accurate, for once.
Moderators: The proper moderation for 90 degree tangents to the story is "Offtopic" and not "Insightful". If you feel the poster still made a good point even if it was completely tangential to the point of the article, might I suggest: "Interesting".
Good grief, you'd think moderation was rocket science or something.
We don't have to go out that far. There are plenty of small asteroids that have stable short-radius earth crossing orbits. Many of them are likely old comets.
No offense, but it astounds me that this is still an argument point, especially here, with all the timely news about potential asteroid impacts on Earth. Y'know, if these asteroids come enough to us for them to be a possible impact, it just *might* be a low-deltaV solution to intercept them? Perhaps lower than Mars?
Exploring asteroids, especially the ones that come near enough to us to potentially be dangerous, is NOT a purely scientific endeavor. Do I really need to outline them?
If so, then see my other posts under this story for more information as to why I believe that. Feel free to debate them, indeed, I hope you do.:)
Cheers, SB
PS Oh, and asteroids are also "solar bodies". There was a memo...;)
Granted Assumption: If we can put a base on the moon, we can put a base on an NEA or a stable earth crossing comet. Right? The life support problem is approximately the same, the fuel problem actually favors many of the NEAs, Heck, we'd probably be shipping less initial weight for the NEAs. (Before you say that we'll have to ship them life-support too, hear me out. *)
Now if we can find an inactive comet head in a close earth-crossing orbit, it's much more likely that we'll be able to access any of the compounds required for life support (such as ice, oxygen, and organic compounds) just by drilling down a bit than we will be able to on the moon. It's likely that even on an "exhausted" comet there are veins lying beneath rocky caps or in places that the sun never reached like the rotational poles. Thing is, those elements are MUCH MORE accessible from the surface than anything buried on the Moon is likely to be. Now it looks like Mars has a lot of what we want beneath the surface, and possibly even more accessible, but the life support problem is about the same and in some ways it's even harder on Mars (surface dust getting into equipment, a lower solar exposure time (important if you're using solar panels, most small asteroids have a much shorter "day" than Mars does), easier to dig into for shielding (much looser surfaces, low gravity and fewer surface altering processes). There are more good reasons not even counting needing a soft landing for base materials that may preclude aerobraking (aerbraking some hundreds of kg in the thin martian atmosphere is one thing, aerobraking five or ten tons is another.)
If we learn how to put bases on NEAs or close comets, that's a big step towards altering their orbits and utilizing them as resources - possibly to supply a moonbase with water and organics. Plus it gives us experience that may prove invaluable in the case of a potential asteroid impact, and we've learned to utilize the most-easily obtainable mineral deposits that exist in the solar system.
Doesn't that solve at least three end-goals at once?:)
* Mars is worse than the Moon and much worse than an asteroid, even if we find water and organics there that we can use, because we have to ship the machines to utilize those resources further and dump them down an even deeper gravity well than the moon. See?
We need three things:
1) Unmanned probes to NEAs. Lots of them. There are, what, four, five nations around the world sending probes to the moon? Why not any to asteroids?
2) A thorough radar and visual survey of all NEAs and any earth crossing bodies with an outside orbit radius inside the asteroid belt. Unmanned radar/telescope installations spread along Earth's orbit could do this. They need not be anything extremely expensive or complicated.
3) A plan that has at least one real end-goal, as you mention.
I'm by far not the first person to preach this here...
From what I understand there's a good possibility that a lot of NEA's are inactive comets with stable short-term orbits. Inactive or not, such a body would likely have a lot more ice and other cometary materials than a rocky NEA, perhaps deeper beneath the surface, but still better than the Moon by far. But we need to get some unmanned probes out to likely candidates and find out.
However, we don't need huge amounts of ice and volatiles to at least bootstrap operations, do we? Any way you look at it, if we can find a good ex-comet candidate, it'll be a lot easier to build a long-term inhabited base on it. And there are mid-small sized NEAs that have resonance orbits with Earth that bring them relatively close to us for long periods of time. Win-win.
