NASA’s asteroid mission takes a beating
Posted on July 31, 2014 | By Eric Berger
NASA can’t afford to send humans to Mars. With its current plans to build a large rocket, the Space Launch System, NASA can’t even afford to go back to the moon.
What NASA can afford to do, in about a decade, is bring a small asteroid to a location near the moon, and then send astronauts to fly in formation with the rock.
This is known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM.
There is little love for the ARM in Congress.
“I don’t think there’s a clear consensus on a lot of things in Congress, but we all agree that pushing a rock around in space is a waste of taxpayer dollars that we don’t have to spare,” John Culberson, a Houston Republican, told me.
On Wednesday, at two separate space policy meetings, the mission was also savaged.
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2014/07/nasas-asteroid-mission-takes-a-beating/

Bob Clark

The joy expressed by the private space mob when they refer to the SLS in this way is exactly the same emotional gratification I experience when referring to the SpaceX entry as “the hobby rocket.”

An HLV like the SLS in the Saturn V range is a rocket to one place- the Moon. This is more an environmental issue than a engineering one. Nuclear energy schemes can carry human beings from the surface of the Earth to the other planets but the contamination is unacceptable. A “rocket to everywhere” will have to lift-off from someplace outside Earth’s magnetosphere.

Nuclear contamination of the Moon is acceptable.

I also hope that your book will emphasize just how– extremely important–it is for NASA to be able to identify and to accurately quantify the types of volatiles contained at the lunar poles.

Marcel

In one blog post, it seemed Dr Phil Plait had written his hope for something similar to what you propose.

To think we can have missions like that take place on a regular basis, all over the Moon.

On a different matter, there’s something I thought of.

Robert Zubrin published his book “The Case For Mars”, outlining in detail about what is involved in going to Mars. It has been updated since then to include the MERs.

What I wonder is if a similar book can be made for the Cislunar Next concept.
Perhaps “The Case For The Moon”?
I think this can bring the idea of development of the moon more into the public mindset.

While I was still an astronaut, and an astronaut veteran at that, then Associate Administrator for spaceflight Lori Garver came to speak to the Astronaut Corps. A private meeting, just Ms. Garver and an attentive group of type A personalities, I would venture to guess there were about 40-45 of us “space fliers” seated in the room. A bit of a “rah, rah” meeting, touting NASA’s work in the world of commercial spaceflight (and I think commercial spaceflight is a good thing, but that’s another op-ed!), she asked us all a significant question. After some perfunctory remarks, she asked us to raise our hands if “we thought that Mars should be our next destination?” Three astronauts raised their hands. Next, she offered the question again, but this time replacing the Red Planet with the option of an asteroid as our next destination. No one… that’s right, no one, raised a hand. When she finally asked us about our near-neighbor the moon, every astronaut, save the three that voted for Mars, raised their hands.

It is unfortunate but it is clear the choice to do an asteroid retrieval mission rather than a return to the Moon is purely based on politics. It is based on the hate the current administration had for the prior one, and also the viewpoint, shared by the current administration, that the huge expenditures of the 60’s of the Apollo missions during a period of political unrest were unjustified.

Bob Clark

Ran across this and thought Dr. Spudis and the regulars would be interested concerning lunar lander technology.

While carrier pilots get all the glory the second most challenging arena may be trying to land a small rescue helicopter on the deck of a small military vessel in heavy seas. The state of the art several decades ago were reverse hoists that winched the helicopter down onto a capture device on the deck. This recent video seems to showcase some very advanced autopilot programs to assist in landing without any of that older technology.

Comparing the different operating environments of a maritime helicopter drone and a lunar robot lander we can see some interesting parallels. Almost all helicopter designs have some serious instability problems- just like a vertical thrust lander in a vacuum- that require constant inputs. Helo drones and robot landers are both far simpler and cheaper than any human-rated system.