NASA Selects Ideas For Asteroid Mission It Can't Explain
NASA Selects Top 96 Asteroid Initiative Ideas
“NASA has chosen 96 ideas it regards as most promising from more than 400 submitted in response to its June request for information (RFI) about protecting Earth from asteroids and finding an asteroid humans can explore.”
– Bolden’s Confusing Asteroid Mission Rationale, earlier post
Maybe they’ll figure it out in the many sessions devoted to PR, excuse me, engagement.
It’s early days; I’m willing to give this time to take shape.
It’s late. Risk has been reduced 95% over the last 15 years by discovery. No planet-busters. All that’s left are smaller objects, city and state-busters that are hard to track well enough to plan defensive action against. Even that risk is on the road to being whittled down. Maybe if NASA had gotten into it 10 years ago. The snack trays are picked over and the strippers have left, just lots of confetti all over the place to sweep up.
It’s late!! Risk is reduced 95% over the last 20 years. No planet busters. All that’s left is city and state buster potential, and those unknowns are shrinking too, faster than any planetary defense can be relevant. Hard to even track small ones well enough to send a mission to. Maybe if NASA had gotten into it like this 15 years ago and LED. Now they are late to the party.
It all seems new, as if people just discovered the issue a few months ago. But the snack trays are picked up and the strippers have left, just lots of confetti all over the place to sweep up.
Standing defense against asteroids is absurd. Hang out for a century on the off chance there’s another window-breaking event to agonize over, that anything can be done about anyway? Talked about messed up priorities. Total disconnect from reality. Piglet in search of teat.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but it sounds like denial to me. Even if all of the asteroid belt rocks were 100% known for ever, which they’re certainly not, there are still asteroids from farther out and comets from anywhere and everywhere in the galaxy that could show up for the first time ever tomorrow, all kinds and all sizes.
Neither the Moon nor Mars – the most popular targets for the anti-asteroid people – are going to fall to earth anytime soon. Asteroids have and will cause great destruction on this planet. Seems like a good enough reason to learn all that we can about them, including grabbing one.
“…Asteroid Mission It Can’t Explain”
I suspect this means we are in for a host of videos showing asteroids killing dinosaurs, knowing down Russian trees and breaking windows in Russia. They may even find some other craters. Someone may even estimate the cost of the damage when a meteor strikes.
NASA appears to be using this mission to set up an ongoing planetary defence section that looks out for dangerous asteroids and tries to deflect them.
I will leave how the USA gains international prestige from planetary defence to US politicians, just remind them it has not flown yet.
Yeah, maybe NASA will even fake a few more close calls like the one in Chelyabinsk last winter. See, now you have me falling into this pit of cynical sarcasm along with the rest. Just keep in mind that the dinosaurs did not have a space program…
There are several serious asteroid tracking programs on the go, as well as some programs dedicated solely to defending against them, and they are certainly not all US programs. This is not about prestige; it’s about a real concern. And it’s certainly not a US politician’s game; they’re amongst the hardest to convince and will allocate a little money to the cause only grudgingly. Governments and universities in many countries are taking this seriously.
Currently asteroid tracking is about defence but when the big money comes it will be about prestige.
p.s. Get it right now because problem solvers will fix problems. Where as prestige collectors think a cover up is the solution.
I can’t really respond to that Andrew because I don’t understand what you’re telling me. I don’t see how anyone can hope to generate prestige from an issue that can so easily be ignored, like so many people and countries are currently doing, As for the money aspect, this is something that will only cost money, perhaps serious money. There is no chance of any tangible return on spending that money; it’s a survival issue aimed at preseving lives and property. The only money to be made would be from government contracts for mitigation / protection schemes, and those would go only to serious parties, not pretenders. I can’t see how anyone involved in a cover up can derive any benefit at all, prestige or money.