I have always liked the idea of smelting an iron asteroid into a cylindrical shape with enormous solar mirrors, tho. There's a certain sort of efficient poetry to it:)
How about a base on a NEA that has an orbit that keeps it near Earth's a lot? We could mount a radar installation there and map a great deal more of the earth-orbit crossing asteroids than we can from here.
We're still putting a "first step out" base on another hunk of rock, only this one has the advantages of being easier to get to (helps when you're moving the mass of a base), it's heavier elements such as metal are likely closer to the surface and it may even contain a large amount of ice (many asteroids do), we'd gain an enormous amount of information about a potential danger to our planet's civilization, and the view would be AWESOME.:)
Nice post, but I suspect that the GP's point was that *untrained* people would likely cause more harm than good. He's probably right, I don't have any statistics, but it's shocking how few people really know the rudiments of first aid (and keep up on classes which are offered free in many places). Anyway I did want to add something to your response:
I also feel that first aid courses that put a serious focus on vehicle accident response should be a mandatory part of obtaining a driver's license. I'd consider the first aid kit optional perhaps, but anyone who took the courses seriously would have one anyway.
If for no other reason (and there are others, such as getting more people trained, and I feel the same as you about that), it might make a lot of people think more seriously about just how dangerous the vehicle they are driving can be. I think we can all agree there are entirely too many ignorant people out on the roads.
Paxton Galvanek pulled one of the passengers out of the smoking car,
If there had been smoke coming from the car, I think that would be a possible life-threatening situation. Cars don't explode like in the movies, no, but if the fuel tank or line is ruptured somewhere along the body they can start on fire pretty quickly.
I wouldn't necessarily have considered smoke coming from the car an emergency, but apparently he did. Now if the car was smoking and I smelled gasoline, that's a whole different story. Unless he talks about it (or gets sued) we'll probably never learn why he made his decision; but IMHO just on that bit of evidence I think we could cut him some slack, eh?
Most modern gas stations have more than enough electrical capacity already to charge at least some cars, all that'd be needed was the charging unit and adding a dedicated circuit to the pump canopies (that nowadays in many of them seems to be full of thousands of watts of floodlights).
I worked in a small one more than fifteen years ago and we had a 200 amp panel in there, more than half of it unused.
The tendency with newer installations is to ramp up the capacity anyway, and if there's demand there'll be more incentive by owners to do so, so I fail to see what the big deal with electrical charging stations is, they're pretty much brute-force electrical installs with some charge controller circuitry, this stuff is all over the place. Enlighten me?
Just have the charging outlet right next to the drivers door, and if the driver gets out of the car and closes the door and doesn't plug it in, have it flash led lights and say "You forgot to plug me in. You forgot to plug me in...."
The collision began about 1.5 billion years ago, about one million years before we observed it. The estimate is based off the two galaxies motion relative to each other.
Slashdot Mirror
There's absolutely nothing you, or anyone, can do about what someone else says or does on the Internet, or in person for that matter.
Yeah, but we can keep voting.
SB
Any intelligent being that is not capable of deceit probably won't survive to breed.
SB
You kids. Back in my day it just took "I'm going out with the boys."
SB
Yeah, but we're not even building serious NEA tracking installations nor doing *unmanned* missions to near earth asteroids, not even the ones that are easier to get to than the moon. Why not?
Any proper exploration strategy would *start* with unmanned missions. We could do them on the cheap, too, to NEAs.
The purpose of visiting asteroids is looking for something to mine
Like ice? How about hydrocarbons?
SB
One of the few really ontopic toplevel posts in the whole story, actually presenting arguments that relate to asteroids vs. moon.
See my other posts.
SB
Dude, the article was about looking at asteroid mission vs. moon mission, not moon vs. Mars. Even the summary was almost completely accurate, for once.
Moderators: The proper moderation for 90 degree tangents to the story is "Offtopic" and not "Insightful". If you feel the poster still made a good point even if it was completely tangential to the point of the article, might I suggest: "Interesting".
Good grief, you'd think moderation was rocket science or something.
