Off the Florida Coast, Astronauts Train For Asteroid Mission 84
Space.com gives an overview of the training that four astronauts are undergoing over 9 days submerged off the coast of Florida near Key Largo. The training mission, dubbed NEEMO 18, is one step toward a proposed (mid-2020s) mission to actually visit a captured asteroid in lunar orbit. In addition to the complications of working outside their school-bus sized habitat while awkwardly suited up in a low-gravity (or at least high buoyancy) environment, their mission also includes a 10-minute communications delay, to simulate the high-latency communications with mission control that would be inevitable for an actual asteroid mission.
The experiments astronauts are doing during the mission, which began Monday (July 21), range from the physical to the behavioral. For example, each of the crew members sports a sensor that records how close the crew members work with each other inside the school-bus-size habitat. ... Communications with NEEMO Mission Control is usually constant, and there is the ability to send items to and from the habitat as needed. Also living inside the habitat are two support staff who are assisting with Aquarius maintenance and systems, as required. The crew members also have Internet and phone service to talk with family and friends.
Send a robot (Score:4, Informative)
When it's time for an asteroid mission, it will probably be robotic.
It's amazing how much money NASA can spend not going into space.
Re:Send a robot (Score:5, Funny)
It's pointless to send robots into space. All they do is waste processing cycles looking at the stars and mess around with fire extinguishers.
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When it's time for an asteroid mission, it will probably be robotic.
Sadly, you're right. The same fuckers that make that decision are probably the same ones who think that artificial insemination is vastly superior to sex. Objectively they'd be right for the purpose of reproduction, but they're still a bunch of heartless assholes for basing public policy on it.
It's amazing how much money NASA can spend not going into space.
Agreed again - open the damn thing to commercial exploitation and see how fast NASA catches up.
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What is heartless about it? You enjoy watching human beings go into life threatening situations so you can get your rocks off?
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There are many big rocks out there. One of them is on a collision course. When it is discovered, there will follow a final chorus of 'I told you so.'
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When it is discovered, there will follow a final chorus of 'I told you so.'
- from the people who wanted to invest in robotic missions, because if we had done that, then the big rock could have easily been diverted using an advanced robotic mission.
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Some of those rocks are bloody big rocks. Kilometers across. They'd shrug off a nuclear bomb, and it's hard to come up with an engine that can even exert enough delta-m to shift their path significantly.
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You don't have many options. You can try to divert it, but it would need a fairly exotic means of propulsion to shift something with so much mass - if it's a comet you might be able to use a nuclear engine with the comet material itsself as reaction mass, but such a thing would be too complicated to operate reliably. Robotic ice-carving and ice-moving robots? Or you could try to blow it up with nukes, Michael Bay style, reducing the big rock into lots of little rocks that will burn up on reentry or get push
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Basically, we're screwed
No, we're not.
There has only been one significant imapct event in the Earth's history, which is the one that created the moon. The rest have ben relatively minor - a danger for life at the time, but not dangerous to us, with our ability to adapt, tunnel and otherwise mitigate the dangers associated with abrupt climate change. At no point since the moon calved off has the earth been less habitable than mars.
And as time passes the danger of imapct diminishes, since Jupiter is doing a great job sweeping
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I didn't say everyone goes to Mars. Just enough to get a sustainable population of people to sit around looking smug. The vast majority of humans on earth will still die off - a few in the impact event, a lot more in the collapse of agriculture that follows. It'll take centuries to rebuild.
Or do you want the real reason? Because it's there. There's a whole universe out there begging to be explored, and here we are sitting on our rock, stubbornly refusing to move. A forgotten little dot in the middle of nowh
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I didn't say everyone goes to Mars. Just enough to get a sustainable population of people to sit around looking smug. The vast majority of humans on earth will still die off - a few in the impact event, a lot more in the collapse of agriculture that follows. It'll take centuries to rebuild.
Yes. A plan which involves billions of people dying unnecessarily seems, well, not like a good plan. Good thing that nobody would ever agree to such an insane plan.
Or do you want the real reason?
I'd like a real reason, but I'm not holding my breath.
Because it's there.
That's not a reason. That's like saying: "We should build a popsicle skyscraper - because we can!" It's nonsense.
ook at what has come about in previous ages of exploration - social experiments, new models of society. There's no land left on this planet worth settling.
