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Bolden Op-Ed on Asteroid Mission

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
July 10, 2013
Filed under ,

The asteroid mission: Why we choose to go, The Hill
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?” — John F. Kennedy
Fifty-one years ago, a young president asked a question that cut to the heart of the American explorer spirit. For me, NASA’s vision statement says it all. Why do we choose to go? To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind.
NASA astronauts, from the original Mercury 7 to our newest class of eight — 4 men and 4 women — have embodied that vision. They have been on the front lines of service to humanity in myriad ways and have lived lives of exploration and adventure.
It is hard to imagine anything more beneficial to humankind than protecting our planet from a dangerous asteroid that could strike Earth with devastating force, something we don’t currently have the ability to do. In addition to developing technologies that will aid in our planning for the first human journey to Mars, an asteroid mission will help us learn more about how to prevent an impact from one of these mysterious objects.

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

35 responses to “Bolden Op-Ed on Asteroid Mission”

  1. Rich_Palermo says:
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    I am normally favorably disposed to this administration but, good gravy, this is wretched apologetics.

    • rb1957 says:
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      agreed .. “good gravy”
      how would “fetch and retrieve” help prevent future (improbable) impact events ? ok, we’d learn something about that particular asteroid (or “mysterious object” … good grief !) but are asteroids similar (very?) in construction ?? probably not, so how’d knowing something about this one help with the others ??
      a long term lunar colony would help lay the foundations for future Mars missions … technically and politically.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Locating precisely, approaching, grappling, working on, moving, stopping, and imposing station-keeping are all capabilities with applicability to many future programs and industries in space. We must not fall into the habit of evaluating things strictly with respect to their applicability to updated Apollo-type HSF missions or on-ground base building. When we finally reach the point where space activities pay for themselves it’ll be because of industial activities, mostly unmanned, involving things like resources and power generation, not HSF programs.

  2. TheBrett says:
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    Ugh, seriously Bolden? If you want to do a dry-run asteroid diversion mission, then send an unmanned probe – they can loiter for years in orbit around an asteroid. A manned mission is precisely the wrong type of mission to send unless you’re literally just going out there for them to take a sample and try to nudge the space rocks, because we don’t have the capability to sit around it for a long time.

    It kills me that this is getting funding when we could be doing more in the short-term that would do much more for manned exploration in the long-term, without certain-to-be-cancelled distant deadlines.

    • Moonliner says:
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      I don’t see an asteroid mission as the most direct path to Mars. I would prefer to see us develop a transportation system that could be built incrementally to make access to the moon and Mars for accessable.
      1. A cheap and reliable system for access to low earth orbit (we’re getting there now with Dragon and other systems).
      2. A heavy lift system (cheaper than SLS).
      3. An equatorial orbit gateway space station launched in segments.
      4. A lunar transporter vehicle capable of traveling between the space station and the moon’s surface.
      5. A lunar base that could ultimately be self sustaining and supply fuel for the transporter.
      Sounds a lot like 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t it? Yeah, that’s what I want to spend my tax dollars on.
      And every step would help develop methods, hardware and technology needed to establish a permanent manned base on Mars.
      Sorry, but the Asteroid mission is not going to get more than 10 seconds at the end of the evening news.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        This makes a lot of sense to me. The unanswered question, however, is: where does this fit in anyone’s list of priorities and what are the prerequisites for it?

    • hikingmike says:
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      I’m pretty sure the capture and relocation of the asteroid is to be unmanned in the proposal.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Manned or unmanned, I would say that the ROI argues for doing the mission.

        • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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          Hi Steve. That’s great! Perhaps you’d like to share your assumptions and calculations for ROI on the mission since no one that I know of has managed to do it yet?

          • Ken Hampton says:
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            I think you vastily underestimate the difficulties we will encounter executing human operations in deep space.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            First off, to be clear, ROI means RETURN on Investment; it doesn’t necessarily mean MONEY Returned on Investment. There is a lot of both science and technology (in the sense of industrial processes and procedures) that has yet to be learned before we can do anything at all with asteroids safely, effectively and efficiently.

            I think we can agree that acquiring and processing off-Earth natural resources for use in space, and perhaps on Earth as well, will be profitable when the time is right. Currently, as you say, no one has managed to do it yet.

