Details about the fiscal year 2014 budget are supposed to be embargoed until Wednesday, when the administration formally releases its budget proposal. When NASA administrator Chalres Bolden spoke before the joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington on Thursday, he said he knew some people there were hoping he might accidentally say something about the budget during his presentation. “Trust me, I purged it all from my mind before I came through the door,” he said to laughter.
Bolden was true to his word, and offered no details about the impending budget proposal. The same can’t be said, though, for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who apparently didn’t feel compelled to wait until Wednesday to spill the beans about one rumored element of the proposal. Nelson told reporters in Orlando on Friday that the budget proposal will include more than $100 million to begin work on a mission to retrieve a small asteroid and bring it back to cislunar space, where astronauts will visit it on an Space Launch System/Orion mission in 2021.
The proposal, Nelson said in a statement, was a little of something for everyone. “The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars,” he said. And the release also emphasized the use of the SLS, which Nelson’s statement refers to on more than one occasion as a “monster rocket,” as the senator has done in the past.
Rumors that some kind of asteroid capture mission, like the concept previously studied by Caltech’s Keck Institute of Space Studies, had been floating around for weeks, and the $100-million figure was reported last week by Aviation Week. Nelson’s comments confirm those statements, as do leaked NASA documents reported late Friday by Space News and the AP. The requested funding of $105 million, as reported by Space News, includes $20 million for asteroid searches, $40 million to begin work on the spacecraft to capture the asteroid, and $45 million for solar electric propulsion system technology that the spacecraft would use.
I wonder what the purpose of visiting an asteroid in cislunar space is?
The Augustine comittee was quite clear. NASA did not have the money to do missions to the moon or Mars without doubling it’s exploration budget. That was never going to happen.
All that leaves in missions to asteroids where you don’t have to spend money building landers.
That’s all there is to it.
There’s no money for Mars.
There’s no money for the moon.
Not in NASA’s world anyway.
The people on this site and in the world at large who expect their favorite fantasy mission to the moon or Mars to be carried out inspite of the budget realities are engaging in magical thinking and will no doubt get their pony for christmas.
This nugget from Senator Nelson’s statement was enlightening:
“Nelson said he thinks NASA’s plan is very similar and that President Obama favors it, as the president already has announced a goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025. This plan would advance that date by four years to 2021.”
So, even though there wasn’t enough money to visit an asteroid in 2025, Nelson thinks adding the technology development for grabbing an asteroid, and then accelerating the mission to spend time out beyond the Moon visiting it, are somehow now more affordable?
The man has gone daft…
“So, even though there wasn’t enough money to visit an asteroid in 2025, Nelson thinks adding the technology development for grabbing an asteroid, and then accelerating the mission to spend time out beyond the Moon visiting it, are somehow now more affordable?”
When your plan is broken and in doubt, double down on stupid.
Key questions that everyone should be asking:
1) Assuming it pans out, where is the $2.6 billion-plus for this robotic NEO retrieval mission going to come from? NASA can’t afford to develop the service module for MPCV in the US, so ESA is going to fund the module’s $320 million cost and develop it in Europe. If NASA can’t afford to develop a $320 million service module for MPCV, how can it afford a $2.6 billion-plus robotic NEO retrieval mission to give MPCV a target to go to?
2) If the robotic NEO retrieval mission successfully retrieves a NEO and places it in lunar orbit, are the suppossed deep space capabilities of SLS and MPCV still necessary to visit it? Or can existing and lower-cost launch vehicles and capsules do the job faster and for far fewer taxpayer dollars? Wouldn’t it be much more cost-effective and quicker to leverage the efforts of SpaceX, Golden Spike, and Inspiration Mars for the human segment of this mission?
3) Is $2.6 billion to put one NEO in lunar orbit an effective use of taxpayer dollars for advancing human space exploration? How will this mission advance the communications, long-duration systems, and deep space operations necessary to explore targets that are weeks, months, and years away from Earth if MPCV is only going a few days away from Earth? How does rendezvousing with a controlled object in lunar orbit advance the state of the art in human space exploration when NASA repeatedly demonstrated that capability over 40 years ago in the Apollo Program?
4) Is $2.6 billion to retrieve one, 7-meter NEO a good use of taxpayer dollars in terms of planetary defense? How does demonstrating a technique to move a NEO that is too small to threaten humans on Earth protect humanity from NEO threats? Wouldn’t this $2.6 billion be better spent developing techniques to move much larger and different types of NEOs?
5) Is $2.6 billion for one NEO retrieval mission a good use of taxpayer dollars for advancing the use of extraterrestrial resources? Wouldn’t it be better to first survey a variety of targets, pick the most promising ones, and then demonstrate various resource extraction techniques at a variety of targets? Why are we jumping to a $2.6 billion mission before spending 1/100th of that cost on some micromission flybys, ideally in partnership with Planetary Resources and/or Deep Space Industries, of the most promising NEOs?
6) Is $2.6 billion for one NEO retrieval mission a good use of taxpayer dollars for science? Is this a priority in the planetary decadal survey? (Answer: It’s not.) Even if NEOs were a research priority, wouldn’t it be better to spread a fraction of that $2.6 billion across robotic visits to multiple NEOs to get a better sampling?
7) Is this NEO retrieval mission really going to cost $2.6 billion? Or will its costs grow several times over as has happened on other recent NASA robotic flagship missions like Mars Curiousity and JWST? The rule-of-thumb is to limit technological miracles to one per mission, but this mission incorporates several highly unproven technologies, from an electric propulsion system operating at power levels never before demonstrated to a large, untried capture mechanism. Are we really looking at a $5 billion, or $15 billion, or more mission?
Like the ISS, there’s a little good that could come out of this robotic NEO retrieval mission. But like the ISS, the rationale is a jumbled mess of many small contributions to many potential goals, rather than a clear cut justification that fully supports the $2.6 billion pricetag and is clearly superior to the programmatic alternatives. And like ISS, the robotic NEO retrieval mission certainly cannot justify a multi-ten billion dollar pricetag when the costs of SLS and MPCV are factored in.
There’s money if it finds a purpose for the SLS. The man’s not daft at all. $100M is cheap if it strengthens the SLS program.
The pricetag is not $100 million. That’s just the telescope searches and mission studies during the first year. The estimate for the full mission from the Keck study is $2.6 billion. Given historical NASA cost performance from initial estimate on these flagship-class missions, we’re probably looking at $5+ billion at a minimum.
There is no guarantee they will even find a rock that small in an accessible orbit. They only know of one Trojan and a couple of Earth synchronous bodies and those are too large. These things are highly transient.
Hi DBN –
I think Churchill once noted that Americans can be counted on to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.
Reading through the comments here, I find the usual misinformation recycled regarding impactor populations and estimates of the impact hazard. The $100 million is needed for detection systems in any case.
Every time a new observation-detection system has been put into operation, the estimates of population and hazard has been driven upward by the new data.
IMO, the only mission that would justify the SLS would be CAPS (the Comet and Asteroid Protection System), and the $100 million search might help in that regard. IMO also, the $500 million SENTINEL from Ball and B612 might seal it.
Note that the operational time constraint appears to be the approach of Comet Schwassmann Wachmann 3’s debris stream in 2022.
This is the end of the mission to the asteroid. Most of the same goals can be achieved with this scenario at a fraction of the cost, freeing up money and attention to the inevitable redirection to the moon when a new president is sworn in in 2017.
Mark R. Whittington said:
“This is the end of the mission to the asteroid.”
Hardly. Nelson’s plan doesn’t have any more money behind it than Obama’s proposals.
But then again, it’s been 40 years since we last left LEO, so it’s not like the U.S. is in any hurry to leave LEO.
The reason we can’t leave LEO for any length of time with the SLS is that it’s unaffordable. Until an exploration architecture is agreed upon that utilizes the lowest cost transportation options of the day (i.e. 20mt launchers), and the lowest cost construction methods (i.e. modular), any “mission” that Congress funds for NASA is doomed to be short lived.
If you want to return to the Moon, you’re more likely to get there if you open your wallet and help fund one of the private efforts. Or isn’t the Moon that important to you?
