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NASA Makes Plans for Manned Asteroid Mission

space.com — Progress is being made on defining a human mission to an asteroid. Experts at several NASA centers are sketching out a prospective piloted stopover at an asteroid—a trek that could return samples from a targeted space rock as well as honing astronaut proficiency and test needed equipment for other space destinations.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 29, 2006

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  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+39Dude, I watched Armageddon. I know how this will turn out.
  • DeepDoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26I flew 10,000,000 miles and all I saw was a stupid rock.
  • cybortrip, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14yeah seriously a remake of the movie except it will probably cost less to do in real life
  • superguysteve, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11here's a constructive comment... Its not up to you what we post on this site.
  • AlphaPrime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Snakes on an Astroid: The sequel to Armageddon
  • totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Can we send Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck up there? permanently?
  • monergism, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I see a need for more PR, and less science.

    I'd like to see another manned Moon mission. If we could arrange it so people on Earth can see the Moon people, and perhaps a structure/object, that'd be most awesome and would boost our declining intrest in 'experiments'.
  • wolvyne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"If lawmakers give the green light to a next generation Near Earth Object (NEO) search program..."

    You just know they brain stormed for a week to try to come up with an acronym for Neo. What next a Star Wars program?

    /sarcasm
  • dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Comments like that are exactly why short-sighted individuals such as yourself are not in charge of the space program. That, and the fact that you probably work at McDonalds. Where is your spirit of adventure? Exploration? Or does it end at the deep fryer?
  • WildTang3nt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I am tired of these *****' snakes, on this *****' asteroid!
  • maxfact, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6A meritorious idea. At this early stage of our exploration of the solar system we need to accomplish two things: (a) competency and (b) public consensus that this is a worthwhile expenditure. Your suggestion would accomplish both.

    This will be a decades or centuries long endeavor and it will benefit the future to have a solid foundation in every way.
  • EricAnderton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I Respectfully disagree. I think the motivation here is well beyond PR. This should help give the entire space industry (private and otherwise) a huge kick in the pants.

    Not all asteroids are worthless hunks of rock. Many are rich in metals like iron, nickel and *platinum*. Any samples brought back by from asteroids by NASA should help illustrate this.

    Anyone wanting to see more private industry involvement in space should be very excited by this concept. Sure, science is a great reason to go into space, but that doesn't pay the bills for everyone. Everything else (for privatized space exploration) is going to need to have a rather substantial profit margin to support all the R&D needed to get there in the first place. Offworld mining could establish a healthy monitary incentive to get cheap space transportation working, viable and reliable - all well beyond what we have today.
  • falstaff, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"as well as honing astronaut proficiency and test needed equipment for other space destinations."

    For your final exam, you will be landing a $5 billion spacecraft on a spinning chunk of space rock with very little gravity to pull you in and hardly any flat surface area. We've run the numbers, and we're almost certain it can be done. Good luck.
  • CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3indeed. by the way. i moved from california to florida. its clear as day now as to why nasa is a fossil. the work ethic here in florida is TERRIBLE and corruption and cronyism is rampant. now i understand why they actually get things done at JPL out in pasadena and nothing gets done at canaveral. looking forward to moving back home to socal where people actually want to accomplish something. by the way, i saw spaceshipone win the xprize. my hopes for the future of space exploration rest with those guys. ive also worked for northrop grumman where the executive staff referred to spaceshipone as 'an interesting contraption but i wouldnt ride in it'
  • NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you didn't slow it down enough, you'd wipe out 70% of life on this planet.
  • hortagorn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Moon is closer, requiring less energy to get too. It, too, is rich in resources...possibly including water.

    The asteroid mission is still a good idea...it just seems like we're doing this out of sequence. Learn to crawl, then walk, then run. Perfecting working on the moon seems a more reasonable next step.
  • Smuikas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No one can escape our quad laser. Its bullet is enormous.
  • zephc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1process those ***** into a Niven Ring!
  • deepdiggdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1NASA's new mission. Get NEO funding. Find a rock that MIGHT hit earth. Collect billions for decades to try stop the rock.
    N ot
    A bout
    S cience
    A dministration
  • Smuikas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How feasible is it to haul a largish asteroid into one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points?

    An asteroid the size of say, Manhattan?

