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#40 by Robotbeat on 06 Apr, 2013 22:20
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The alternative isn't something awesome (like a lunar landing, which would require a significant increase in the NASA budget--or a wholesale cancellation of involvement in ISS and unmanned planetary exploration--if they're going to do it with anything close to the architecture of Constellation), but launching to an empty spot in space, turning around, and coming back.
Identifying asteroids, moving one of them, then bringing it to the vicinity of the Earth-moon system to be studied by astronauts (and large, tens of kilograms (or more) of samples brought back instead of the usual few grams or micrograms like from Hayabusa or other deep space unmanned sample return missions...) could accomplish useful scientific goals with what would otherwise be a largely engineering-test mission. It would also be more defensible for skeptics, since part of the funding would be used to survey near Earth objects (a planetary defense imperative), and the operational capability to interact with and move an asteroid (even if it's small) is something it'd be nice to know how to do /before/ we have to design a mission to deflect a real killer.
And of course, the pie-in-the-sky possible return-on-investment would be encouragement for asteroid mining.
If you compare this to the ~$1 billion Osiris-Rex (60grams minimum sample) or the $250 million Hayabusa (about one nanogram of samples?), you're likely to get /three orders of magnitude/ more sample material for the additional cost of the robotic portion ($2.5 billion?) and some additional training for the astronauts and some EVA capability and other mission peripherals (don't know how to estimate those costs), since the Orion and SLS and flight is already needed for engineering development. -
#41 by Bubbinski on 06 Apr, 2013 23:26
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After I posted I did see that a part of the $100 M budget request for this to get the project started was going to detection of asteroids. If part of the funding is going to be used for a survey, as you say, that makes me feel better about this mission, as surveys like that are critical.
Good point about the sample return as well. But I would hope that one mission to this one very small rock would not be the end. If NASA's focus will be on asteroids, I would hope to see longer flights to more (and much larger) rocks out there to follow on after the 2021 mission, to build up to eventual flights to Mars (and Phobos and Deimos). I would also hope that some kind of facility could still be built at a Lagrange point, as a staging point for missions (by an exploration ship stationed at that facility) to the moon, asteroids, and to Mars. -
#42 by Robotbeat on 06 Apr, 2013 23:30
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People have mentioned that Mars is out of reach. This mission would definitely help gain practical knowledge for an orbital mission to Mars that also visits the surface of Phobos or Deimos, and possibly would help develop ways to do ISRU (even if it's just for radiation shielding or some such) with their soils.
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#43 by QuantumG on 07 Apr, 2013 00:01
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No response from PR or DSI?
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#44 by robertross on 07 Apr, 2013 01:18
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I haven't read anything about this except an announcement on CNN and personal blog posts here.
I see this as NASA trying to balance significant budget constraints while trying to play the public opinion card.
That asteroid explosion over Russia probably brought people a sense of insecurity across America, and the more the scientific community can learn from them (or the public perceiving they will be learning something from them), they can push their own internal agendas (I'm talking about the ones we don't hear about from higher up).
Call it job security, or whatever, but NASA needed 'something' to push the SLS agenda, and this could be their solution.
I'm not for it, but it's not as if I have a say in the matter anyway. -
#45 by a_langwich on 07 Apr, 2013 01:23
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I might get some negative response to this post but...
Okay, there is no reason why this isn't hypothetically doable and I think it should be executable in practice. My real objection is that this represents an abandonment of deep space flight. It's a tacit admission that it is too difficult and costly to build DSH and fly it to any target, so they've got to fly the target to the Earth/Moon system.
I disagree. Is a test flight "an abandonment" of the goal of flying a paying payload? Was Gemini an abandonment of the goal of landing people on the moon? No. They are steps in that direction.
I think this mission could be seen in the same way. All of the existing constituencies (moon, L2, asteroid-out-there, Mars) are howling because they want NASA to drop everything else it is doing and focus on their desired plan of action NOW. They all have schemes where something half-assed but practically meaningless can be done, along with other plans requiring massive expenditure and large infrastructure and accomplishing lots of things we hypothetically might be able to do, held together in a big mudball by wishful thinking. In reality, there's a lot of engineering and TRL development needed, and this little baby project is a useful step for some pieces of that development.
If you don't have the budget to work on all that development and drive those risks down AND complete SLS, this allows you to work on pieces of the puzzle first, at lower cost, while also developing out the capabilities of your launch platform.