“freeing up money and attention to the inevitable redirection to the moon”
There’s nothing “inevitable” about a NASA return to the Moon. Congress has killed it twice, once when SEI was cancelled and again when Constellation was cancelled.
“when a new president is sworn in in 2017.”
Given that track record on human lunar return and the SLS/MPCV mess that the Obama Administration is so far handing to the next White House, it’s unlikely the next President will want to revisit or do anything new in civil human space exploration.
Physics is inevitable. But you’ll just have to trust me on that. Either you believe, or you don’t.
“it’s unlikely the next President will want to revisit or do anything new in civil human space exploration…”
In fact, its more likely than you want to believe given HRC’s personal interest in space and given the track record og U.S. space policy, always recatvie to external events, any initiatives by other nations toward Luna would likel trigger a policy review. but the american mindset today is similar to that of the UK about a century ago as its empire began its decline- ‘the been there, done that’ attitude has taken root in the United States- and no just in space ops. And as the late Neil
Armstrong lamented to a friend shortly bwefore he passed,Americans today seem content simly to be ‘entertained.’ And a PRC jaunt to Luna televised on Chinese made big screen TVs would do just that.
Agreed. The cis-lunar mission to a captured asteroid is contrived and quixotic. After this silly stunt, then what? Like most liberals, Bolden is incapable of thinking more than one step ahead. The moon is the obvious long term exploration target.
Mark R. Whittington
April 6, 2013 at 1:44 am · Reply
This is the end of the mission to the asteroid. Most of the same goals can be achieved with this scenario at a fraction of the cost, freeing up money and attention to the inevitable redirection to the moon when a new president is sworn in in 2017.>>
Seesh you are delusional. Just like Romney was going to win the Presidency, Iraq had WMD, we were going to take Iraq with 50,000 troops etc etc…you have been wrong on everything.
There will be no new exploration goal with a new President in 17; those days are history…
On the other hand Dennis Tito might be on the way to his “mission” (with whoever is on it) about to launch and Falcon might ahve a reusable first stage…Zounds RGO
Oler, you never cease to amaze. However, as the NRC report demonstrated, there is zero support for Obama’s mission to an asteroid outside the White House and Charlie Bolden. The capture the asteroid and bring it in is a quite clever idea to get that out of the way so that the next administration can refocus to the moon.
As for Tito’s scheme. I think it’s pretty cool and wish him well. But I can also think of a hundred or so ways it could go sideways.
Mark R. Whittington
April 7, 2013 at 1:07 am · Reply
Oler, you never cease to amaze. >>
I know, but getting the outcome of the 12 election correct really wasnt that hard. The problem you have is that you no longer really analyze things, you see what y ou want to see and hear what you want to hear.
” there is zero support for Obama’s mission to an asteroid outside the White House and Charlie Bolden.”
there is no support FOR ANY REPEAT ANY human spaceflight mission other then ISS outside of the crony capitalist who need the money or they evaporate and the space political cronies who feed them.
There is no popular support for a “return to the Moon” or have you tried to forget the Florida primary and “Mr. Newt” going down in flames with his proposals?
ANd that was among the right wing faithful who like you bought the stupid polls.
Robert
“On the other hand Dennis Tito might be on the way to his “mission†(with whoever is on it) about to launch and Falcon might ahve a reusable first stage…Zounds” quips RGO
LOL Stephen Colbert, a vocal space advocate BTW, soundly lampooned this foolish plan of tito’s severa weeks ago. So keep bring up the press release on it and remind readers just hot naiive NewSpacers truly are.
“There will be no new exploration goal with a new President in 17″ hopes RGO. Ther’s a better chance than there is now given HRC’s interest in spaceflight- something sorely lacking at her recent paygrade level in government for decades.
DCSCA
April 7, 2013 at 1:38 am · Reply
than there is now given HRC’s interest in spaceflight->>
I realize that repeating things often enough to solme people makes them facts…but can you point me to a single statement from HRC about her support for a space effort with humans in this time period? RGO
In fact, there are plenty, Oler. You just choose to ignore them. (It’s akin to your ignorance on the PRC’s aspirations for Luna.) HRC has repeated voiced a personl interest in space over the years. You just choose not to hear it.The latest was last year when as SoS, HRC was in Australia giving a talk. =sigh=
DCSCA
April 7, 2013 at 6:48 pm · Reply
In fact, there are plenty, Oler. You just choose to ignore them.>
OK if there are plenty of them post ONE just one…one ping Vasili (oh sorry channeling THRO) RGO
DCSCA, HRC is as liberal or more liberal than Bronco. And is more likely to mirror his philosophy than differ from it. Especially in an area as unimportant to a president as the space program. Where do you get the idea that she is going to change the world and make everything better for you? Do you have a crush on her?
“HRC is as liberal or more liberal than Bronco.” moans Jim.
In fact, she is more conservative than Fox viewers care to accept. Her positions on the war spoke volumes. But what does that have to do with her personal interest in space. HRC has a genuine interest in it and has voiced it over the years- albeit certainly not over the top the way ‘Newt Gingrich, Moon President’ has. – HRC has made reference to it many times over the years. Last year as SoS in Australia it came up in remarks. Interest in space from anyone at her paygrade at that level of gvoernment is certainly welcomed.
DCSCA said,
“Interest in space from anyone at her paygrade at that level of gvoernment is certainly welcomed.”
I agree. Regardless of her politics, I agree.
“HRC has made reference to it many times over the years. Last year as SoS in Australia it came up in remarks.”
Okay, I did a little bit of googling and didn’t come up with the text of any speech in Australia. Most of the articles about her trip were about Drudge and Fox News saying she went down there for a “Wine Tasting” and to avoid testifying in Benghazigate. A bunch of trash really.
If you can remember what she said or can help me find the text of the speech I’d appreciate it. Not as a point to argue over but for my own information. Thanks.
It came up during remarks in Australia on a SoS visit, last autumn. Her history is peppered with expressions of personal interest. WRC made reference to it during the STS-95 pressers pre-launch at KSC back in ’98. HRC’s interest is real. Its simply -and wisely- not ‘over the top’ a la Newt Gingrich- Moon Presidnt.’ The woman has an interest in it. And that’s a good thing.
DCSCA
April 8, 2013 at 4:55 am · Reply
Last year as SoS in Australia it came up in remarks. Interest in space from anyone at her paygrade at that level of gvoernment is certainly welcomed.”
sigh is this the basis you have for HRC’s interest in space?
She talks about space junk and moving some intel assets to Aussie land?
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/australia-host-us-space-surveillance-systems..
Actually the C band radar is a bit of a misnomer, it is going to be a C band but every one knows who knows that it is the stalking horse for another Pave Paws installation
Hardly a notice of indepth interest in space.
RGO
Latest update this morning from Florida Today:
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20130406/SPACE/304060016/NASA-wants-lasso-asteroid-tow-home
I don’t know where Lou Friedman is getting his $1.5 billion cost estimate for the mission when the Keck study that he participated in put the figure at $2.6 billion. There’s been no independent cost estimate, and Friedman is already gulping pitchers of Kool-Aid to get the cost down.
Mark R. Whittington said, “…to the inevitable redirection to the moon when a new president is sworn in in 2017.”
I am sorry sir, I believe you are indulging in a fantasy. I don’t think any congress in the relative near term is going to pay for NASA to start up a meaningful Moon program.
Unless you mean a push to the Moon by commercial entities risking their own assets but having NASA support them in ways both big and small. If that’s what you mean then I’m with you on that.
There may be non-profits who get into the act as well. Societies, groups, and other NGOs that might be formed to support Moon programs or other space-related causes.
But I don’t believe we are going to have a full-scale Moon program from NASA in the near future. Congress won’t pay for it. And why should they? NASA has been trying to do things that way for nearly half a century and the results are on display now.
Jim, have you learned nothing? As Mark and his fellow Tinkerbells all know, you just have to believe to make it so.
That’s right, either you can believe your eyes that the moon is much closer to Earth than an asteroid, much larger than any asteroid, and has poles perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, or you don’t. Science is weird that way, you can believe what you want.
