NASA Plans 2025 Manned Mission To Asteroid

Aol News:

It's a little soon for astronauts to suit up, but NASA is planning to send a manned mission to an asteroid in 2025.

Read the whole story: Aol News

Comments

[frank day]

06:06 PM on 03/27/2011

Moon Colony first. Please?

[Downix]

01:44 AM on 04/19/2011

Why? Moon colonies don't go anywhere.

[jsarets]

10:59 PM on 03/26/2011

Here's a link to a recent NASA presentation on the deep space habitat module that would accompany the Orion spacecraft on missions to the asteroid belt:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110006982_2011003312.pdf

The 15ft diameter by 25ft long habitat module would provide over 2500 cubic feet of habitable volume in addition to the Orion, blanketed by 1.25 inches of multilayer mylar and 2 inches of water wall for thermal control and radiation shielding. It will also feature closed-loop environmental systems for recycling air and water supplies over a one year mission.

[Downix]

11:08 PM on 03/26/2011

You beat me to it, I was about to post this myself!

[KupoKupo]

04:01 AM on 03/26/2011

I've always said that we need to start mining the asteroid belt to build our space colonies, then we can terraform mars, build a stargate to warp us to other solar systems, then we begin our GALACTIC EMPIRE!!!!1111

[Downix]

11:11 PM on 03/26/2011

Hey, I have the business plan for the asteroids. Just need the $8 billion to get off the ground.

[Icke Icke]

02:01 AM on 03/26/2011

Jesus, what a waste of time, money and resources. Trying to land on a stupid space rock? Hey NASA, you haven't done squat since the 60s, stop grasping for straws. Your done.

[Downix]

11:12 PM on 03/26/2011

Other than save the lives of millions of people? Those mammograms which detect breast cancer early enough to allow treatment, NASA technology. (to be exact, off of the Hubble)

[Opening Shares]

12:29 AM on 03/26/2011

Having a socialist bent, I know I should loath developing robotics while wage and debt slavery is the norm, but I hate to see the US falling behind the rest of the world in technology, so I really find NASA sticking with the manned space flight thing to be completely senseless. Manned space flight requires so much more of everything that it takes to accomplish an objective in space. But like my hero of HuffPo's NASA threads; jsarets says it's all about putting the biggest rocket into space.

[BannedInBoston]

09:53 PM on 03/25/2011

That's nearly twice as long and only half as hard as the Apollo and Shuttle programs....

[jsarets]

10:54 PM on 03/25/2011

Yeah, but NASA has less than half the budget (in real dollars) they had during the Apollo program, and they're not allowed to shed legacy infrastructure from the Shuttle program.

They have to keep the most crushing fixed costs, including the ATK SRB racket in Utah (along with the massive Apollo-era crawlers needed to move the SRBs to the launch pad) and the exorbitant expense of sustaining Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne even as their last two engines (RS-68 and J-2X) have fallen well short of their performance targets.

The costs are getting so bad that even the consortium of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that runs the launch systems for the Pentagon is cutting deals with a small company called XCOR and making overtures toward the upstart SpaceX in order to open an escape route away from the PWR engines.

But Congress has ordered NASA to keep using the PWR engines and the ATK boosters, and NASA is quite willing to go along with that because of the entrenched bureaucracy at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville that serves in theory as a liason between NASA and these contractors but more accurately as a redundant systems engineering shop operating in parallel with them.

So basically NASA doesn't have the budget they had during Apollo, and yet their cost structure has spiraled out of control. It's not really the marginal costs of the missions that are sucking the life out of the space program. It's the fixed costs of keeping their bloated industrial complex alive. They can barely afford to sustain the hope of maybe doing something eventually.

At the beginning of Apollo the aerospace industry had nothing but potential, and by the beginning of the Shuttle program we had well over a dozen vibrant contractors vying for a project with rigidly constrained development costs but virtually limitless operating costs. And 40 years later we now have a few obese conglomerates completely addicted those outrageous operating costs.