Of course, if you wanted SLS to be cancelled in favor of lots of EELV launches, this is further movement in support of SLS. Tough. Feel free to go out and earn/raise billions and do things your way. Or you can organize politically to kill it, but you have to understand that killing the PoR inevitably weakens NASA and support for NASA as well, as it has so many times in the past. (It's the French Revolution syndrome: once you've marshaled the opposition to send projects to the guillotine, YOUR project is likely to meet the same fate when it gets its chance. At this point, it is far too much easier to kill NASA's big HSF projects than to finish them.)
Rather than an abandonment of Flexible Path, I think this is a further investment in that approach. Rather than developing lunar landing hardware, this allows exploration to be done while in cislunar space without dropping into the gravity well. If you are a fan of ISRU, this is a way of testing/developing ISRU hardware without having to build a lot of infrastructure deep in a gravity well. If you are a fan of manipulating asteroids and averting planetary calamity, this is a way of testing working hardware on a smaller scale. If you want asteroid mining to take off, this is a way to explore that machinery, while still in the presence of humans to troubleshoot, observe, and innovate.
Meanwhile, you are testing your BEO launch/reentry hardware, radiation mitigation schemes, ECLSS, and so on.
I think the proper perspective is not that this replaces Flexible Path or moon or Mars, but represents a reasonable small-sized mission for early SLS flights. I don't think it's a justification of near-term SLS, so much as giving near-term SLS a nice side benefit beyond proving out upper stages, BEO operations, etc. It's the same sense that including a small scientific/commercial payload on the first flight of a new launch system doesn't justify an already necessary flight, but serves as icing on the cake. The actual justification of SLS rests in its capability to accomplish bigger things down the road. And, as icing on the cake, the confidence in achieving those greater things can be increased by upping the development level of hardware used to dig/drill/scrape/cut/extract/refine within the constraints of space operation.
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#46 by Robotbeat on 07 Apr, 2013 01:55
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Why are people negative about turning a flight test into something useful?
Is it because you don't like the administration? Is it because it's not the Moon?
Neither seem like good reasons to me. The perfect is the enemy of the good. We won't see a perfect plan EVER. But we might, just might, see one that is affordable enough that it could actually happen. This is one of those. -
#47 by vt_hokie on 07 Apr, 2013 02:05
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To me, this project (no matter how plausible in engineering terms and potentially useful in scientific terms) represents a surrender of the future of HSF. There will be no BEO, probably not in any of our lifetimes, unless Inspiration Mars somehow hits their target launch date.
I've already resigned myself to the fact that there will likely be no BEO human spaceflight in my lifetime. I'm just hoping to see us go back to the moon (or something like this wacky idea, which at least puts humans in the neighborhood since the administration seems dead set against returning to the lunar surface). Heck, at this point, I'm just hoping to see the US develop a low Earth orbit crew transport capability before I die! -
#48 by Robotbeat on 07 Apr, 2013 02:42
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Can't go to the lunar surface without a lander. I've looked at the budget sand charts, and while NASA is developing SLS and Orion (and even afterward, when it is flying), NASA /cannot/ afford to develop and build landers (esp. of the Altair type) without a budget increase, unless you steal a lot of money from other NASA initiatives.
The Obama administration has proposed cutting SLS/Orion. The Administration has even proposed an increase in funding for NASA (before the deficit hawks started really pecking at Barack's brain). Either of these would make room for NASA to do significant beyond-LEO HSF (lunar missions of Apollo scale or maybe better could be afforded using existing launch vehicles and the budget of SLS... And if you use vehicles like CST-100, even better), but Congress was outraged, and SLS was restored. So we're stuck without the budgetary capability to go to the Moon's surface. Look at the sand charts, we /cannot go/. And what'd be the point, anyway? To make propellant for a Mars mission we can't afford even more? Either we change something dramatically about how we do HSF (i.e. using commercial crew, existing launch vehicles, and game-changing tech like propellant depots and large-scale solar-electric propulsion) or NASA will need a big budget increase. Since the latter is NOT a realistic option (unfortunately), Obama choose the former. And Congress has barely let any of that go through and has kept SLS/Orion in place.
A mission like this is pretty much the very best option left to get some beyond-LEO exploration done in the next ten years, given the budgetary constraints and the constraint of having to use SLS/Orion.