That’s right, pretend the Moon doesn’t have a much steep gravity well. Orbital delta v is cheaper than gravitational delta v. Get over it.
For industrial exploitation a moderately deep gravity well is a blessing.
All an asteroid is going to do is create a huge mess in zero gravity. I’m also not sure if the people designing this mission fully understand angular momentum.
Different Guest said:
“For industrial exploitation a moderately deep gravity well is a blessing.”
Well sure. But we’re talking NASA here, not the private resource extraction, so “industrial exploitation” has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
The science community can already perform wonders on very small meteorite samples, so I’m not exactly sure how saturating the science market with huge quantities of identical samples is going to help them much, unless they get middle and high schoolers involved, and I’m not sure if they have access to the very expensive analytical equipment required to extract any information from these samples. That assumes they can locate a carbonaceous body of the size, type, location and rotational characteristics that will make retrieval possible. Already Osiris-Rex is a very expensive mission and there is lots of this stuff sitting around on museum shelves. So I expect any science performed decades ahead will be with the eye towards materials exploitation and not solar system evolution, something we already know quite a bit about and nothing of which seems to be of critical national security interest.
Guest said:
“The science community can already perform wonders on very small meteorite samples, so I’m not exactly sure how saturating the science market with huge quantities of identical samples is going to help them much…”
Wow, a point of agreement.
In my mind, the whole purpose of traveling to an asteroid is to prove that we can venture out that far and do something difficult (like rendezvous with a tumbling body and do a little research). Because if we can’t travel with confidence to an asteroid, then we’re not even close to being ready to proceed to Mars.
The dissection of an asteroid is of scientific interest for sure, but there are already two companies in the U.S. that have declared their intentions to do the same, so NASA should not be duplicating what they are doing – if anything they should be partnering with them.
Oops, going too fast. “much steep” should read “much steeper”. Heading out the door and in too much of a hurry.
NASA can send 13 tonne loads to LEO for $54M. It could do 5 launches for $270M. This is a small addition to a $2.6 billion mission. The launches can be used for risk reduction by flight testing the components in space. For instance the high power ion thrusters can be tested without having to wait for the asteroid catching hardware.
I’ve been reading more about this proposal. It will be interesting to see the reception this gets in congress. My guess is this trial balloon will be made of lead, just like the infamous ‘flexible path’. It will also be interesting to see who comes out of the woodwork in the NASA leadership to sell it.
amightywind said:
“My guess is this trial balloon will be made of lead…”
Which would mean that the SLS & MPCV still don’t have any known need.
Kill the SLS now so we can save NASA.
When you’re in free drift through choppy seas, and have no snchor at hand, you tie a line to a big rock and let the weather pass.
Yeah right!. A good way to get yourself dashed to pieces. Rather you evaluate the weather pattern and plot and execute a passage out of the turmoil, something NASA, Congress nor the WH seems capable of doing.
That’s right, Neil. You must be landlocked. Been sailing for 45 years. You lose an anchor, you toss a line on a rock and ride out the storm trailing down wind. =sigh=
Yeah right. With comments like your’s, don’t need to reply as they speak for themselves. Stick to rocket science. Oh, sorry, you tried that as well. Well maybe janitorial services then just to really stretch you.
Sorry Jeff for the off-topic post, just some so-called experts really piss one off.
Satisfying the humans-to-an-asteroid presidential dictate by hauling an asteroid back to where humans can easily get to it is hilarious. In fact, there are asteroidal remains on the Earth where it’s a lot cheaper than this to put footprints. But what makes this idea so hilarious is that the goal is a destination, and not a real accomplishment. It’s just flag-planting. In fact, that’s the sad thing about not going back to the Moon. The “we’ve already done it” applies to the Moon as a destination, and not to some more meaningful accomplishment that we could carry out there, and that we haven’t already done.
I’m not saying I know what such a meaningful accomplishment would be for sending humans either to an asteroid or back to the Moon, but let’s just hope that someone can figure that out.
So what are we going to DO with this asteroid once we’ve captured it and visited it? Gee, maybe we can create an outpost there? It would end up looking like a rock attached to the wall of a space station. Pretty cool! Maybe we can mine the precious metals that, if we’re lucky about what kind of asteroid is accessible for capture, might even be on it? I suppose if there is nothing worthwhile to be found there, we can mine souvenirs. That’s the trouble with flag-planting. It’s an accomplishment that isn’t extensible. Yes, we planted six flags on the Moon, and surrounded each of them with footprints. But those were at remarkably different and diverse places. How many flags are going to fit on a 7-meter rock? It’s going to end up looking pretty stupid with flags poking out all over it. Oh yes, each mission there is going to need to plant a flag on it.
This mission concept is one that highlights the inability of our nation to fashion anything that even has the vaguest scent of what might be called human space exploration.
The pattern is now familiar. The Obama administration suddenly produces new and controversial policy decisions, hatched in secret, and tries to implement them by edict. They are then shocked, when the opposition, who was never consulted, resists. They will attack the opposition with the familiar straw man arguments. “The moon? We’ve already been there.” Compelling. This is about as weird a plan return to manned space exploration as one can imagine. I predict this will go nowhere.
Bear in mind, Windy, that Mr, Obama’s position did a complete 180 fom his early campaign position which is why Cernan et al were so angry. Somebody opposed to all things Griffin in a time of imploding economic numbers handed Mr. O a white paper with a cover sheet and talking points recommending cost savings by terminating the project (the Garver vs. Griffin feud still simmers), he had a speech written up, gave it at KSC and tossed space in the out box and moved on to dealing with a collapsing economy. He has no interest in space. HRC does.
He had little interest in the collapsed economy either. The labor participation rate is near an all time low. It is also a fallacy that the bad economy effected NASA funding and forced them to jettison NASA programs. It did not. NASA finding jumped with everything else in 2009. I agree Obama has no interest in NASA, but he has empowered a an unpopular leadership who is. And they continue try to implement a strange, minority vision.
So, how does this conspiracy theory square with the fact that it was a Senator who gushed about the plan? Kinda busts that narrative, don’t it?
Nelson is a democrat Senator and an insider. It is not at all surprising that the tablets of Moses were revealed to him first. Nice of the Whitehouse experts to inform him, don’t you think? This morning Tucker Carlson on ‘Fox and Friends’ referred to the plan as a little weird and unlikely to be funded.
amightywind, has it occurred to you that these weird asteroid missions are basically just ways to somehow keep that evil force known as SLS still alive?
Congress is not going to pay for any Moon or Mars missions so an asteroid mission is all that is left that could require the SLS or even MPCV. Without an asteroid mission of some kind SLS has no reason to exist.
“Tucker Carlson on ‘Fox and Friends’ referred to the plan as a little weird and unlikely to be funded.” gusted Windy.
Given Tucker Carlson’s failures at all the cablers and in other mediums, he ought to know about funding problems, eh. Windy.
This entire idea, of capturing an asteroid and hauling to cis lunar space, so we can have astro’s float around, smells and sounds and looks like the a desperate act by an Agency struggling to rationalize Human Space Flight existence.
The flailing of ones arms while drowning is most intense just before sinking below the water.
As many of the posts on this thread point out, this mission, and the supporting rationale it gives to the SLS/MPCV fiasco, seems amateur at best.
Sheesh.
James. the most descriptive post of the entire thread. nice RGO
One odd little point. The Keck proposal, as summarized at Doug Messier’s Parabolic Arc website (http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/04/06/nasa-looks-to-lasso-an-asteroid)
calls for corralling a 25-ft diameter asteroid and transporting it in a 6 to 10 year period to lunar orbit, with a suggested arrival date of 2025. This doesn’t match up well with Bolden’s 2021 date.
So is NASA headquarters misinformed on such details, is NASA planning some alternative capture-and-transfer scheme, or is Charles Bolden whistling in the wind?
Any ideas?
They’re all whistling in the wind. Where’s the cold, hard cash coming from? Guess they’ll just get Treasury to print em up a whole pile o’ them they’re green backs. Apologies, never was much good with accents.
Cheers
“Where’s the cold, hard cash coming from? Guess they’ll just get Treasury to print em up a whole pile o’ them they’re green backs.” quips Aussie Neil.
