Comments on: NASA budget: asteroid mission efforts, funding commercial crew, and restructuring education

By: vulture4

vulture4 — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:33:26 +0000

I don’t actually disagree with the idea, it’s just hard to see bringing the asteroid back all this way and not putting it in a medium earth orbit where it will not decay but can be easily accessed. That would avoid the need for a manned moon rocket to reach it. Presumably the idea would be to used the asteroid for on-orbit construction, i.e. radiation shielding. There may be only a few accessible objects and most asteroids are ordinary chondrites and won’t provide a lot of precious metals. Maybe just as well if it would disintegrate on atmospheric entry.

OTOH this means more cuts in planetary science and commercial crew.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:40:49 +0000

If Colbert and the late-night comedians start skewering this….I wonder what the actual House/Senate hearings will look like?

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:07:10 +0000

Stephen Colbert, a vocal space advocate BTW, roundly skewered ‘Project Lasso’ in his show-opening lampoon Thursday evening. It’s already a national joke. A punchline along with ‘Newt Gingrich, Moon President.’

By: mt noise

mt noise — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 04:26:47 +0000

Oh I agree the capture idea will never happen. That said, why should we care what the other 6-7 billion think? For that matter, what if we build a base on the moon and then declare the territory around it a new state? Let them build a rocket and claim their own territory.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:46:17 +0000

One needs to be reminded of an old D.C. adage: “The Administration proposes, the Congress disposes.” The Administration’s FY 11 request was a stark reminder of that. And watch for the Hearings to be quite heated. One should not disregard the opinions of the Congresscritters making the lunar-return proposal: they sit on the Science and Technology Committee that deals with NASA, and their views should not be disregarded.

By: vulture4

vulture4 — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:13:49 +0000

This would be a pretty expensive undertaking and the budget estimates seem unrealistic, particularly if one adds in the cost for SLS and Orion. I’d be glad to see it happen but right now there have been only two asteroid rendezvous missions and only one sample return, and I think a few more such missions to a spectrum of asteroid types would be more productive scientifically.

By: Aberwys

Aberwys — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:22:22 +0000

I _know_ it’s BS. I was there when the first version of the came out from LM, lomg begore the Keck report.

The motivation was: “Now that Constellation is becoming extinct, how do we address our sunk costs and keep our company afloat?” LM had started to lay ppl off, the Colorado Advanced Manufacturing research park was stood up to help with the loss, it came and went and BAZINGA! The original study paper emerged about 5 years later in prettier wrapping, with NEOs and asteroid cowboys in tow.

I don’t need to postulate or imagine any other reasons beyond what I directly witnessed.

By: JimNobles

JimNobles — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:07:24 +0000

I think you should take notice of what the people who are actually working on getting to Mars think. That’s the Mars next faction in NASA (btw, bigger and more powerful than the moon next faction) and Elon Musk with SpaceX. Neither NASA or SpaceX thinks the road to Mars goes through the Moon. If people want to go to the moon that’s fine. But it is unnecessary for going to Mars.

By: Stephen C. Smith

Stephen C. Smith — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:00:12 +0000

Why the so-called REAL Space Act is a fraud:

http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2013/04/posey-moons-taxpayers.html

By: Fred Willett

Fred Willett — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:32:03 +0000

You’re perfectly correct. What I said was sloppy short-hand for a complicated process.
But it does make for a much shorted post (cheesy grin)
and who wants an essay?
The point is there are alternatives that get us somewhere. The political process that delivers us the program of record gets us nowhere and has done that since the conclusion of apollo.