If you don't believe me, if you believe there's money sitting somewhere to pay to develop and fund lunar hardware (while funding SLS/Orion and ground facilities and mission ops) without a budget increase, look here:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Wilhite_2-13-13/Wilhite_2-13-13.pdf
Slide 5. (CTV, the pink, is Orion)
And notice that the budget requests (from the Obama administration, for instance) have been much higher than what was actually passed, though in recent years they've converged (Obama gave up and started believing the deficit hawks). There simply isn't fracking any room for a lander in there. And that's without possibility of going over-budget anywhere. If you cut out just the HLLV (and associated ground costs), there's room for developing everything else (even Orion), and when they're done being developed, you just buy trips on existing launchers ($2-3 billion per year buys you a LOT of launches, especially with bulk, firm purchases... 12-20 Atlas Vs? 50 Falcon 9s? per year?).
But there are political strings attached to this money, and so we definitely can't just use that money to develop things like landers, deep space habs, pressurized rovers, electric Mars Transfer Vehicles, and such. It has to go to making the HLV and the capsule.
TL;DR:
And so given those constraints (budget, SLS, etc), this asteroid mission looks like a pretty good plan to me to actually get some exploration done and actually use this HLV and capsule that we're investing a lot into.
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#49 by notsorandom on 07 Apr, 2013 03:15
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No response from PR or DSI?
From the link YG1968 posted above:QuoteRick Tumlinson, chairman of an asteroid-mining venture called Deep Space Industries, said he was concerned that NASA's asteroid mission might interfere with private-sector efforts — and he called on NASA to rely on private enterprise wherever possible.
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#50 by notsorandom on 07 Apr, 2013 03:28
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The goal of an asteroid by 2025 was to develop and test the systems needed for Mars. The idea being that a NEO mission was a stepping stone along the way to Mars. With this plan we would not have to develop a deep space habitat and learn how to do long duration BEO missions. It makes this asteroid mission easier and cheaper but we still need to figure all that stuff out to go to Mars. The question in my mind is what do we do immediately after this that gets us on track for Mars? What is the next stop on the path to Mars?
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#51 by yg1968 on 07 Apr, 2013 03:33
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No response from PR or DSI?
From the link YG1968 posted above:QuoteRick Tumlinson, chairman of an asteroid-mining venture called Deep Space Industries, said he was concerned that NASA's asteroid mission might interfere with private-sector efforts — and he called on NASA to rely on private enterprise wherever possible.
The rest of the paragraph was also important:QuoteThe administration official assured NBC News that cooperation with commercial ventures as well as other groups such as the B612 Foundation was part of the plan.
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#52 by HappyMartian on 07 Apr, 2013 03:40
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"Only the smallest asteroid could possibly be brought back to cislunar space; the object described in the Keck report is only a few meters across – a dried mud ball. An asteroid that small will have virtually no geological diversity, thus giving us limited information about asteroid evolution (NEAs almost that large already exist in meteorite collections on the Earth.)"
And, "Of course, this will be portrayed as an effort to learn how to 'mitigate' asteroid collisions with Earth, but there’s nothing we can learn from a hauled rock at L-2 that we could not learn from a small robotic mission to a NEA safely situated in its own orbit around the Sun."
Let’s Haul Asteroids! By Paul Spudis April 5, 2013
At: http://www.spudislunarresources.com/blog/lets-haul-asteroids/ -
#53 by sdsds on 07 Apr, 2013 03:46
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As I see it, talking about this mission is a good plan for the next 2 or 3 years. During those years the current compromise on funding priorities for human spaceflight beyond LEO can stay more or less intact. SLS has a purpose and thus its development gets funded. Ditto Orion. Some funding goes into planning, and some goes into early tech development for the robotic component, and some into the survey/search for an appropriate target. Not too much (if any) gets taken away from ISS operations, commercial resupply, or commercial crew.
Everybody stays happy for now, and no one currently holding an elected or appointed office needs to think much about what happens beyond the next 2 or 3 years.... -
#54 by Robotbeat on 07 Apr, 2013 03:58
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The goal of an asteroid by 2025 was to develop and test the systems needed for Mars. The idea being that a NEO mission was a stepping stone along the way to Mars. With this plan we would not have to develop a deep space habitat and learn how to do long duration BEO missions. It makes this asteroid mission easier and cheaper but we still need to figure all that stuff out to go to Mars. The question in my mind is what do we do immediately after this that gets us on track for Mars? What is the next stop on the path to Mars?
