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#380
by
robertross
on 25 Mar, 2015 23:50
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Call is over.
Can I give a w00t! for them selecting Option B?
Indeed.
Thanks for the great coverage Jon.
As you had noted, hopefully some nice oportunities for you and your team in the future!
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#381
by
Burninate
on 25 Mar, 2015 23:55
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Does it bother anyone else that we're reaching for a boulder smaller than the IMLEO of the mission to visit the boulder?
Where'd ya get that? It certainly sounds like it could be close.. I figure about 90 tons for anything resembling a 4m diameter "boulder". Even if they're going to launch their retrieval mission with SLS that's at most 70 tons.. but as I understood it they were aiming for a smaller launch vehicle.
Even if that is the case, you're not getting a gearing factor of 1:1 to the Moon with anything, so it sounds like a huge win.
A 4 meter diameter perfect sphere is 33.5 cubic meters. Per
this , while density may vary in some types of asteroids between 1 and 5 tons per cubic meter, the default assumption is two tons per cubic meter, for a total mass of 67 tons. I'm not sure whether the reality of non-spherical rocks would nudge this upwards or downwards. EM-2 to the asteroid is supposed to use an SLS Block 2, with the EUS, the Orion, the Orion service module, and perhaps a habitat. Apparently payload inserted to rendezvous orbit will be on the order of 50 tons, says WP. At the best RL10's can do, that means to get to an EML point you need 100-110T IMLEO before even attributing a nonzero dry mass to the EUS.
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#382
by
QuantumG
on 26 Mar, 2015 00:01
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EM-2 to the asteroid is supposed to use an SLS Block 2, with the EUS, the Orion, the Orion service module, and perhaps a habitat.
I thought you were comparing the IMLEO of the robotic mission to the returned mass. What's the point of comparing the IMLEO of EM-2?
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#383
by
Burninate
on 26 Mar, 2015 00:42
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EM-2 to the asteroid is supposed to use an SLS Block 2, with the EUS, the Orion, the Orion service module, and perhaps a habitat.
I thought you were comparing the IMLEO of the robotic mission to the returned mass. What's the point of comparing the IMLEO of EM-2?
The immediately obvious usage for asteroid mass is as a cheap replacement for shipping mass (water, shielding, carbon) up from Earth. I'm just pointing out that we're not getting all that much mass back here. EM-2 is just an arbitrary point of comparison. If we successfully did our ISRU thing to this rock, we would get back much less than the amount of rocket fuel and water that it cost to visit.
"But it's technology development!" is a completely valid counterargument, if you believe we're going to iterate on this solution and use it to move forward rapidly on inspace ISRU to gather larger objects and do more purposeful things with them. I don't have much confidence in that proposition, though, particularly starting at '4m boulder' instead of at '10m asteroid'; I'm also not encouraged when they make it clear that we're only going to do one asteroid mission at a time, and that mission will require ten years of being a large portion of the human spaceflight budget.
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#384
by
QuantumG
on 26 Mar, 2015 00:52
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I'm still confused. EM-2 is the crew visit to the rock. It's not the mission to retrieve the rock. If you want to compare the IMLEO of any mission to the mass of the rock, it should be the IMLEO of the mission to retrieve the rock.
"But it's technology development!" is a completely valid counterargument, if you believe we're going to iterate on this solution and use it to move forward rapidly on inspace ISRU to gather larger objects and do more purposeful things with them. I don't have much confidence in that proposition, though, particularly starting at '4m boulder' instead of at '10m asteroid'; I'm also not encouraged when they make it clear that we're only going to do one asteroid mission at a time, and that mission will require ten years of being a large portion of the human spaceflight budget.
They've also made it clear that the same mission will demonstrate diverting
the whole asteroid. It's not too infeasible to imagine that a follow-on mission (hopefully by a commercial player) could divert an entire asteroid into Earth orbit - if the technology development goes well. Of course, said commercial player will probably have to do the initial technology demonstration mission too..
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#385
by
sdsds
on 26 Mar, 2015 02:24
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They've also made it clear that the same mission will demonstrate diverting the whole asteroid. It's not too infeasible to imagine that a follow-on mission (hopefully by a commercial player) could divert an entire asteroid into Earth orbit - if the technology development goes well.
Yes. There are some objects passing near the Earth which would require very little delta-v to place them on trajectories that remain near the Earth. 2006 RH
120, for example. It is low mass too, making it amenable as a demonstration target!
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#386
by
arachnitect
on 26 Mar, 2015 02:49
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Option B makes it easier for Congress to cancel this mission. Wasn't particulary inspiring as it was, 2025 for a small rock is even less so.