    Hollow out the inside into corridors and rooms. Add airlocks. A small pebble-bed (or similar) reactor, so as not to have huge solar sails to power the thing. The perfect space station - at least, with today's technology. If, in fact, someone figured out how to haul an asteroid the size of Manhattan to one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Steve Buscemi FTW!!!!
  • Soldan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1unless NASA gets real funding it is just a joke... where is the progress I would rather see the funds go to private enterprises at this point they might be able to come up with something cheaper and a hell of alot faster..
  • dwb325, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They said the same thing about crossing the atlantic. Exploration and colonization has always been beneficial to society.
  • DiggityDugged, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nasa: how to hijack an asteroid
  • zephc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you get 'em slow enough (taking away most of their kinetic energy), you should be able to land 'em somewhere like devoid of human life, like Antarctica, the Sahara, or Utah, and process them from there.
  • dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Someone likes to say "Lagrange Point".
  • DeepDoo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3You earth people cannot go to the moon. Only we, the native Moon People, are allowed there. Your primitive Earth technology will not work on the moon. You primitives should concern yourselves with other matters and leave Space to our superior Moon People culture. You primitive Earth people still use combustion based rocketry for space travel. Our superior Moon People technology uses quantum Kerney-Fuchida-Cockrin space folding warp jump drives for propulsion. It is vastly superior to your primitive earth technology.
  • humperdeath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There may be a good reason. These 'rocks' travel very far and very fast. If it is possible to 'hitch a ride' on one then we can save fuel for the return trip. Just a thought.
  • shadowvorlon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You are certainly right about the these rocks going very far. While your assertion that they go very fast is also correct, speed is only relevant with regard to the other objects in question. Hitching a ride on an asteroid would be a long ride indeed. Most asteroids orbit the sun and stay between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, so these are not helpful for transportation. The trans-neptunian rocks have huge orbits that take many many years to do a single transit, making it swifter to use chemical or other man-made propulsion. Local asteroids don't really go anywhere so there's little point in hitching a ride on those.

    It's better if we develop the tech to do it on our own.
  • Kenzan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Fast forward 500 years:
    Coca-Cola and McDonald's in space.
    ~And 90 quadrillion tons of space rubbish floating.

  • ampersand2001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1dude. bruce willis already did this. marked as lame.
  • jmcrane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Note: NASA's budget is 0.7% of the total US budget. It only gets attacked because of its high profile of "useless" activity. One should consider the advances we hold dear today because of NASA to justify its current cost. Microprocessors, GPS tracking, fuel efficient air travel, heck, even tempurpedic foam! Its efforts today pave the technological advances that make the world run tomorrow. The disturbing thing is if NASA is undervalued by the public and its funds cut, we will never know what we are missing.

    If you want to save tax payer money, start looking at the cash cows, defense at 19% and healthcare at 21%. When you see misappropriated spending in those two areas, it becomes difficult to nitpick over a paltry 0.7%.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why don't we work on getting a man to the moon first?
  • Pilot85, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is where you rush to find a bathroom.
  • Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@dknighton -- No, I work in IT at a financial advisory firm. I seriously doubt many McDonald's employees are on digg, not there is anything wrong with doing such a job, you elitist pig.

    You are exactly the reason NASA gets away with this wholesale fraud. Yes, a lot of us like to watch Jerry Bruckheimer movies and think about how cool it would be to land people on an asteroid. But tax dollars are a very finite resource, and crazy far-out impractical space exploration is one of the poorest uses of public money. Private enterprise will find a way to fund this research, if and when it is deemed a potential source of revenue. That private enterprise has been so reluctant to pursue such a goal should tell you something about its worthlessness. If you're relying on romantic sci-fi notions to justify spending billions of dollars, you've been conned by a bunch of self-serving bureaucrats.
  • Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2NASA really needs to stop coming up with these ridiculous, impractical attempts to justify its continued existence. It's almost like a contest to see which sci-fi movie they can most blatantly rip-off in an attempt to funnel billions of tax dollars into a calcified, pointless bureaucracy. There are plenty of legitimate projects for NASA in the post-Cold War world. They can provide geological data and survey changing weather patterns. Except these worthy efforts only use up about 10% of their current budget, so they have to propose moon bases and Mars missions and so forth in order to keep the paychecks coming. They really ought to be ashamed of themselves.
  • SpookyET, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1I've seen that movie. IT SUCKED!
  • Ramtech, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5They should send Steven Tyler with them...
  • MindTrigger, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3When? 2083? ***** NASA.
  • ronintetsuro, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3Queue Ben Affleck singing poorly to Liv Tyler in 3... 2...
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5oh, great. another night in tears.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1Plans are like *****, everyone has got one.
  • coldphoenix, on 10/12/2007, -20/+2So cue the excessive amount of Armageddon comments in addition to the ones already said. Seriously, make some constructive comments, not cheesy Armageddon allusions.

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