So, you’ve finally discovered the financing scheme for NewSpace. Well done. Cheers!
There’s a lot of things that don’t add up in the reporting.
For example, Alan Boyle claims that an Administration official told him that the robotic NEO retrieval mission would cost only $1 billion, spread in $100 million payments over ten years. This is a $1.6 billion reduction from the Keck study estimate, suppossedly due to the use of SLS as the launch vehicle in 2017.
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/06/17630481-administration-confirms-nasa-plan-grab-an-asteroid-then-focus-on-mars
That’s nutty for several reasons.
One, launch costs in the Keck study were only $288 million (for an Atlas 551). NASA can’t save $1.6 billion by switching to SLS or any other “free” launch vehicle.
Two, the spacecraft alone, which must obviously be built before launch, was $1,359 million, or almost $400 million more than what the Administration official claims is available for the entire mission. And then there’s mission ops, reserves, and overhead.
Three, even if the entire mission with an SLS launch magically costs $1 billion, at $100 million per year starting in 2014, that implies a completion date around 2024, not 2021. The NEO is going to arrive two or three years too late for the 2021 SLS/MPCV mission.
Lou Friedman, who participated in the Keck study, is claiming a different mission cost of $1.5 billion in a different article.
There’s no way to know if these inconsistencies are due to bad reporting, bad information, or bad planning by the Administration until the budget rolls out on Wednesday. One hopes it’s the former, not the latter.
I had a comment about that Cosmic Log paragraph on NewSpaceWatch last night. I thought they meant the 2nd SLS/MPCV launch, not the first test flight of the pair because the paragraph says
“That flight would send astronauts around the moon and back in 2021.”
Whichever launch they’re talking about, though, it doesn’t seem to make sense that it would reduce the cost of the asteroid retrieval part of the idea.
If they are talking about using the already-planned 2017 launch for the robotic mission, though, I wonder how that would affect the 2017 MPCV test.
NASA Watch is also suggesting that Russia and other countries are interested in participating in the mission. I wonder how this might factor into the costs. You could imagine space agencies bartering access to asteroid material for NEO search data, close-up assessment of potential NEO targets, MPCV robotic arm or EVA capabilities, launches, spacecraft subsystems, etc.
If they do this carefully without rushing into a full-blown mission, this could be a good way to do some of the robotic precursor, exploration technology demonstration, and commercial encouragement from the original FY2011 plan (e.g.: NEO search and assessment robotic precursors, advanced SEP technology demonstration, PR/DSI involvement, and, if it’s successfully retrieved, ISRU technology demonstrations, interesting space tourist destination, etc). If they aren’t careful, yes, I could see a financial debacle like JWST.
“I had a comment about that Cosmic Log paragraph on NewSpaceWatch last night. I thought they meant the 2nd SLS/MPCV launch…”
I read the Cosmic Log article as meaning that the robotic NEO retrieval mission would launch shotgun with the unmanned MPCV test in 2017, giving it a “free” SLS launch. If you use NASA accouting and count SLS as “free”, then that saves something approaching $300 million for the Atlas V launch. But it’s not going to save $1.6 billion, not even if SLS somehow reduces the cost of the NEO retrieval spacecraft. (And it won’t given how careful NASA has to be with the enormously expensive SLS and MPCV.)
“If they are talking about using the already-planned 2017 launch for the robotic mission, though, I wonder how that would affect the 2017 MPCV test.”
I’m sure they have payload mass to spare. MPCV is massively overweight for reentry and its SM is substantively overweight, but even then, I doubt they’re up against the 70-ton payload mass limit for SLS Block I.
“NASA Watch is also suggesting that Russia and other countries are interested in participating in the mission. I wonder how this might factor into the costs.”
There hasn’t been enough time to strike any international deals, and I’m not sure there are any to be had. NASA will want to do the spacecraft itself because that’s where the new technology is (the high-power ion propulsion and the capture bag). The rest of the mission costs are launch (already going to SLS) or NASA Deep Space Network communications and operations. ESA is providing the SM for MPCV, but there are no other foreign contributions to SLS/MPCV. The Russians (and theoretically the Chinese) could send modified Soyuzes to the NEO after it’s in lunar orbit, but that would just be a freebie for them.
“If they do this carefully without rushing into a full-blown mission, this could be a good way to do some of the robotic precursor, exploration technology demonstration, and commercial encouragement from the original FY2011 plan”
See my response to Stephen below. I tried to take a “Red-type” approach to what would be a better use of the funds to further advance the goals that this robotic NEO retrieval mission is suppossed to support.
I know some people will never be happy unless the taxpayers help fund their reliving childhood fantasies about an Apollo redux, but I like the basic idea of this proposal.
Learning how to harness and mine asteroids some day will be an essential part of human expansion into the solar system. NASA’s original purpose when founded in 1958 was to develop new technologies that could be transferred to other government agencies and/or the private sector. This is in that tradition.
I’ll wait for the particulars when the budget is released on Wednesday. It sounds like all this does is ask Congress to commit to a study that develops all the details.
Some of the people complaining here probably would have blasted John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961 because he didn’t give specific details on how people would have landed on the Moon, what vehicle they would have used, the exact date and location, etc., ad nauseam. The study will come back with a program that Congress can choose to fund or not. This is different from Constellation, which was a big pork barrel program that promised the Moon but didn’t ask for adequate funding to make it happen. The asteroid proposal appears to be honest. The Constellation program was not.
I’m not in the relive Apollo camp — the Moon does very little for you if you want to go to Mars or anywhere else in the solar system.
That said, the more I look at the Keck study and examine the alternatives, the more I become convinced that this proposal has no clear justification worth the $2.6 billion pricetag (not including the 2021 SLS/MPCV mission). It’s not a boondoggle on the scale of SLS or MPCV, but it’s a boondoggle nonetheless.
For example, if the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is to help prepare NASA for human space exploration to Mars or other deep space locations, it’s a very expensive way to do very little testing, if any, of the systems and operations necessary for those kinds of missions. The duration of the 2021 SLS/MPCV mission to a NEO parked in lunar orbit will be measured in days. For Mars or other deep space locations, we need to be testing life support systems (and every other spacecraft system) that can last weeks/months/years without repair/replacement. The communications delay to an MPCV visiting a NEO in lunar orbit is measured in seconds. For Mars and other deep space locations, we need to be testing mission control protocols and operations involving communications delays of minutes to tens of minutes. An MPCV returning from lunar orbit does not test the reentry capabilities needed to return from Mars or other deep space locations. In terms of advancing human space exploration, all this mission would prove is that we can rendezvous with a controlled object in the vicinity of the Moon and conduct spacewalks. We did both over 40 years ago during Gemini/Apollo. Repeating those stunts is not worth even a small fraction of $2.6 billion. If NASA wants to advance human exploration of deep space, then it should be pursuing a mission like the Inspiration Mars mission, which would test out actual deep space life support, communications, inflatable habitat, and reentry systems in deep space — not bring an asteroid back from deep space robotically. The Inspiration Mars mission is estimated to cost less than $1 billion.
If the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is planetary defense, it has a very limited contribution, if any, to future NEO threats. The civilization-ending/extinction-causing NEO threats are 1000 meters across and larger, while 90% of the NEOs that pose regional/local threats are estimated to be larger than 140 meters across. This retrieval mission will bag a NEO no bigger than 7 meters across. That’s 20 to 140 times smaller than the kinds of NEOs that we need to learn how to divert to protect the planet. And the technique being proven — physically bagging the NEO and very slowing moving it — is not a NEO deflection technique, like nukes, kinetic impactors, gravitational tractors, ion beam shepherds, solar concentrators, mass drivers, or Yarkovsky effect modifiers. Bagging a sub 10-meter NEO and tugging it around with a solar electric ion engine, while a neat stunt, does not contribute meaningfully to planetary defense and is not worth a fraction of $2.6 billion on that basis. If NASA wants to contribute meaningfully to planetary defense, then the logical next move is to step up NEO searches, which can range from augmenting the ongoing ground-based Spaceguard Surveys to deploying microspacecraft-sized IR space telescopes of the kind Planetary Resources is pursuing to placing a large IR telescope near Venus’s orbit like the B612 Foundation has proposed. The costs involved range from rounding errors to $450 million for the B612 telescope.