            Therefore, it’s fair to say we don’t know for certain how to do it. Put all of these together and you get — If we do one or more asteroid missions for the purpose of learning how to process asteroids, then we’ll have learned a method for acquiring profitable space resources, which is the RETURN on our investment in the currently proposed asteroid mission(s) and any follow-up mission(s).

      • Ken Hampton says:
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        The original proposal was fully robotic. Now, the mission is two parts: the robotic s/c brings the rock back to cis-lunar space and then a piloted s/c goes to it for curation.

  3. Richard Gudnitz says:
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    Why is it wrong to send humans? We are in the business of sending humans to space.

    • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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      Yes? Like when? The U.S. does not have the capability to send humans to space. Only China and Russia currently have that technology and flight hardware.

      • hikingmike says:
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        You didn’t answer the question at all. And I’d say the U.S. has the capability in the broader sense of this discussion. You’re saying not currently having flight hardware means the U.S. doesn’t have the capability so you have narrowed the topic to a more specific area that meets your needs. I’m not sure what you gain by saying that though.

  4. majormajor42 says:
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    Why we go? Because we can’t afford a lander yet so this is the only mission possible without further blowing up the budget. Compared to the cost of an SLS/Orion, which is launching somewhere that year, Apollo 8 type mission, how much more will it cost for this mission? That is why we “choose” to go.

  5. Jim R. says:
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    This mission is not going to happen. Bolden is simply taking one for the team. The asteroid capture idea has little support from the GOP in the House (they want NASA to go back to the Moon)… the House Dem’s do support it… but the GOP and Dem’s are not talking much. It appears Obama could care less about the mission, given his lack of interest lately. How does Bolden convince the House GOP to support this?

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      However, let’s put the time factor into the equation. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2017 and the next Presidential election is in 2016. Also, Congress will have rolled over twice in that time. A lot could change. As a minimum the US will have a differernt President.

      • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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        Seems like the President doesn’t hold much sway in the U.S. anymore.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          I’ve found that if you look over time, from President to President, and issue to issue, that can change quite a bit. I don’t think we can use any one President to predict the actions of his successor.

    • Ken Hampton says:
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      Actually, the WH was and is very firmly behind this mission. It doubt it would have gone forward as the centerpiece of human exploration if it didn’t have the full support of OSTP.

  6. Steve Whitfield says:
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    What makes sense for one type of mission is useless for another type, so we should be qualifying our opinions better. There is one generalization that I think we can make — the first instance of a mission type would probably benefit from human eyes and brains being on site to evaluate events. Tied to this is the idea that, in the future, a first-of type mission will be an extension of the planning phase for the mission type, unlike in the past, where every mission, including the first of a type, was expected to achieve specific results.

    At this point in time I think we need to go back again to the Gemini model of experimenting with new activities, concentrating on trial and error to learn instead of exactly following a preplanned set of rehearsed tasks. The question of manned vs. unmanned needs to be answered on a case by case basis. And above all, we need to stop using the Moon and/or Mars as the absolute yardstick for measuring every program.

    I maintain, still, that in the long run tasks performed in space itself, instead of down another huge gravity well, will be the lion’s share of space activities, both HSF and unmanned, because that’s where the money will be, as opposed to surface bases which will always cost much more to build and operate than they will earn for at least several decades yet to come.

    Before creating any “permanently”-manned bases on the Moon or Mars we need to use the ISS to learn how to live off Earth more reliably and much more economically. Also, when explorers tackled the South Pole, they laid out safety supply caches and shelters along their route on the way in so that in the event of trouble it would never be too far away to get food, shelter, tools and/or medical supplies. We will need an analogous setup for exploring and exploiting the solar system.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      Agree about the need to reduce cost. Supporting a permanent lunar base with ELVs like the SLS would be like maintaining a permanent base at the South Pole with dogsleds. Maybe t could be done, but why? The South Pole base was only practical because of the C-130, a safe, reusable, economical aerospace transportation vehicle.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        To take your point to the next step, the first team to actually get near the pole using dog sleds made two major screw-ups, which cost them dearly. First, they used dogs without first taking the time to learn how to use the dogs, and second, as their trek progressed they actually started eating some of the dogs! And it was actually part of their plan from the start to do so. We can easily imagine analogies to these two mistakes in the pursuit of a lunar base. Let’s hope we learn from history and don’t repeat it.