The last real attempt at settlement was Greenland and prior to that 10000 years or more ago. On what are you basing your assertion that this was an a time of social expansion (more
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The settling of the Americas counts. There was the small issue of first emptying them of their former occupants, but that aside it had quite an impact. We're still telling (rather romanticised) stories about it. It did foster some social and political revolution.
In the event of a very large rock heading our way, there isn't much to do about it - neither robots nor humans are currently capable of diverting it. One way or another, a lot of people are going to die.
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The settling of the Americas counts.
Best estimates put this at 15000 years ago. Again, what evidence is there that this triggered a cultural evolution?
In the event of a very large rock heading our way, there isn't much to do about it - neither robots nor humans are currently capable of diverting it. One way or another, a lot of people are going to die.
As I already pointed out, even at the moment of impact, the Earth will be more habitable than Mars is. And Mars is more hospitable than, say Mercury, or Neptune, or the moons around Jupiter. In other words - at the exact moment that the asteroid hits, the earth will still be a nicer place than anywhere else in the Solar System.
If you want to go into space, that's fine, you and your mates a
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I was referring to the more recent settling by Europeans, thus the comment about "first emptying them of their former occupants."
It's not like star trek. Robots are even less like star trek.
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Best estimates put this at 15000 years ago. Again, what evidence is there that this triggered a cultural evolution?
I was referring to the more recent settling by Europeans, thus the comment about "first emptying them of their former occupants."
Then it could hardly be considered "settlement". We might more accurately call it "annexation", "genocide" (in the south), "real estate fraud", "failure to comply with treaties", amongst other things. And none of those things is at all like constructing a habitat for humans in space. For one thing, there were humans there already, and air, and gravity, and soil, and game, and reasonable levels of radiation. The Europeans who travelled to America did so on the understanding that there was lot's of free stuff
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If you ignore the genocide issue, it was still a settlement. People came to claim land, at great personal risk. Some of them came seeking material wealth. A few came for more abstract reasons, settling on a religious mission or to escape conflict back in Europe. In their isolation, there was a cultural change - the society that emerged had different values from the old, far more individualistic and anti-authoritarian, culminating in the American Revolution.
Sure it does. Some people still find the old sci-fi
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If you ignore the genocide issue, it was still a settlement.
Genocide isn't something that people tend to ignore.
Some people still find the old sci-fi dreams inspirational.
Some people find santa claus inspirational. That doesn't mean we should spend bales of money looking for santa claus.
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You kidding? I'd love to go myself - you see, some of us actually want to know what's out there, and to see it first-hand.
I meant "heartless" in the vein that they have no heart for it.
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What is heartless about it? You enjoy watching human beings go into life threatening situations so you can get your rocks off?
Not all human beings have been turned into sheep yet.
Some people are actually still willing to risk their lives to advance science or just to do something cool.
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Hey, it's the Anti-Space-Nutter Nutter. Haven't seen you around for a while. How've you been?
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If you look at the history of NEEMO missions, many have a robotic component. They endeavored to study issues involved with teleoperation from Houston, ways the robots could be used to assist the aquanauts, and how they could help mission control or aquanauts in the habitat interact with and improve the safety of astronauts on the outside of the habitat. They've used various flavors of crawlers and ROVs over the years to do so. The communications delay affects the robots, as well.
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Indeed, a giant plunge for mankind.
NASA, as I said before, is a PR Agency. They hang out around Washington too much.
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+1. Astronauts are obsolete technology, get over it. People may soon become obsolete for many other tasks as well.
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If a robot does it, who gets to claim the credit?
Especially important when the objective is to mine billions of dollars of natural resources out of an asteroid...
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When it's time for an asteroid mission, it will probably be robotic.
ARM is primarily a robotic sample-return mission. The intent is to send a robotic system to intercept and literally bag a small, 5-7m, NEO asteroid, then using ion drive bring it almost all the way back to Earth.
Only the actual sampling will be performed by humans, through slits in the bag with a pick'n'reach tool. Hence in order to create a destination for SLS/Orion that is within the system's incredibly limited capability, the asteroid will be returned to the highest orbit that the SLS/Orion system can re
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Send Bruce Willis.
He's already trained and isn't doing us any good here on earth anyway.
