Mr. Gerstenmaier further stated that “We had trouble getting the funding together for this thing. So this slip of the one year that you see wasn’t caused by technical. It was really caused by budget availability. We just didn’t have the budget available to go do this.”
Quote from: cro-magnon gramps on 08/01/2016 08:15 pmMr. Gerstenmaier further stated that “We had trouble getting the funding together for this thing. So this slip of the one year that you see wasn’t caused by technical. It was really caused by budget availability. We just didn’t have the budget available to go do this.”Considering the unpopularity of it I'm not surprised. If they truly want to prove it's an asset for Mars, they need to change the targets to Phobos or Deimos. If the ultimate point is to prove SEP can deliver (or return) things from Mars, send it to Mars orbit and then return it to Orion in Lunar orbit. People, congressional, scientific, and public, would finally click and say "Ah I see now..."Of course this is just me rambling, but we'll see in another year or two.
It also has the side effect of encouraging/accelerating asteroid mining.
In the meantime we have this politically weak asteroid redirect effort that relies on a transportation system that itself has a questionable future. I think we'll have to wait until after the election to truly get an idea if it's got a future or not...
Quote from: Robotbeat on 08/02/2016 01:07 amIt also has the side effect of encouraging/accelerating asteroid mining.While I think helping our private section figure out how to increase our GDP by exploiting resources off Earth is a good idea, it's not currently an acknowledged government initiative.
Instead, NASA states about the ARM...
Planetary Resources Development Corp. in Redmond, Washington: The “Arkyd Spacecraft Collaboration with NASA’s Asteroid Initiative” study will determine how three classes of small, low-cost spacecraft being developed by Planetary Resources could be modified to enhance NASA’s planned asteroid missions.
Deep Space Industries in Houston-: “Secondary Spacecraft in Support of ARM,” which will assess three spacecraft types being developed by DSI for compatibility with the ARV or launch on SLS, and examine public-private partnership approaches.
The paradigm shift enabled by the ARM concept would allow in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) to be used at the human mission departure location (i.e., cislunar space) versus exclusively at the deep-space mission destination. This approach drastically reduces the barriers associated with utilizing ISRU for human deep-space missions. The successful testing of ISRU techniques and associated equipment could enable large-scale commercial ISRU operations to become a reality and enable a future space-based economy utilizing processed asteroidal materials.
These activities could jump-start an entire in situ resource utilization (ISRU) industry.
Several activities could take place after the NEA is placed in cislunar orbit to benefit human exploration, the development of ISRU, and science.
• Testing of large-scale sample acquisition using various collection approaches, leading to subsequent mining activities.
Mining/Benefaction/Extraction/Fabrication – The technical requirements for mining asteroids would be as diverse as those used on Earth. Plausible asteroidal feedstocks cover a vast range of chemical compositions and physical properties, suggesting a careful tailoring of drilling, blasting, cutting, and crushing hardware to the chosen target—and placing a premium upon prior knowledge of the nature of the target material. Indeed, one of the central reasons for choosing a water-bearing C-type asteroid as our first target is that the chemical and physical properties of these materials are both rather well understood and benign (very low crushing strength and high content of desirable volatiles). Benchscale prototypes of systems for processing asteroidal materials have been developed in laboratories on Earth, in some cases using real meteorite materials as the feedstock.Further development of equipment for effecting mineral separation on asteroids, a process that would become more important in potential future missions to volatile-poor metal-bearing asteroids, could await both experience with the first retrieved asteroid and laboratory investigations on meteorite samples. Beneficiation (the selective enrichment of desired minerals) may in many cases require crushing of the target rock, followed by magnetic, electrostatic, or other means of concentration. Such concentration technologies would also be of considerable value on the Moon for the concentration of potential ores such as ilmenite.The extraction of a desired material (water, carbon, nitrogen, iron, nickel, sulfur, platinum-group metals, etc.) may involve either chemical or physical processes. Examples include thermal decomposition of clay minerals and hydrated salts to release water vapor, Mond-process volatilization and separation of metallic iron and nickel, electrolysis of molten silicates, or any of dozens of other candidate techniques which would be chosen for their relevance to the intended target and the desired product.Fabrication of products would likewise involve a host of different possible processes. Production of high-purity water for propulsion or life-support use may require controlled distillation of the first-cut water driven off by heating the asteroid material to separate the water from undesirable contaminants such as volatile organics and sulfur and chlorine compounds. Likewise, production of high-purity iron (99.9999% iron has the corrosion resistance of stainless steel and a very high tensile strength) could be effected by Mond-process volatilization of native metal alloys, simple distillation to separate iron and nickel carbonyls, and controlled thermal decomposition of the iron pentacarbonyl vapor in a heated mold (at about 200 Celsius and 1 atm pressure). Fabrication of refractory bricks or aerobrakes could be done by microwave sintering of appropriate metal-oxide mixtures in molds. These candidate fabrication processes could be developed sequentially as our experience with in-space processing grows, and as new classes of asteroidal feedstock become available.
Um, I said it was a side effect. Just because a single statement about ARM doesn't talk about it doesn't mean it's not there. That's the whole problem: people take the existence of one goal as evidence that others don't exist. That's dumb.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 08/02/2016 01:59 pmUm, I said it was a side effect. Just because a single statement about ARM doesn't talk about it doesn't mean it's not there. That's the whole problem: people take the existence of one goal as evidence that others don't exist. That's dumb.I understand your point of view, but by nature secondary goals are not going to be as visible as primary goals. ...
{snip}Fundamentally, ARM (especially Option B) is a capability that every space-faring species should possess. And we shouldn't short-change it by trying to pidgeon-hole the concept into fitting just as a small, incremental cog in the Mars Campaign (which may soon become obsolete anyway).
Just like the Mars colonization thing, I think NASA's voice and articulation is muffled by a desire not to whip up controversy and just an overall risk averseness and desire for consensus.
But these are things which ARM was really intended for, and we ought to be vocal about them.
Fundamentally, ARM (especially Option B) is a capability that every space-faring species should possess. And we shouldn't short-change it by trying to pidgeon-hole the concept into fitting just as a small, incremental cog in the Mars Campaign (which may soon become obsolete anyway).
And I think that ARM would benefit tremendously if the case for it were more publicly and firmly made:1) Enhanced gravity tractor technique.2) Asteroid mining (aka ISRU) in 3 ways: a) piggy back microsats by commercial ventures who want to contribute data to the mission b) bringing a big rock to cislunar space where asteroid mining techniques can be directly tested in a representative space environment but with low latency and easy opportunities (fast turnaround) to enable quick iterations and improvements c) the actual spacecraft being reused to capture more rocks for ISRU/mining after main mission is done3) SEP demo4) Scientific sampling (including characterizing asteroids for hazard analysis)