If the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is to advance the use of in-space resources, a lot is dependent on what kind of NEO is retrieved and what access groups besides a handful of NASA astronauts have to it. If NASA retrieves a stony asteroid, instead of a carbonaceous asteroid full of volatiles or metallic asteroid full of platinum group metals, it won’t be a good target for testing resource extraction techniques. That’s why Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries propose microspacecraft-sized IR telescopes and NEO flyby probes before moving or mining any NEO. They want to make sure they have the right, resource rich targets. These are missions measured in the millions to low tens-of-millions of dollars.
And if the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is pure, curiousity-driven science, well, NEOs have never been a priority in any NRC planetary decadal survey, and we’re actually cutting the budget for the Planetary Science Division at NASA by more than what the sequester requires to pay for this project (and SLS, MPCV, etc.):
http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/34713nasa-planetary-science-bracing-for-brunt-of-sequester
The only possible rationale for this NEO retrieval mission is to provide a target to justify SLS/MPCV’s existence. But by bringing a NEO to lunar orbit, the robotic retrieval actually undercuts the rationale for SLS/MPCV as it puts the human element of the mission within easy reach of other launch vehicles and capsules, as studies by Georgia Tech, Golden Spike, Inspiration Mars, and others show.
There’s no good reason to undertake this mission, certainly none commensurate with its $2.6 billion cost. If we’re serious about the set of goals that the robotic NEO retrieval mission is suppossed to support, NASA and the taxpayers’ money would be much better spent pursuing the $1 billion Inspiration Mars mission, the $450 million B612 Space Sentinel Telescope, a dozen microspacecraft-sized NEO prospectors (say $25 million each or $300 million total), and upping the rate of Discovery/New Frontiers-class AOs (say $500 million). We’d still have $3-400 million left over for a high-powered solar-electric propulsion demo mission and/or some serious ISRU work.
Sorry, but for all its coolness, this proposal is just dumb, dumb, dumb…
There is a certain degree of political reality here.
Despite the predictions of some on this forum that sequestration would force the death of SLS/MPCV, the reality is the opposite. During the recent House Appropriations hearings, the Congresscritters were more adamant than ever about SLS and that it be somehow exempted from sequestration.
The bottom line is that we’re stuck with it.
Congress expects NASA (and by extension the White House) to find a use for it, to justify all the money they’re flushing into the “monster rocket” to protect jobs and contractors in their districts. Okay, here’s a mission. Congress has had two years to find one, but never bothered. Okay, here it is.
I can foresee everything prior to the crewed SLS mission in 2021 (or whenever) being done by commercial vehicles. The SLS part we’re stuck with.
If the Falcon Heavy were used for launching the robotic retrieval craft, it would demonstrate that vehicle could do the job more cheaply. Which might make the point that SLS should be buried.
“There is a certain degree of political reality here.”
Agreed. But that’s not an excuse to double down on stupid.
“If the Falcon Heavy were used for launching the robotic retrieval craft, it would demonstrate that vehicle could do the job more cheaply. Which might make the point that SLS should be buried.”
If we ascribe to your logic that NASA is stuck with SLS, then the robotic NEO retrieval mission is going to launch on SLS. Since NASA is stuck with SLS, SLS becomes a “free” resource to any program at NASA. Why pay another $100 million to SpaceX for a Falcon Heavy launch when I’ve sunk $10 billion into SLS Block I, which is launching with excess payload mass sometime after 2017 come hell or high water?
Such is the logic of internal launch development programs…
As we understand it now, SLS would only be used for the crewed spaceflight in 2021.
Bolden told the House Appropriations Committee meeting two weeks ago that he wants to move up the SLS crewed test flight from 2021 to 2019. Now we know why. He wants the 2021 slot for the crewed asteroid mission.
The Keck study proposes using an Atlas V in the 551 configuration, e.g. what was used for New Horizons in 2006.
The point of the NASA study is to come up with a proposal NASA takes to Congress. I think we can safely assume that Falcon Heavy would be cheaper than Atlas V.
All the $100 million gets NASA is the proposal for the mission. We won’t know specific details until it’s completed. This is like people in May 1961 complaining about the JFK Moon proposal because he hasn’t specified the vehicle, the crew, or the landing point.
“As we understand it now, SLS would only be used for the crewed spaceflight in 2021.”
That’s not how I read Cosmic Log article. In it, an unnamed Administration official was claiming that they could reduce the total robotic NEO retrieval mission cost to $1 billion (vice the $2.6 billion Keck study) by launching the mission on SLS. I understood that means that the mission launches shotgun in 2017 with the unmanned MPCV test so that the NEO can be in lunar orbit circa 2021 for the crewed MPCV test.
It doesn’t make any sense in terms of the total cost savings — they’ll only save something approaching $300 million (the Atlas V cost), nothing close to $1.6 billion. But regardless, even setting aside the $10 billion “invested” in SLS Block I, they’ll go the SLS route that saves them $300 million, vice the Falcon Heavy route that saves them $200 million.
“I think we can safely assume that Falcon Heavy would be cheaper than Atlas V”
Sure. But a secondary ride on SLS costs nothing to the robotic NEO retrieval mission. Zero beats any price for any launch vehicle, including Falcon Heavy.
“This is like people in May 1961 complaining about the JFK Moon proposal because he hasn’t specified the vehicle, the crew, or the landing point.”
I disagree. In my case, I’m complaining about the poor justification for the mission. It contributes little/nothing to the goals it claims to support, and there are much better alternatives for advancing those goals for the same or less cost. That statement is true regardless of the mission’s launch vehicle or other specifics.
Dark Blue Nine wrote:
That’s not how I read Cosmic Log article. In it, an unnamed Administration official was claiming that they could reduce the total robotic NEO retrieval mission cost to $1 billion (vice the $2.6 billion Keck study) by launching the mission on SLS. I understood that means that the mission launches shotgun in 2017 with the unmanned MPCV test so that the NEO can be in lunar orbit circa 2021 for the crewed MPCV test.
So everyone should overreact and issue snap judgments based on one quote by an unnamed official who most likely will have nothing to do with the final proposal when it comes out in a year or so from now?!
Me, I’ll wait for the actual proposal and study. I like the general idea. I look forward to the specifics. I’m not going to jump off the deep end based on idle speculation from anonymous sources.
“So everyone should overreact and issue snap judgments based on one quote by an unnamed official… I’m not going to jump off the deep end based on idle speculation from anonymous sources.”
No. No one should do that.
They should do what I did, which was read through the 51 page Keck study in length, along with the publicly available presentations on the same study and the handful or so of press articles on the mission.
Please reread my posts. My argument about how the robotic NEO retrieval mission does not advance the goals it claims to support is not based on anything that the anonymous Administration official stated.
As I stated earlier, I do think the official is smoking dope if he thinks that replacing a $300 million Atlas V launch with a “free” SLS launch will magically reduce the mission’s cost from Keck’s $2.6 billion estimate to $1 billion.
But that has nothing to do with whether the mission is justifiable at those costs or the best way to spend those funds in pursuit of the mission’s suppossed goals. It’s not.
Please retract your insinuation.
“Me, I’ll wait for the actual proposal and study.”
We have a study and a proposal from Keck. Unless the Keck team totally overlooked something that makes the mission technically infeasible, nothing fundamental is going to change with NASA’s summer review.
Dark Blue Nine wrote:
We have a study and a proposal from Keck. Unless the Keck team totally overlooked something that makes the mission technically infeasible, nothing fundamental is going to change with NASA’s summer review.
The Keck study is not the government proposal. We don’t know what that is. They’re requesting the money Wednesday for that proposal. The government program won’t be known for many months.
The justification for the mission seems to be a sort of compromise “do a little planetary science, a little HSF advance, a little technology demonstration, a little planetary defense work, a little ISRU, a little SLS/MPCV justification, a little commercial participation, maybe a little international participation” … very much like Shuttle or ISS justifications. None of the individual justifications seems worth it, but combined are they?