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Came for the Armageddon reference; left satisfied.
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You're welcome! I actually came here expecting the most obvious joke to already be made, but nope. I guess if you really want something, you have to do it yourself :)
simulate high-latency communciations? (Score:5, Funny)
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I would have modded him, but my last mod points expired in march 2017. He should have posted his comment a few years earlier.
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We can have a technician rendezvous with you... (Score:4, Funny)
Useless Internet (Score:1)
Who's going to watch porn when you're in closed quarters and with NASA monitoring what you watch?
Serious question though, sex is a physical need, how is this addressed for astronauts?
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Give the physiologic changes that microgravity brings, I'd be surprised if sex was even possible without some engineering and pharmaceutical assistance...
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So what you're saying is, they're screwed.
Re: Useless Internet (Score:2)
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I don't see why erection wouldn't be possible - it works perfectly well when lying down under one gravity. You'd just need to hold on, or put one of those sleeping bags to another use to avoid drifting apart and have something to thrust against.
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sex is a physical need, how is this addressed for astronauts?
First, I'm afraid I can personally guarantee you that sex is NOT actually a physical need. Second, they're already astronauts, for heaven's sake! Do their sex lives really need enhancement? Fighter pilots and astronauts impress girls. Videogame programmers impress geeks. What was I thinking, damnit?
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It's not strictly speaking a need, but it has a psychological effect. No-sex often makes for unhappy people. Even those without a partner tend to masturbate.
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Sigh... whoosh? Apparently, I also made a wise choice in becoming a programmer rather than an entertainer of any sort.
Re: Useless Internet (Score:2)
Just like the NSA here.
More "pretend" than "simulation" (Score:3)
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Having spent many hours in trainers and simulators of varying levels of fidelity courtesy of Uncle Sam's Canoe Club - trust me, a low fidelity simulator is much better than none at all. You can still learn quite a bit.
10 min xmit/rcv delay? (Score:2)
10 light minutes? (Score:3)
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I didn't know the moon was millions of kilometers away? By lunar orbit, do they mean some other planet's moon?
That has to be a mistake. Perhaps they meant 10 seconds? Even that seems pretty long for a lunar orbit - I think EME is only 2 seconds.
10 minutes would be more like Mars I think (round-trip).
Summary over-summarizes. TFA clarifies the 10 min (Score:2)
"Space Brothers" NEEMO episodes (Score:3)
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When did NASA get a man rated bird? (Score:1)
Apophis (Score:1)
I think they're training for the very real chance that we'll get hit by Apophis in 2036.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophi... [nasa.gov]
From Firsthand experience (Score:3, Informative)
I worked at the Saturation Diving Facility (Aquarius) during a handful of NEEMO missions, and noted that in addition to the 'stated' mission plan here, NEEMO missions carry a great deal additional impact.
Every Astronaut that did a stint at the ISS /after/ a NEEMO mission has described it as the closest analog to the station possible on the planet - the environment is hostile, the conditions and plans are in upheaval, and mission plans are designed to shake down astronaut candidates. Scott Carpenter was a participant in the SeaLab project - the world's first large scale scientific saturation diving project in Panama City in the early 60's, and attested loudly that living under the sea was by far more difficult than living in space. And, the depths they were at, help was a /long/ way away..
Outreach is also a big objective. Astronaut candidates spend a lot of time doing telepresence with elementary schools, colleges, etc. One remarkable one I was around for was a threeway between the guys up in the space station, the team in Aquarius, and various elementary schools. We kept the connection up to let the ISS guys drive some ROVs on the seafloor over ip, which was fun and resulted in some superb procedure refinements for Aquarius and for the ISS.
Living in Aquarius is challenging. Getting materials from home takes a few hours - and there's siginificant limitations to what can be brought down 'dry'. Getting the team to the surface takes 17 hours of decompression in the event of an incident - so the team has tremendous pressure to 'fix it yourself'. The facility is small, loud, uncomfortable, crowded, and needs continuous adjustment to maintain life support. The vistas are breathtaking, and the work intense. The reality of these matters carry a massive impact to the psychology of the candidates infinitely more than putting them in a big can down the hall in the surface. ;]
And, running Aquarius is cheap compared to other aspects of Astronaut candidate training and other research! When I worked there, it was around $15k day.