The next step could be the gateway, possibly using the gateway to further study the captured asteroid (and practice for later missions), then a more ambitious asteroid mission (go to a larger asteroid), then straight to Phobos or Deimos. I don't know that there's money to do any more than the gateway (and a modest one), though, until ISS is decommissioned around 2028. If ISS is used as a platform to develop the gateway, this plan may take longer than we might like but could be realistic as far as providing continuity.
The gateway wouldn't be permanently manned and would be much smaller than ISS... it would use the infrastructure currently in place for ISS ops (and thus should continue with the political support that ISS has) and would function as a prototype for the deep space habitat/transfer vehicle, but should be able to be resupplied and supported for much less cost than ISS, being a far smaller and simpler craft (though launching crew using SLS wouldn't be exactly free...). But a gateway or deep space hab would be a good platform for providing intensive study of an asteroid or moon of Mars, including possibly something like the MMSEV (with suitlocks). Toward the late 2020s, this seems like a realistic option to me, politically, technically, and budgetarily, transitioning to more intense asteroid (or lunar, depending on what future Congresses and Administrations decide) missions then to Phobos/Deimos on the road to a Mars surface mission.
One good thing about the gateway combined with the captured asteroid is that it could allow testing of ISRU technologies relevant for a Mars mission... Large amounts of regolith (several tons, perhaps tens of tons) could be used as bulk shielding against GCRs, perhaps just by crushing the regolith and putting it in sacks placed around the crew quarters. The same technique could be used during asteroid missions or even Mars missions (using the regolith of the moons of Mars) and lunar surface missions, though it'd probably be insane to assume it could just work before testing it first. This would address the biggest "scary" challenge for long-stay Mars (orbital) missions: GCR (as much as I think it is overblown and addressable without such countermeasures). It'd also allow more permanent habitation and usage of the Gateway without huge complaints from flight surgeons.
That is just the /easiest/ way of doing ISRU. Once you've started experimenting with ISRU, I'm sure that oxygen extraction will be tested (or perhaps provided to NASA as a private service, just like the Sabatier water generator on ISS), converting the gateway into a powerful staging platform for all deep space destinations. (further small asteroids could be captured, perhaps by private companies if they can do it cheaper than NASA is able to) Such a capability could be replicated in Mars orbit, as well. If it is honed and largely automated at the gateway, you could also capture small asteroids in Mars orbit (!) or use Phobos or Deimos and demolish the tyranny of the rocket equation. -
#55 by RigelFive on 07 Apr, 2013 04:07
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There is a relatively large Trojan-like asteroid called 3753 Cruithne that is orbiting Earth. I bet this one could be jarred into a lunar orbit as its horseshoe orbit is likely unstable. Note the comment on Wikipedia "It is incorrectly identified as Earths second moon." But I'd give it some credit for this asteroid capture concept. Just reading the types of orbits asteroids actually have is pretty inspiring (to me).
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne#section_3
Then there is 2010 TK7. Can't remember where I read it, but somewhere someone published this one as being reachable given current delta V capabilities for a manned mission. 300 meters doesn't seem way out of the box to move its orbit, but still pretty big.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_TK7
I think it would be fascinating to attempt to correlate what these asteroids are made of, see if there is a common origin to these objects, and discover something about Earth's and our moon's history. I bet the solar flux on these objects could tell a dandy story.
Admittedly, I haven't had the chance to consider feasibility of all this. Perhaps a pool table trick shot to bump an asteroid is all it takes!? Oh the places we could go! -
#56 by HappyMartian on 07 Apr, 2013 04:16
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As I see it, talking about this mission is a good plan for the next 2 or 3 years. During those years the current compromise on funding priorities for human spaceflight beyond LEO can stay more or less intact. SLS has a purpose and thus its development gets funded. Ditto Orion. Some funding goes into planning, and some goes into early tech development for the robotic component, and some into the survey/search for an appropriate target. Not too much (if any) gets taken away from ISS operations, commercial resupply, or commercial crew.
Everybody stays happy for now, and no one currently holding an elected or appointed office needs to think much about what happens beyond the next 2 or 3 years....
"Recently, I’ve been struck by how closely Boorstin’s concept of the pseudo-event describes the current sorry state of our civil space program. Specifically, the program is more notable for what it purports to be (or for what it says it intends to become) rather than for what it is actually doing."
And, "The net effect of the advent of a space pseudo-program is to make the average citizen (who thinks little about space on a daily basis but is broadly supportive of it) believe we are progressing in space, when in fact nothing is being accomplished except that some people are making a career out of pretending that we are accomplishing something."