SB
We don't have to go out that far. There are plenty of small asteroids that have stable short-radius earth crossing orbits. Many of them are likely old comets.
No offense, but it astounds me that this is still an argument point, especially here, with all the timely news about potential asteroid impacts on Earth. Y'know, if these asteroids come enough to us for them to be a possible impact, it just *might* be a low-deltaV solution to intercept them? Perhaps lower than Mars?
(sorry, yes, it's rocket science)
SB
Dear asteroid skeptic,
Exploring asteroids, especially the ones that come near enough to us to potentially be dangerous, is NOT a purely scientific endeavor. Do I really need to outline them?
If so, then see my other posts under this story for more information as to why I believe that. Feel free to debate them, indeed, I hope you do.
Cheers,
SB
PS Oh, and asteroids are also "solar bodies". There was a memo...
Ah, an asteroid agnostic Wavering :)
:)
Let me just interject something here:
Granted Assumption: If we can put a base on the moon, we can put a base on an NEA or a stable earth crossing comet. Right? The life support problem is approximately the same, the fuel problem actually favors many of the NEAs, Heck, we'd probably be shipping less initial weight for the NEAs. (Before you say that we'll have to ship them life-support too, hear me out. *)
Now if we can find an inactive comet head in a close earth-crossing orbit, it's much more likely that we'll be able to access any of the compounds required for life support (such as ice, oxygen, and organic compounds) just by drilling down a bit than we will be able to on the moon. It's likely that even on an "exhausted" comet there are veins lying beneath rocky caps or in places that the sun never reached like the rotational poles. Thing is, those elements are MUCH MORE accessible from the surface than anything buried on the Moon is likely to be. Now it looks like Mars has a lot of what we want beneath the surface, and possibly even more accessible, but the life support problem is about the same and in some ways it's even harder on Mars (surface dust getting into equipment, a lower solar exposure time (important if you're using solar panels, most small asteroids have a much shorter "day" than Mars does), easier to dig into for shielding (much looser surfaces, low gravity and fewer surface altering processes). There are more good reasons not even counting needing a soft landing for base materials that may preclude aerobraking (aerbraking some hundreds of kg in the thin martian atmosphere is one thing, aerobraking five or ten tons is another.)
If we learn how to put bases on NEAs or close comets, that's a big step towards altering their orbits and utilizing them as resources - possibly to supply a moonbase with water and organics. Plus it gives us experience that may prove invaluable in the case of a potential asteroid impact, and we've learned to utilize the most-easily obtainable mineral deposits that exist in the solar system.
Doesn't that solve at least three end-goals at once?
* Mars is worse than the Moon and much worse than an asteroid, even if we find water and organics there that we can use, because we have to ship the machines to utilize those resources further and dump them down an even deeper gravity well than the moon. See?
We need three things:
1) Unmanned probes to NEAs. Lots of them. There are, what, four, five nations around the world sending probes to the moon? Why not any to asteroids?
2) A thorough radar and visual survey of all NEAs and any earth crossing bodies with an outside orbit radius inside the asteroid belt. Unmanned radar/telescope installations spread along Earth's orbit could do this. They need not be anything extremely expensive or complicated.
3) A plan that has at least one real end-goal, as you mention.
I'm by far not the first person to preach this here...
Cheers,
SB
Hey, Asteroid Brother
Just one (slight) kibble:
The closest asteroids with ice are around Jupiter
From what I understand there's a good possibility that a lot of NEA's are inactive comets with stable short-term orbits. Inactive or not, such a body would likely have a lot more ice and other cometary materials than a rocky NEA, perhaps deeper beneath the surface, but still better than the Moon by far. But we need to get some unmanned probes out to likely candidates and find out.
However, we don't need huge amounts of ice and volatiles to at least bootstrap operations, do we? Any way you look at it, if we can find a good ex-comet candidate, it'll be a lot easier to build a long-term inhabited base on it. And there are mid-small sized NEAs that have resonance orbits with Earth that bring them relatively close to us for long periods of time. Win-win.