With ISS going to 2024 or later and practically flat budgets, there's not going to be anything more ambitious than this.
I don't know if congress is really in a position to decide what's "inspiring." Not that I'm a real authority, but I happen to think ARM is pretty cool. If testing engines for mars spaceships and moving asteroids around isn't "inspiring" probably nothing is. I know a lot of people really want a kind of tightly defined goal ("beat nation X to destination Y") but NASA may actually reach more people doing a series of unique, long duration, incremental, and slightly bizarre missions. There's a real premium on novelty these days.
Remember, the people these missions are meant to inspire are not just 1 but 2 generations removed from the moon landings. Maybe they need a different kind of space program.
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#387
by
baldusi
on 26 Mar, 2015 03:04
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IF I understood it right, not only are going to demonstrate SEP and planetary defence, which itself it should be enough, but autonomous terrain recognition and boulder selection, did I got that right? That's a huge capability jump. You can preposition things ar Phobos, for example, and even do RV at the asteroid mission. Same basic technology could enable RV at Mars' surface.
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#388
by
jongoff
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:18
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Option B makes it easier for Congress to cancel this mission. Wasn't particulary inspiring as it was, 2025 for a small rock is even less so.
Because flying astronauts to circle the moon and play-act at doing a Mars mission is *so* much more inspiring.
I don't know about others, but taking concrete steps toward learning how to harvest the resources of the solar system seems pretty inspiring to me...
~Jon
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#389
by
jongoff
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:23
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Thanks for the great coverage Jon.
You're welcome!
As you had noted, hopefully some nice oportunities for you and your team in the future!
It would be nice, though to be honest, I'm not counting on it. The main NASA Option B concept doesn't feature any of our Altius work in it. It uses JPL microspine grippers on the end of robot arms derived from the MDA FREND design (used for DARPA Phoenix and GSFC's robotic refueling work), with Langley developed landing legs. Everyone we've spoken with so far liked what we did, but tried not to get our hopes up on seeing any follow-on work. We've had fun, and I hope we can find a way to stay involved, but right now I'm not betting on seeing another penny.
So while I'm biased toward Option B, it's not because I'm expecting to be making a lot of money from it going forward.
~Jon
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#390
by
jongoff
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:26
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I'm also not encouraged when they make it clear that we're only going to do one asteroid mission at a time, and that mission will require ten years of being a large portion of the human spaceflight budget.
Where do you get ARM being "ten years of being a large portion of the HSF budget"? If you take the "ARM-unique" elements that would go away if ARM was canceled, you're probably talking less than $500M. That's about 3 months worth of SLS's budget. People act as though this is some massive distraction on the way to Mars, when really it would at most make a 2-3 month difference on a mission that's at least 20-30 years out.
~Jon
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#391
by
HIP2BSQRE
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:39
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Option B makes it easier for Congress to cancel this mission. Wasn't particulary inspiring as it was, 2025 for a small rock is even less so.
Because flying astronauts to circle the moon and play-act at doing a Mars mission is *so* much more inspiring.
I don't know about others, but taking concrete steps toward learning how to harvest the resources of the solar system seems pretty inspiring to me...
~Jon
Jon,
Thanks for the great coverage Jon.
You're welcome!
As you had noted, hopefully some nice oportunities for you and your team in the future!
It would be nice, though to be honest, I'm not counting on it. The main NASA Option B concept doesn't feature any of our Altius work in it. It uses JPL microspine grippers on the end of robot arms derived from the MDA FREND design (used for DARPA Phoenix and GSFC's robotic refueling work), with Langley developed landing legs. Everyone we've spoken with so far liked what we did, but tried not to get our hopes up on seeing any follow-on work. We've had fun, and I hope we can find a way to stay involved, but right now I'm not betting on seeing another penny.
So while I'm biased toward Option B, it's not because I'm expecting to be making a lot of money from it going forward.
~Jon
Jon,
Why do you think NASA went more with the JPL design and none of your Altius work?
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#392
by
GWH
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:43
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I wonder how much of a percentage the mission cost would increase if they were to build 2 or more identical retrieval craft and go after multiple targets?
I also wonder if the notional SEP Jupiter tug alluded to in the recent lockmart announcement would be suitable with modifications? Or would the scale and mission profile be to drastically different?
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#393
by
Darkseraph
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:49
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I think what is really great about this is mission is that even if SLS get's cancelled somewhere down the line, we still have this really accessible piece of rock that commercial and international partners can go to to test out their ideas (shielding, 3D printing, mass drivers, propellant production, life support). It will orbit there for decades. The technologies that come from it will be scalable and have plenty of other uses.
