I want to learn about asteroids. I agree that bagging one may not be a practical defense against a collision. But to design that defense, it’s really important to know how strong it is. I expect one to be more like a snowdrift or a loose pile of gravel than a boulder. I want men to experiment over a long period of time.

With ARM, astronauts will be able to visit an asteroid on missions lasting weeks rather than years. They will be able to abort missions if there are problems. They can build infrastructure on one mission and use it on subsequent missions. They can plan a mission using things they learned on another mission a month earlier.

If there’s platinum in an asteriod, is it spread evenly throughout, or is it concentrated? If you centrifuge material from an asteroid, do the valuable parts separate out? Astronauts can try things that it will be hard to design robots to do.

After we have studied a few asteroids close at hand, we will be in a much better position to plan a mission to visit an asteroid in its native orbit.

Many landing fields in NM are not manned; you eyeball the strip and put down without any guidance other than automated info; wind speed, direction, etc.

I suspect that the good people of NM have been sold another Richardson initiative. Conducting space launches and landings was the apparent goal. Currently, they can’t handle an old retired guy in a Cessna. As a result, and an estimated two billion bucks later, I am not optomistic. Appears more like a Federal than a state project. Our tax dollars, derived in a very poor state, at work…..

Oh my! I’m surprised I got that out with a straight face!

Serious Jeff, thanks for providing a thought provoking and lively forum for those of us interested in space exploration and the political maneuvering required to make it happen.
I now have Space News bookmarked and look forward to your articles.

Best of luck!

I’ve worked in space program oversight and management for going on two decades. I have advanced degrees in the field. Your background and expertise is in what?

“will no longer have a forum to bloviate on topics”

The record speaks for itself. We’ve spent over a decade pursuing Ares I/Orion and SLS/MPCV, and we’re no closer to a new civil human space flight system, forget an actual human space exploration mission, than we were in 2004. And SLS/MPCV just slipped another year.

That’s not “bloviating”. It’s just the facts.

“not waste our time reading their myopic fantasies.”

Where did I express any personal “fantasy”? And since when is expecting NASA and its political apparatus to be able to execute the first couple steps in the VSE and at least do what it did five decades ago “myopic”?

I’m sorry your STS religion is failing (yet again), but turn that anger in the right direction. I’m just the messenger.

I’m going to miss Space Politics – it’s been a fun place!

It is actually phenomenal that the uneducated, uninformed, cynical, blind space exploration know-nothings will no longer have a forum to bloviate on topics they have no zero expertise on and will have to find real jobs and not waste our time reading their myopic fantasies.

Good luck Jeff. All the best in your new endeavors.

Thanks for all of the wonderful posts. Good luck on the new job. I’m going to miss this site and its cast of characters.

Best Regards

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe some day, we will learn.

Until then — and until Mr. Foust gets a new blog rolling at SpaceNews — I’ll get my fix of civil human space flight dysfunction by rereading old rocketsandsuch.blogspot entries.

A sincere thanks and all the best for Mr. Foust. Take care.

Oh man, just when I had found a great site with excellent content and a fine bunch of bloggers, everything has to go and change. That’s life, I suppose.

If I joined the others in congratulating you and wishing you all the best, I really would not be telling the truth.

If things don’t work out and sometimes, Jeff, they don’t, you could always get the gang back together.