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

So, you’ve finally discovered the financing scheme for NewSpace. Well done. Cheers!

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).

“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.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

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.