I have always liked the idea of smelting an iron asteroid into a cylindrical shape with enormous solar mirrors, tho. There's a certain sort of efficient poetry to it
Cheers!
SB
How about a base on a NEA that has an orbit that keeps it near Earth's a lot? We could mount a radar installation there and map a great deal more of the earth-orbit crossing asteroids than we can from here.
We're still putting a "first step out" base on another hunk of rock, only this one has the advantages of being easier to get to (helps when you're moving the mass of a base), it's heavier elements such as metal are likely closer to the surface and it may even contain a large amount of ice (many asteroids do), we'd gain an enormous amount of information about a potential danger to our planet's civilization, and the view would be AWESOME.
Doesn't that seem like a better deal all around?
SB
Nice post, but I suspect that the GP's point was that *untrained* people would likely cause more harm than good. He's probably right, I don't have any statistics, but it's shocking how few people really know the rudiments of first aid (and keep up on classes which are offered free in many places). Anyway I did want to add something to your response:
I also feel that first aid courses that put a serious focus on vehicle accident response should be a mandatory part of obtaining a driver's license. I'd consider the first aid kit optional perhaps, but anyone who took the courses seriously would have one anyway.
If for no other reason (and there are others, such as getting more people trained, and I feel the same as you about that), it might make a lot of people think more seriously about just how dangerous the vehicle they are driving can be. I think we can all agree there are entirely too many ignorant people out on the roads.
SB
In this situation:
Paxton Galvanek pulled one of the passengers out of the smoking car,
If there had been smoke coming from the car, I think that would be a possible life-threatening situation. Cars don't explode like in the movies, no, but if the fuel tank or line is ruptured somewhere along the body they can start on fire pretty quickly.
I wouldn't necessarily have considered smoke coming from the car an emergency, but apparently he did. Now if the car was smoking and I smelled gasoline, that's a whole different story. Unless he talks about it (or gets sued) we'll probably never learn why he made his decision; but IMHO just on that bit of evidence I think we could cut him some slack, eh?
SB
It takes an effort to learn something in a regular classroom or course, too.
SB
I can hear it now: "We've been trying to tell you for years that doing something in a game can teach you how to do it real life.
Isn't that what educational games are all about? That *is* what America's Army is supposed to be.
SB
Who has the time to read an article twice?
SB
Most modern gas stations have more than enough electrical capacity already to charge at least some cars, all that'd be needed was the charging unit and adding a dedicated circuit to the pump canopies (that nowadays in many of them seems to be full of thousands of watts of floodlights).
I worked in a small one more than fifteen years ago and we had a 200 amp panel in there, more than half of it unused.
The tendency with newer installations is to ramp up the capacity anyway, and if there's demand there'll be more incentive by owners to do so, so I fail to see what the big deal with electrical charging stations is, they're pretty much brute-force electrical installs with some charge controller circuitry, this stuff is all over the place. Enlighten me?
SB
WRT recharging and people plugging in their cars:
Just have the charging outlet right next to the drivers door, and if the driver gets out of the car and closes the door and doesn't plug it in, have it flash led lights and say "You forgot to plug me in. You forgot to plug me in...."
SB
Only if the plumber who fixes your mains leak can have the same incentive
Fair is fair, right?
SB
Something like that would probably only be practical for night driving, but I think it would aid depth perception considerably.
Of course one could vary the color of the lights as well - say green-yellow-red?
SB
Perhaps some effect, but even the larger SUVs and pickups one usually has enough room to weave in or out a bit and see what's around them.
Tractor-trailers, on the other hand; which have hugely proliferated in number since I was a kid...
SB
Only if they aren't already cast elsewhere
But Paul Allen certainly seems to like these kinds of projects...
SB
Yeah, see my other post. Whups :(
Moderators certainly failed it tho...
SB
I run into this question a lot, so I don't think he was being facetious.
(Usually I don't answer it wrong, doh, thanks)
SB
The collision began about 1.5 billion years ago, about one million years before we observed it. The estimate is based off the two galaxies motion relative to each other.
:)
It's just imprecise language.
SB