[Downix]

12:03 AM on 03/27/2011

I find it funny how Aerojet has better solids *and* liquids than PWR does at this point... save for the RL-10. That one engine is still worth it from PWR.

[DoctorWhoDat]

04:33 PM on 03/25/2011

How about a manned mission to the Sun with all the Republicans and Teabaggers.

[stargazer13]

04:22 PM on 03/25/2011

mine the moon it ,s much closer :) no need to travel so far

[BannedInBoston]

10:06 PM on 03/25/2011

Want big bucks to spend on space travel? Just tell the oil companies that there are entire SEAS of gasoline on Saturn's moon Titan....

[Will B7772]

04:16 PM on 03/25/2011

No Mars trip or Moon colonization, but an asteroid?

[Quasi Libertarian]

04:48 PM on 03/25/2011

I was thinking the same thing.....Why waste a trip to essentially a big rock in space?  Mars should be the next goal.  We have the technology and capability to do this.  The moon should be the test place for practicing how to land and once we have that down with a proven vehicle, then off to Mars we need to go...
 
There is no telling how much new stuff will be developed that can be applied to every-day applications.  The Space program has always had a fantastic return on investment in the private sector.

[Will B7772]

04:58 PM on 03/25/2011

Especially since an asteroid is moving faster so it would be more dangerous and difficult.

[Sam Debater]

05:24 PM on 03/26/2011

There are good reasons for visiting asteroids, though I would prefer us to establish a permanent, manned lunar presence. One good reason is that asteroids offer us what likely would be the least-expensive source of natural resources in orbit. We might be able to do fantastic things if we could mine and transform asteroids. But, it really doesn't matter what NASA picks, because any program lasting more than 8 years is going to get canceled, anyway, if that option exists. The "space.com" article that is the source of this one points out that NASA has spent $21 billion (7% of its budget) over the last 20 years on canceled space transportation programs. NASA lacks the internal and external leadership and will necessary for it to accomplish these bold missions.

[JaxReader]

05:03 PM on 03/25/2011

Gotta take a step at a time. Asteroid mission would be the first one of its kind in deep space past the moon. Trip would take at least 6 months to get there. Necessary experience before you decided to orbit Mars as it takes some 4 years to get there.

[Sam Debater]

05:27 PM on 03/26/2011

Actually, it "only" takes about 6 or 7 months to reach Mars from the time of Earth launch, using current technology. The launch windows open about every 3 or 4 years.

[martiniandabotoxchaser]

03:50 PM on 03/25/2011

Silly as each administration pays with the budget and shoots down the programs of the last.  NASA is without a rudder.

[Sam Debater]

04:51 PM on 03/26/2011

I fully agree. This is what happens when you turn space research into a dog-and-pony show. How often does a National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation achievement make it live to the evening news? I like the coverage for myself, but it opens the door to armchair quarterbacking, and NASA is just a political football. NASA goes where the political winds blow it, not where it would be most effective.

[CarolinaDem]

03:39 PM on 03/25/2011

A mission to South Carolina could deliver intelligent life to a needy and deserving little world.

[rbenjamin]

03:47 PM on 03/25/2011

Great icon.

We don't get many Kangaroo Democrats in this bar.

And with your prices and politics I can see why.

[Mister Grumpy]

03:29 PM on 03/25/2011

Oh...... Oh.......... Armagedden anyone?............

[BannedInBoston]

10:02 PM on 03/25/2011

One of the suckier sci-fi movies I've seen (and I've seen some pretty sucky ones....)

[TheMuckraker]

03:03 PM on 03/25/2011

If we put a flag on it we need to update our intergalactic insurance

[usmcSaltDog]

02:45 PM on 03/25/2011

HOw awesome would it be to be that astronuat chillin on a asteroid in outer space... man. I shoulda been an astrounaut!

[EdMitchell]

02:50 PM on 03/25/2011

Seems you already are a space cadet.

[Sparks Magoo]

02:30 PM on 03/25/2011

Are Bruce Willis and his boys going?