I think the idea of Earth having two moons is kinda cool and inspiring. I mean, sure it will be a pretty small rock, but our own little tiny island in space to build on. The realistic alternative right now is no astronauts ever leaving low earth orbit for about 20 years, if ever. Basically more milk runs to ISS until they toss into pacific in 2025/28. I like the ISS, but we ought to slowly spiral out there beyond just that, using tech tested there.
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#394
by
jongoff
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:51
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Jon,
Why do you think NASA went more with the JPL design and none of your Altius work?
Well, I don't know that they've settled on a final Option B approach yet, and I hope we'll yet see some elements from what we did show up in the final design. The JPL/GSFC approach was just the main Option B approach that NASA was working from their side. The ARM BAA contracts were always ways to see if Industry had cool ideas worth blending in, but were never likely to outright replace the NASA-led approach.
I think the JPL/GSFC approach that seems like the de facto baseline is perfectly workable. Microspines are a cool technology. We've worked with Aaron Parness's lab before as a subcontractor during DARPA Pheonix. Great team. The MDA/GSFC team is also really sharp, and the same arms they're developing are the ones GSFC wants to see for their satellite servicing efforts. I think our approach provides better load distribution on what is potentially fairly friable asteroid boulder (especially if they go for a Carbonaceous Chondrite) than transferring all the loads through two microspine patches. But I don't know if that's enough of a real show stopper to outweigh the "extensibility" benefits they probably see in the baseline approach. Time will tell, and I'm trying to reach out to the various people out there to make sure they know we'd like to stay involved. But yeah as I said, I'm not betting my business on getting more work from NASA.
~Jon
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#395
by
jongoff
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:53
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I wonder how much of a percentage the mission cost would increase if they were to build 2 or more identical retrieval craft and go after multiple targets?
I also wonder if the notional SEP Jupiter tug alluded to in the recent lockmart announcement would be suitable with modifications? Or would the scale and mission profile be to drastically different?
Several of the Option B variants split the capture mechanism from the SEP as a separable lander module. So long as they designed the SEP to be refueled, if they went with a lander approach it would be pretty easy to launch a propellant tank and another capture mechanism lander to do a follow-on mission. The delta-cost for a follow-on mission (that could likely be launched using a Falcon 9 single-stick) would be pretty modest.
~Jon
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#396
by
jongoff
on 26 Mar, 2015 04:55
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I think what is really great about this is mission is that even if SLS get's cancelled somewhere down the line, we still have this really accessible piece of rock that commercial and international partners can go to to test out their ideas (shielding, 3D printing, mass drivers, propellant production, life support). It will orbit there for decades. The technologies that come from it will be scalable and have plenty of other uses.
I think the idea of Earth having two moons is kinda cool and inspiring. I mean, sure it will be a pretty small rock, but our own little tiny island in space to build on. The realistic alternative right now is no astronauts ever leaving low earth orbit for about 20 years, if ever. Basically more milk runs to ISS until they toss into pacific in 2025/28. I like the ISS, but we ought to slowly spiral out there beyond just that, using tech tested there.
Oh, I think they'll send astronauts beyond LEO even if ARM gets canceled. They just won't be doing anything real. Some people (whose views I normally respect a lot more) seem to think that spending billions sending the astronauts out to pretend like they're on a Mars mission is somehow better and less distracting than actually having them perform a useful function...
~Jon
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#397
by
sdsds
on 26 Mar, 2015 05:00
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I wonder how much of a percentage the mission cost would increase if they were to build 2 or more identical retrieval craft and go after multiple targets?
That's a good question. How much cost was involved in the MER-A / MER-B (Spirit / Opportunity) approach to Mars rovers? From the 2003 press kit: "Program Cost: Approximately $800 million total, consisting approximately of $625 million spacecraft development and science instruments; $100 million launch; $75 million mission operations and science processing." That tells us launch and operations costs did not dominate the MER program....
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#398
by
KelvinZero
on 26 Mar, 2015 07:50
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Option A did sound more impressive, but there were some great arguments for Option B. It does sound more instructive for future HSF missions to a large asteroid. I also liked Jon Goff's mention of doing pretty much the same mission to Phobos/Deimos so we can begin thinking about ISRU for the first manned mission.
Both A and B sound more impressive in the context of keeping the asteroid there, multiple visits, a DSH etc. I have seen ideas like that bandied about by proponents. When is it likely to be established if that is part of the official plan or not? What comes after this mission, officially?
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#399
by
Darkseraph
on 26 Mar, 2015 12:00
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So...what do we know about the material composition of this asteroid?