        • dogstar29 says:
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          Not a mistake, it was part Amundsen’s plan from the start, a multistage dogsled system to minimize weight by using some dogs as food for others. Scott brought both dogs and ponies but the dogs were poorly chosen and the ponies could not tolerate the conditions. Ultimately Scott ate his ponies but was not as well prepared as Amundsen, and ultimately failed to make it back.

          The real parallel with the moon is that two nations raced to the pole in 1912, but no one came back until the 1950’s when they had FAR more advanced technology that finally made it practical.

  7. Tritium3H says:
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    I think this proposed asteroid mission is complete hogwash. If we are seriously going to build a heavy lift launch system (SLS), then we should be looking at taking advantage of it’s capabilities. We should be looking to establish a permanent human presence at a location where bona fide scientific research can be conducted, as well as establishing methods for exploiting resources available in situ.
    The obvious (IMHO) decision is to establish a modest lunar base at the pole…and build from there. The very initial capabilities of the “base” might, for example, allow for the crew to stay on station for perhaps a few weeks, upwards to a month. Then, additional modules can be built, which expands the capability, allowing for longer durations while supporting larger crew.
    Either that, or we swing for the fences, and go for a Mars landing and return.

    • Ken Hampton says:
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      Then you need to write Congress and ask them for the several billion dollars more per year that NASA would need to actually execute a moon mission. The Asteroid Initiative can actually be accomplished within the fiscal constraints of NASA’s budget.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      I see points in your proposal with which I would agree, but unfortunately it won’t come to pass because the terms “modest” and “lunar base” simply don’t go together in NASA land. And I think when you add in “SLS” it gets much worse instead of better.

      When the habits of the various powers are combined we have a situation where nothing affordable is deemed to be desirable as a NASA program. And the sensible program possibilities are quickly made unaffordable so as to prevent them from being acceptable (if I can’t have my pet program, neither is anybody else going to have theirs). The game is rigged such that nobody wins.

  8. Saturn1300 says:
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    I see they are changing SLS-1 to go to where they want to park the asteroid.

  9. dogstar29 says:
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    If our goal is a future in which there will ever be significant numbers of people living, working and vacationing in space, SLS is not part of the solution because it is so expensive it can never carry more than a handful of people into space. More tax dollars will not magically appear. The only way to make BEO human spaceflight feasible and even marginally competitive with robotics for science is to massively reduce the cost of human flight to LEO.

    Should also point out that the “Rice vs Texas” speech was a homage to Rice University. The amazing thing was that Apollo began only 35 years after Lindberg’s flight.

    When addressing Congress Kennedy made clear Apollo was a means to prove to the nonaligned countries the superiority of the American system without the risk of nuclear Armageddon.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      The only way to make BEO human spaceflight feasible and even marginally competitive with robotics for science is to massively reduce the cost of human flight to LEO.

      V4,

      If I may presume, my friend, your sentence above I feel needs a few extra words added for completeness:

      …massively reduce the cost of human flight to LEO, and then, within a reasonable time frame, make LEO facilities the center of off-Earth operations.

      What I’m suggesting is that right now (and for the past few decades) the goal is to get to LEO cheaper. But, ASAP, we should be eliminating the Earth-to-LEO step completely whenever possible and practical. We are wasting 80% or more of our costs on an unnecessary first step every time. This, I feel, applies to all space activities not specifically dedicated to moving people between Earth and space. Government and military space activities aspiring to the same setup will be tricky from a current treaty perspective.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        From the days of von Braun the concept of staging all BEO missions in LEO has been proposed as a way of reducing cost. Reusable vehicles for BEO flight are very different from those needed to reach LEO. Eliminating the stop in LEO makes reusability impossible, and thus makes reducing cost impossible.

  10. Robert Clark says:
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    The reason why NASA is opposed to a Moon mission is based on a false premise: that such would have to be expensive.
    The only thing needed to get a low cost lunar mission smaller is to choose to make your lander and capsule smaller. For instance the Altair lunar lander was three times larger than Apollo. With a 40 years advance in technology since Apollo, we can make a lander smaller not larger.

    Bob Clark