I think a lot of the benefits would come with the side efforts that enable the mission, like a more capable NEO survey, hopefully some close-up checks of a few NEOs, demonstrating the propulsion system that hopefully can have additional uses, and adding capabilities to MPCV to actually do something with the NEO.
” if the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is to help prepare NASA for human space exploration to Mars or other deep space locations, it’s a very expensive way to do very little testing, if any, of the systems and operations necessary for those kinds of missions.”
I guess the SLS/MPCV astronaut mission was planned anyway for a cislunar flight without much more than tests of the ability to do such a flight. That expensive part of all of this would be doing more than originally planned (assuming SLS/MPCV developments don’t spiral out of control). It also seems to me that the work on this flight could help prepare NASA for later missions visiting NEOs in their natural orbits, and also Phobos and Deimos. It wouldn’t cover the long distance and duration aspects of such missions (which could be simulated in cislunar space test missions), but it could help with NEO/Mars Moon close-up operations.
It could also help with other (currently unplanned and unfunded) cislunar space missions like observatory servicing (i.e. if EVA or robotic capabilities are added).
“If the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is planetary defense, it has a very limited contribution, if any, to future NEO threats.”
I agree that the logical next step in that area is more intense NEO searching and characterization. However, that seems to be one of the things they propose funding in this first year, so that’s a good start. I’m not sure that “side mission” would be happening without the primary NEO retrieval mission. So the “package deal” is better than just the main mission.
Also, I could see the NEO itself allowing future planetary defense tests on a small scale, and the robotic retrieval spacecraft might demonstrate useful technologies for planetary defense (e.g.: propulsion) even if the collection method wouldn’t work with large dangerous NEOs.
“If the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is to advance the use of in-space resources, a lot is dependent on what kind of NEO is retrieved and what access groups besides a handful of NASA astronauts have to it.”
Hopefully they get this right. We don’t really know yet if they plan to to justice to picking the right NEO. I’d rather have this whole thing take a few more years if needed to allow characterization rather than just grabbing the first NEO they can. I’m sure SLS/MPCV will cooperate with that sentiment and have a several year delay of the 2021 mission.
“And if the justification for the NEO retrieval mission is pure, curiousity-driven science, well, NEOs have never been a priority in any NRC planetary decadal survey”
Maybe the retrieved samples could be justified at the level of a Discovery-class Planetary Science mission (there were no NEO flagship or New Frontiers class missions recommended by the last decadal survey, but they didn’t go into details on Discovery missions). I’d think the combination of the retrieved sample itself (especially if they select a good one), some of which could be brought to Earth for detailed analysis and some of which could be studied in space, plus the science value of the NEO survey, plus possibly a handful of close-up assessments of potential NEO targets, plus the demonstrated technology of the robotic spacecraft that hopefully could be used on future science missions, plus the future potential science at distant NEOs or Mars moons by astronauts enabled by the mission, would count for something on the science side.
Anyway, I agree that your proposed set of smaller missions to more directly address the needs of science, HSF exploration, technology development, planetary defense, and so on would be better. Unfortunately, packaging them that way might result in them getting under/not funded like the FY2011 SEP demonstration, the NEO search robotic precursor mission and so on, since so many space-state Congresspeople want funding to go to SLS/MPCV, or at least things that directly support SLS/MPCV. We will see if even this proposal does that enough.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the proposal gets a response similar to Gingrich’s proposal, though. I’m surprised the Administration didn’t just hold off on ambitious-sounding proposals.
“I’m not in the relive Apollo camp — the Moon does very little for you if you want to go to Mars or anywhere else in the solar system.” mused DBN.
Except it does given the state of the technology in this era. The way to Mars is by way of Luna- for the systems, hardware and procedures for making that trip will be refined via cis-lunar ops, as both Kraft and Armstrong have noted. The real issue is developing a rationale for sending people to Mars at all; a rationale for HSF, at least by the United States.
Given the increasing sophistication of probes and volumes of data returned from robots peppering the red planet and eventual SRMs- sending people on a two year trek to grab rocks, sample the air and poke into the Martian crustis a hard sell. Humans are there already in a virtual sense. And the rationale for sending people as the probes keep suceeding only works against any reason to send people at this time.
If you wanna colonize a barren, desert-like environment with retirement communities, the Mojave Desert awaits- plenty of open, Mars-like real estate to work with there, where you already have some favorable atmospherics and clusters of support sites hours- not years away. And instant communications links– not 18 miuutes, one way. And commercialists like Musk could make a buck at it, too.
But if you want to go to Mars ‘just to go’- because ‘it is there’, that simply won’t fly in this era. You need a rationale for HSF. Everything flows from that. And the only person on this forum who has posted comments about ‘reliving Apollo’ is Smitty BTW. The Apollo rationale for sending humans to the moon was totally political, as a projection of political power, economic vigor and national prestige on Earth, as the late Rocco Petrone often noted. That ‘rationale’ for HSF is no longer valid and not transferable to a trip to Mars. The U.S. has to articulate reason for HSF and lassoing asteroids ain’t it.
Here is a very recent (March 28) presentation by the Keck Institute to the National Research Council on the asteroid retrieval mission:
http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20130328q%20Asteroid%20Return%20Mission%20%28ARM%29.pdf
“I know some people will never be happy unless the taxpayers help fund their reliving childhood fantasies about an Apollo redux…” muses Stephen.
The only person who has posted this line of thinking on this forum is you. Strange. Because nobody wants to re do Apollo… not even the people left alive who DID Apollo. But a lot of people realize that going back to Luna is the way out to places beyond, given the state of the trechnolgy in this era.
There is one reason I like this mission. It brings back a small asteroid so that wannabe asteroid-miners can practice their ideas and techniques on it.
Otherwise it doesn’t do anything useful. It doesn’t test deep-space techniques or equipment for manned missions. It doesn’t showcase SLS and/or MPCV since neither are really needed for it.
But I do like the idea of having a small asteroid nearby for the people who think they can get resources for asteroids to work on.
Will it ever really fly and is it worth its cost? I don’t know. You make the call.
That’s true only if the asteroid is of a type that interests wannabe asteroid-miners. There’s little guarantee of that.
It’s also only true if the wannabe asteroid-miners are at the stage of fundraising and mission development that they’re ready to test those techniques. Both of the wannabe asteroid-mining companies are at the stage of microspacecraft telescope/flyby missions (really designing these missions). It’s unclear that they’ll be out of that stage by the 2020s.
If NASA wants to help these companies, then it should partner with them to conduct NEO searches, scout the most promising NEOs, and do some resource extraction research. Moving NEOs and/or testing mining techniques on actual NEOs comes downstream.
In terms of NEO mining, this proposal puts the cart before the horse. The conversation is something like: “Great, you got a new bulldozer that can move a boulder. But I need to verify and then access the petroleum that I think is a half-kilometer under that boulder.”
“There is one reason I like this mission. It brings back a small asteroid so that wannabe asteroid-miners can practice their ideas and techniques on it.”
That’s one reason I don’t like this mission. That’s MY MONEY being spent on behalf of wannabe asteroid miners. Sorry, but if your claim to national relevance is that you’re a self-enriching wannabe, please take a hike.
Oh, by the way, the opportunity for “operational experience beyond the Moon” in the KISS study is a weak pointer to Earth-Moon L2. That’s 17% of the Earth-Moon distance beyond the Moon. Whoopee. In fact, the main interest of Earth-Moon L2, as opposed to Earth-Moon L1, is that it’s, er, beyond the Moon. That, of course, is like saying we need to go to Kansas City, because we’ve only managed to go to St. Louis.
Hiram wrote:
That’s one reason I don’t like this mission. That’s MY MONEY being spent on behalf of wannabe asteroid miners. Sorry, but if your claim to national relevance is that you’re a self-enriching wannabe, please take a hike.
So you’re arguing that anything which has a practical commercial application should be forever banned as a NASA mission?!
And you’re arguing that NASA may only do missions that never have any practical application?!
And that entrepreneurs should be forever banned from going to the Moon, Mars or any other place NASA explores because they might become “enriched” by it?
Very odd reasoning.
