Draft NASA Funding Bill Cancels Asteroid Mission For Return To the Moon 237
MarkWhittington writes "A draft version of the 2013 NASA Authorization Bill nixes any funding for President Obama's asteroid retrieval mission and instead directs NASA to return astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as possible, funding of course permitted. The NASA bill is currently working its way through the House Science Committee. Thus far the Senate has not taken up NASA authorization. However the cancellation of the asteroid retrieval mission and an insistence on returning to the moon, which both President Obama and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden have opposed, would place Congress on a collision course with the White House should that version of the bill be passed by both houses of Congress."
Re:The important word is "should" (Score:5, Informative)
> A mission to an asteroid seems like it would be much cheaper and quicker to accomplish.
Can you elaborate? It's farther. It's more dangerous (less is measured/known/visible, I believe). There's a lot more chance of well, getting his by micro meteorites up to big ones. Sample collection is going to have to be via new method(s)...I'm just trying to figure out what's the easier part. I agree it would give better return value. But if it was done quicker and cheaper, I'd be very pessimistic about anyone coming back.
OK, energetically, there are asteroids that we could could reach for roughly the same delta-V as going to the Moon, and coming back. (To put it another way, that Apollo could have reached with the Saturn V.) So, energetically, it's a wash, at least for the NEO we would be going to first.
In terms of technology, we are more or less there for an asteroid - we have demonstrated long duration flights on the ISS, and you don't land on a small asteroid, you dock with one, and that we have technology for. We just need a launch vehicle. For the Moon, we HAD the technology (the Lunar Module), but lost it, and estimates to get it back are in the billions of dollars. Advantage, asteroids. Plus, it turns out landing on the Moon and on Mars are rather difficult, so there is no synergy advantage in terms of going to Mars if we develop a Lunar Module first. Again, advantage, asteroids.
(I believe that avoiding that LM cost/development time was the "cheaper and quicker" the OP was referring to.)
Sample collection is well in hand, and not really a problem for either Moon or asteroid. That's a wash.
Now, going to an asteroid for 9 months is indeed more dangerous than going to the Moon for 9 days. No doubt. However
- if we are ever going to get to Mars, we have to develop the capability to do long duration deep space missions. Going to an asteroid is no more dangerous (or not much more dangerous) than just going out there and coming back, with much more return.
- When we do go back to the Moon, we are likely to go to stay. It is by no means clear that going to an asteroid for 9 months is more dangerous than going to the Moon for 9 months.
So, for the danger aspect, I regard as a wash, except that the asteroid mission would have real synergies.
So, IMHO, the advantages for the Moon are week and iffy, while the advantages / synergies for an asteroid are real and solid.
Also, there is a LONG history of commercial development riding the back of initial government investment. NASA going to an asteroid would jump-start commercial asteroid mining.
Space is Full of Energy (Score:5, Informative)
What hardly anyone understands is that space is full of abundant energy.
The world's fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) reserves are equal to 7 trillion barrels of oil, and one barrel contains 6 x 10^9 Joules. Thus we have 42 x 10^21 Joules of fossil fuel energy. The area within the Moon's orbit (384,000 km radius) has 38 x 10^21 Joules of sunlight passing through every minute, nearly as much....Every Minute!
Asteroids and the Moon are sources of raw materials, but the energy is what enables you to do something with it, and solar energy in space is easily extracted.