And, "We have a national space agency that doesn’t know where it is going or what it is doing. Critical national spaceflight assets and facilities carefully built over several generations are being lost – decaying from neglect, being inexpertly mothballed or sold off. A trained and dedicated technical workforce is disappearing like a vapor, as if it had never existed."
And, "The Moon landings are renowned for the fact that many believe they never happened. What a remarkable development for American spaceflight – we once had a real space program that some thought was faked; now we have a fake space program that many believe is real."
From: A Space Pseudo-Program By Paul Spudis January 29, 2013
At: http://www.spudislunarresources.com/blog/a-space-pseudo-program/ -
#57 by HappyMartian on 07 Apr, 2013 04:48
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There is a relatively large Trojan-like asteroid called 3753 Cruithne that is orbiting Earth. I bet this one could be jarred into a lunar orbit as its horseshoe orbit is likely unstable. Note the comment on Wikipedia "It is incorrectly identified as Earths second moon." But I'd give it some credit for this asteroid capture concept. Just reading the types of orbits asteroids actually have is pretty inspiring (to me).
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne#section_3
Then there is 2010 TK7. Can't remember where I read it, but somewhere someone published this one as being reachable given current delta V capabilities for a manned mission. 300 meters doesn't seem way out of the box to move its orbit, but still pretty big.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_TK7
I think it would be fascinating to attempt to correlate what these asteroids are made of, see if there is a common origin to these objects, and discover something about Earth's and our moon's history. I bet the solar flux on these objects could tell a dandy story.
Admittedly, I haven't had the chance to consider feasibility of all this. Perhaps a pool table trick shot to bump an asteroid is all it takes!? Oh the places we could go!
"Cruithne is approximately 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) in diameter, and its closest approach to Earth is approximately thirty times the separation between Earth and the Moon (12 Gm or twelve million kilometres)."
And, "There is no danger of a collision with Earth for millions of years, if ever. Its orbital path and Earth's do not cross, and its orbital plane is currently tilted to that of the Earth by 19.8°. Cruithne, having a maximum near-Earth magnitude of +15.8, is fainter than Pluto and would require at least a 12.5-inch (320 mm) reflecting telescope to be seen.[7][8]"
And, "is in a normal elliptic orbit around the Sun. Its period of revolution around the Sun, approximately 364 days at present, is almost equal to that of the Earth. Because of this, Cruithne and Earth appear to "follow" each other in their paths around the Sun. This is why Cruithne is sometimes called "Earth's second moon".[9] However, it does not orbit the Earth and is not a moon."
From: 3753 Cruithne Wikipedia
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne
"2010 TK7 has an absolute magnitude of luminosity (determinable because of its known location) of about 20.6.[8] Based on an assumed albedo of 0.1, its estimated diameter is about 300 meters.[3] No spectral data are yet available to shed light on its composition. 2010 TK7 would exert a surface gravitational force of less than 1/20,000 times that of Earth."
And, "At the time of discovery, the asteroid orbited the Sun with a period of 365.389 days, close to Earth's 365.256 days. As long as it remains in 1:1 resonance with Earth, its average period over long time intervals will exactly equal that of Earth. On its eccentric (e = 0.191) orbit, 2010 TK7's distance from the Sun varies annually from 0.81 AU to 1.19 AU.[3] It orbits in a plane inclined about 21 degrees to the plane of the ecliptic."
And, "However, 2010 TK7 is not an energetically attractive target for a space mission because of its orbital inclination:[9] It moves so far above and below the Earth's orbit that the required change in velocity for a spacecraft to match its trajectory coming from Earth's would be 9.4 km/s, while some other near-Earth asteroids require less than 4 km/s.[3]"
From: 2010 TK7 Wikipedia
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_TK7 -
#58 by sdsds on 07 Apr, 2013 05:02
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Yes, the risk of the United States ending up with only "a space pseudo-program," as described by Spudis, is a piece of the puzzle. But the situation isn't quite as bleak as Spudis makes it out. Orion flight hardware exists. SLS has passed PDR.
What supporters can hope is that during the 2 or 3 years of relative funding stability this mission concept might provide, Orion will have flown and SLS will have built flight hardware. Maybe those accomplishments would provide the "momentum" needed to then carry out an uncrewed EM-1 flight? -
#59 by Robotbeat on 07 Apr, 2013 05:17
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Spudis doesn't like this plan because it bypasses the Moon. You're just not going to convince him of it.