“That’s one reason I don’t like this mission. That’s MY MONEY being spent on behalf of wannabe asteroid miners. Sorry, but if your claim to national relevance is that you’re a self-enriching wannabe, please take a hike.”
Encouraging the emergence of new industries has always been in the nation’s interest. You’d have to reverse over 200 years of US history — from canal building to railroad land grants to the Airmail Act to pharmaceutical IP to DARPA investments in semiconductors and packetized electronic communications — to justify your argument.
No, you’re not addressing my objection, which is that these wannabe asteroid miners are in the game for their own enrichment. This isn’t about satisfying national needs. Emergence of new industries? Give me a break. It is well understood that while mining asteroids might well be advantageous for future space development (none of which is in the cards, right now), it is not so much for terrestrial economy. So, quite frankly, I don’t think these wannabes are even going to enrich themselves for a long time.
I’m quite satisfied with investing federal money to help new industries emerge. I’d just like to see half an ounce of thought be expended on deciding which emerging industries are most deserving.
In this context it is far more sensible to have a mission that identifies small asteroids, and verifies the resources that might be on them, perhaps by sampling. This is an activity that doesn’t need astronauts. This is the activity that even has a chance of allowing a new industry to emerge.
Why, I can advocate NASA building a space hotel at Earth-Moon L2. Why? Well, geez, it’ll encourage the emergence of a new tourist industry! Your assessment that there is actually a new industry to be developed by capturing an asteroid is not shared by most of our economic leaders.
“No, you’re not addressing my objection, which is that these wannabe asteroid miners are in the game for their own enrichment.”
So were the canal boat captains, the railroad barons, the airmail carriers, and the semiconductor and pharmaceutical CEOs. They weren’t spending the equivalent of billions of today’s dollars out of some sappy sense of patriotism and common good. They wanted to get rich (or much richer).
But what they were doing to get rich — creating better transportation networks, faster forms of computation and communications, and inventing cures to diseases — are important common goods of great importance to nations. The US is lucky enough to have had a government smart enough to recognize this and engineer incentives that accelerate the maturation of these industries. For better or worse, that also accelerates the accumulation of wealth for the leaders and investors in these industries. But if you think that’s bad in a socialist kind of way, I’d argue that’s a small price to pay for the kinds improvements in the human condition that these industries have brought. And to the extent that certain players become too powerful, the government has all sorts of anti-trust tools to bring to bear.
“Why, I can advocate NASA building a space hotel at Earth-Moon L2. Why? Well, geez, it’ll encourage the emergence of a new tourist industry!”
That’s a ridiculous comparison. No one is going to argue that the tourism industry is as critical to a nation as its access to natural resources are.
“In this context it is far more sensible to have a mission that identifies small asteroids, and verifies the resources that might be on them, perhaps by sampling. This is an activity that doesn’t need astronauts. This is the activity that even has a chance of allowing a new industry to emerge.”
We are in violent agreement on this point.
“Your assessment that there is actually a new industry to be developed by capturing an asteroid is not shared by most of our economic leaders.”
That was never my assessment. I’m supportive of the nascent NEO mining industry. But I agree that NASA tugging a small NEO to lunar orbit does little, if anything, to help them and will probably do a lot more harm than good to these companies.
FWIW, those slides are contradictory and the details of the presentation don’t support the mission justification.
Slide 4 claims that the mission will provide an “Opportunity for human operational experience beyond the Moon”. But slide 20 states that for reasons of orbital stability, they’re probably going to have to put the NEO in high lunar orbit.
Slide 4 claims that the mission will provide “valuable resources for human, robotic, and human-robotic synergistic exploration, and potential utilization of material already in space”. But the only human-robotic synergy on slide 22 is the fact that this mission is the first “truly robotic precursor since Surveyor”, which isn’t even a true statement given missions like Lunar Prospector and LRO. And the only “potential utilization” on slide 22 is the vague possibility that the mission “could enable new commercialization options”.
Slide 4 claims that the mission has “Science, technology, and engineering elements relevant to planetary defense”. But slide 22 states that the mission “is not aimed at planetary defense”.
Like SLS and MPCV (and ISS and Space Shuttle), the NEO retrieval mission is a hammer in search of a nail. It’s a cool proof-of-concept, but it’s not designed from a top-down set of coherent goals and requirements. If our goal was to get operational astronaut experience beyond the Moon or jumpstart space mining or protect the planet from NEOs, we wouldn’t pursue this mission.
The post above should have appeared under Stephen’s link to the Keck study presentation to the NRC.
Does anyone really honestly believe this mission is going to fly? I’d sooner believe in fairies quite frankly. I’m not saying it might not be a worthwhile objective but as with many NASA things, where is the money and look at the timelines and NASA’s record on making both shedule and budget on their flagship missions. It’s simply not believable.
Neil Shipley said:
“Does anyone really honestly believe this mission is going to fly?”
I don’t think it will.
NASA has a long history of over-reaching on many things, and this just appears to be a way to show there is a “need” for the SLS, not that it’s a well thought out effort. Note that this is only one small “need” for the SLS, and we’re still waiting for a backlog of “needs” that will keep the SLS busy flying at least twice per year for a decade or more.
That’s not to say that Congress won’t try to allocate money for it – I think they will, and since there isn’t enough money in the budget already for the SLS and MPCV, it will be interesting to see where they try to take it from.
However since this whole program depends on the use of the SLS, and that program is more than likely to exceed it’s budget and go significantly over schedule, this type of mission is ripe for cancellation in order to “save” the SLS.
Although the asteroid retrieval mission has its points, I do not see a continuation of SLS/Orion and a simultaneous year slip in commercial crew (recently announced) because of lack of money reveals utterly misplaced priorities. It would make more sense to study the asteroid robotically and accelerate commercial crew. Where is the mission that is going to pay the overhead of the SLS/Orion program?
OBSERVE-TOUCH-EARLY-OFTEN.
Reference Dark Blue Nines set of very good questions. In particular, reference DBNs #6.
“The proposal, Nelson said in a statement, was a little of something for everyone. “The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars,†he said.”
The cablers are having a field day ridiculing this ‘lunacy’ from all points of the political compass.
Nelson is as much a piece of shuttle era deadwood as Bolden. Where is the general philosophy that advocates human spaceflight by the United States, Senator? That’s what the nation needs articulated. Everything flows from that. And aside from competition and reactive, short term political policies, there doesn’t seem to be one for the U.S.A. That really should be your focus rather than hyping a run to lasso a rock that will get shelved next to the Constellation files come lame duck time for Mr. O.
Hi DCSCA –
“The proposal, Nelson said in a statement, was a little of something for everyone. “The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars,†he said.â€
It is interesting to watch the way the paradigm shift is taking place, not only in the US, but globally.
Another generic thought about all this …
Nothing in what we’ve read so far rules out a private mission to the captured asteroid. Once it’s in position, Planetary Resources or Deep Space Industries or whomever could launch their own missions — crewed or robotic — to the asteroid.
Even though the captured asteroid might not necessarily have everything those companies are looking for, it’s a good place to test and practice mining technologies.
I’m sorry to keep needling, but…
Beyond DSI’s scifi logo art and Diamandis’s childhood memories about playing asteroid miner, PR and DSI aren’t planning any crewed missions to anywhere. Their approach is entirely robotic. Even at SpaceX prices, they can’t turn a profit bearing the costs of actual, human space miners. That’s still in scifi land.
In terms of prospecting, PR and DSI would have no reason to send robotic missions to a NASA-retrieved NEO as long as NASA still planned to send an MPCV crew. NASA would have to make the MPCV mission data publicly available because it was obtained on the taxpayer’s dime. That data might be useful to PR and DSI, a potential “freebie” for them. But if the taxpayer is going to pay to stimulate commercial NEO prospecting (which I’m fine with), then we should be good stewards of the taxpayers’ money and do it affordably with multi-million dollar-class robotic missions — not with multi-billion dollar-class boondoggles.
And in terms of testing resource extraction techniques, that’s highly dependent on whether NASA retrieves a NEO with significant and accessible volatiles or PGMs. Without precursor missions, the odds of getting a resource-rich NEO relevant to what PR and DSI need to test goes way down.
There has been a quote in the press from DSI, in which they’ve expressed concern about NASA getting involved in asteroid resources in such a big way. There is also a “that’s cool” blog entry on the PR website about the NASA robotic NEO retrieval mission. PR isn’t negative or cautious like DSI, but they’re very non-committal in that blogpost, too.
In terms of NEO resource utilization (commercial, government, or otherwise), my bottomline is that this mission puts the cart before the horse. Or the mining before the prospecting. What these companies need help with right now is partner funding for microspacecraft-sized space telescopes and flyby missions to identify motherloads worthy of larger investments towards resource extraction. Until that’s done, everything else is a sideshow for these companies.
The USG didn’t help SpaceX by putting a retirement home for Silicon Valley engineers on Mars. We held a competition for industry to build a space cargo transportation service.
Same sequencing needs to be followed for NEO exploitation. Let’s start with a COTS-like (maybe even prize) competition for some low-cost robotic prospecting missions (or data) and move up from there. NASA is already doing that with several of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. There’s no reason not to do it here except that this NEO retrieval boondoggle and SLS/MPCV are eating up all the (largely imaginary) budget.
My 2 cents… FWIW…
One other thought…
I worry that the NASA NEO retrieval mission may do more harm than good in terms of investor and public perceptions for these commercial NEO mining concerns that are just getting off the ground.
The Keck study makes clear that the mission will most likely retrieve a “dried mudball” and probably not a resource-rich NEO. And this “dried mudball” will be 7-meters across at most. MPCV is 5-meters across. In terms of a NEO propulation distribution, there’s a good chance that this mission will retrieve a NEO that’s actually smaller than MPCV. Hardly a huge reservoir of volatiles or PGMs even if the NEO contains some.
To the extent such a commercially useless NEO becomes emblamatic in the investor community’s and the public’s mind about the potential of NEOs, it could greatly deflate the ability of these companies to raise capital. When people hear “asteroid mining”, they imagine mountains of gold floating in space, not dried mudballs with diameters smaller than their SUV’s length. I worry about that huge gap between expectations and the reality of this NASA mission and what it could do to these commercial concerns before they’ve had a chance to find some commercially exploitable NEOs.
Same goes for the enormous NASA costs of just retrieving one, small NEO. PR and DSI may have a much harder time explaining to investors why they think they can prospect and mine asteroids for millions of dollars when the government has to blow billions of dollars just to move one NEO around and send astronauts to it.
Again, my 2 cents… FWIW…
I’m surprised Jeff didn’t point this out earlier, but less than a month ago, Bolden and Holdren were on the Hill testifying that Congress should _not_ put more money into NEOs, not even a few million bucks to accelerate ground-based NEO searches:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2013/03/20/nasa-to-congress-dont-pour-money-into-neo-programs/
This is testimony that was made after the Chelyabinsk airburst.
Now they’re asking for $100 million to study a NEO retrieval mission that will costs billions of dollars if pursued. What an amazing turnaround!!!
Nope, no hypocrisy from our nation’s civil space leaders. Not one ounce.
Grotesque… just grotesque.
Perhaps I missed the science reason to capture an asteroid. Capture an asteroid sounds like a cool thing to do but I don’t see the science benefit in posted articles other than being able to do it and to “study” it.
A good science reason could be to characterize the asteroid’s shape and material make up; then send it on a SAFE controlled collision course and impact region with the Earth and observe its entry breakup etc. Compare with CFD etc computations. This would allow us to better predict the breakup of a future larger potentially dangerous asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth.
Apparently unknown at this time is why the Russian asteroid exploded and produced so much dust — what was it made of?
Ordinary chondrite, about 10% iron. The force of the explosion (extreme kinetic energy released due to atmospheric impact) shattered the relatively weak and brittle stoney material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
i don’t find this asteroid mission very inspiring. developing an rlv (spacex), that’s inspiring… planning for a manned flyby of mars just six years from now, that’s inspiring… trying to justify to a make work project (sls), not so inspiring…
I agree. My reason for finding it uninspiring has to do with my lack of belief that NASA can make it happen based mostly on the historical record wrt schedule and budget.
This is at odds with the SpaceX RLV where they clearly have a plan and are building and flying test hardware. IP also have a plan, a set timeframe and are investing private funds to see if they can make it happen.
Spaceflight Now has some additional hints about the proposal:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1304/06asteroid/#.UWNlWFfDQeR
“But the proposed NASA project closely follows the Keck scenario. The outline indicates a three-pronged approach, starting with enhanced efforts to identify suitable targets. The idea is to find a number of near-Earth asteroids roughly 20 to 30 feet in diameter in favorable orbits that would permit capture and transport to Earth’s vicinity.
…
A “notional” timeline in the mission overview shows a test flight in the 2017 timeframe followed by a rendezvous and capture mission in 2019. The asteroid then would be hauled back to cislunar space by around 2021.
…
Two NASA teams currently are studying the proposed mission. One is focusing on identifying suitable asteroids and developing the unmanned systems needed to capture and return a candidate to Earth’s vicinity. The other is studying manned rendezvous and sample-return scenarios.
“There is much forward work to do to better characterize the cost, schedule and mission requirements, and focus an observation campaign to find candidate asteroids,” according to the mission outline.”
It’s interesting that the notional timeline includes a 2017 test flight followed by a 2019 operational retrieval mission. It doesn’t say what launchers would be used for the 2 robotic flights. It will be interesting to see what’s included in the test flight, and whether there is enough time between the technology demonstration flight and the operational mission to shield the operational mission costs from potential technology demonstration stumbles.
The article doesn’t mention any close-up mini-robotic inspections in the observation campaign to find suitable targets to make sure the retrieved object is interesting from science, commercial, or ISRU perspectives. It doesn’t rule such inspections out, either. I think this thread shows that such inspections are pretty important to make sure this mission is productive and not just a lame “check off the box”.
I have doubts about the affordability of the main mission, the whole SLS/MPCV part of it, and the risk of not including enough characterization of the object to make sure it’s a worthy one. However, based on the hints I do like that it starts with some work that seems affordable, useful (whether or not the main mission is implemented), and achievable – i.e. the search/characterization phase and the test mission.
One thought that keeps crossing my mind with this NEO retrieval proposal is the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve samples from “near-Earth carbonaceous asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36″.
http://osiris-rex.lpl.arizona.edu/
That mission was the winner of the most recent New Frontiers competition, and as such is a ~$1B class mission. The Planetary Science Decadal Survey isn’t likely to prioritize NEO sample return missions now that this mission has been selected, although their list of 7 potential New Frontiers missions for the next 2 selections includes a Comet Surface Sample Return and a Trojan Tour and Rendezvous (of asteroids around Jupiter’s Trojan points). But Planetary Science does value NEO sample return or they wouldn’t have selected OSIRIS-REx.
The main objective of the mission is to retrieve “at least 60 grams or 2.1 ounces” from the asteroid, quite a bit less than the Keck proposal. It’s also supposed to map the asteroid and document the sample site. I imagine that the Keck approach would do a quite good job of that. It’s also supposed to measure the Yarkovsky effect and compare close-up results to Earth-based telescope results.
It seems like there is a lot of overlap between OSIRIS-REx and the Keck proposal if similar types of asteroid are the subjects. That leads me to wonder if NASA would attempt to replace OSIRIS-REx with the Keck-style mission, and use OSIRIS-REx funding to enable part of the Keck mission? OSIRIS-REx got to PDR recently, so would that even make sense by the time the Keck-style mission gets the go-ahead after studies? Hopefully they’re not thinking along those lines, as there’s been enough of the wrecking-ball approach used on Planetary Science lately. OSIRIS-REx is managed at GSFC, and I doubt that Mikulski would tolerate that.
I could also imagine NASA saying to OSIRIS-REx “keep going ahead with your mission, but get rid of the part about the sample return capsule to Earth, and just deliver the sample somewhere MPCV can pick it up”. The same goes for the Comet sample return mission I mentioned above if it’s selected, or the Lunar South Pole Aitken sample return mission (one of the other 7 missions the Decadal Survey selected as competitors in the next New Frontiers competitions).