Steve et al,
OBSERVE-TOUCH-EARLY-OFTEN is the key to understanding these “neighbors” of ours. It is difficult to assess completely, and with confidence, the total value of this mission, whatever the gauge, to the community of communities, including the planetary defense community. Part of what we’ve talked about is the necessity to “engage” a large number of targets and do it as early as possible. The ARM mission gets us “an engagement”. It is a “touch”, albeit “one touch”, and depending on which clock you’re watching, could be considered “early”. I suppose the point to made here is that ARM, if it goes, and if successful, can’t be the “be all, end all” in our understanding and our efforts to understand these targets. We have a tendency to claim victory, take on the “been there done that” attitude. The community of communities have “many question marks”, the strategic knowledge gaps to fill.
Huh?
You’re right, this comment should have come 3 days ago, at the very start of this comment stream.
Steve Whitfield you may not consider prestige important but practically everyone in Congress knows its relevance. On an international scale “My country can move meteors but yours cannot” is something politicians can imply.
Prestige is important in it’s place, but it is not the primary justification for being concerned about the potential danger from asteroids.
Above, you are the one who introduces the idea of prestige (“I will leave how the USA gains international prestige from planetary defence to US politicians, just remind them it has not flown yet..” And you’re the only one here I’ve seen mention it, and it seems to have come into the discussion from nowhere relevant. Your meaning is not clear. Are you saying that the politicians won’t fund it until they can find a way to get prestige out of doing so? What exactly are you trying to say?
Currently there is no national prestige in meteor defence so you are only able to get little money.
I think you’re making a connection where none exists, but I don’t think it’s worth us getting into an argument about. Although I often tend to question the motivations of Congress people, and their counterparts in other countries, they are not basically dumb. I’m sure thay can see the merits of the the arguments for and against funding this and deciding a reasonable estmiation of the danger. After all, they have plenty of advisors and committee speakers to provide them with professional information. Sometimes these things take time because the line-up for money requests is getting longer every day.
I challenge anyone to propose a better combination of scientific exploration and practical application than a mission to manipulate an asteroid into position for study by astronauts. The only missing element is to develop a proper concern for the health and safety of the astronauts, given the vicissitudes of space weather.
Tom, as much as I am a proponent of the Moon, I do see value in this mission, depending on how it is carried out, which is still TBD. Learning how to operate at an asteroid is a valuable skill in the economic development of the solar system. The ISRU value could be extremely high, depending on what type of object is chosen.
However, in a ranking system, the asteroids are the second choice and the only reason that we are doing them is that we are building this big rocket but don’t have the money to build planetary payloads, surface infrastructure, or an overall rational for what we are doing other than Mars. Mars is NOT sustainable without the Moon. No more flags and foot prints.
Dennis, your statements do not seem internally consistent (“only reason we are doing them is…”). But let’s just admit that others may prioritize differently when comparing planetary protection to staking out real estate on the moon. Chelyabinsk was a wake up call that many have heard, perhaps enough to make this priority stick. Even if your only interest is in promoting a space faring civilization, you should recognize that building a starship is going to require us to become adept at finding and using materials that exist in space outside of deep gravitational wells. [Full disclosure: I have no professional interest in an asteroid mission, other my citizenship on planet Earth].
“A truly intelligent species will outlive its home star.” — Todd Brennan
Tom, I agree with your thinking and would add that anything we learn about manipulating asteroids and protecting ourselves from them will not be applicable only to life on Earth. The knowledge, skills and processes will be protection for us wherever people end up living — space stations, the Moon, Lagrange points, Mars, another asteroid, space ships, other moons and planets, or even in a free fall orbit in the middle of nowhere. At some point, we all have to start thinking past the day after tomorrow.
if we want to create a good defence against the asteroids then only one thing can come to my mind “create a spider web” ill take it from nature create a web using the gravity of moons and planets and the sun…spiders act as radars using sound waves to detect moving objects i figure 3 between the distance of each planet from one another and for removing them i would use magnets to push them out of earths path using the friction between the 2 to my advantage but of course for a plan like this being on such a large scale would take all nations to put money aside and everything as well as the work be done for free basicly bring the world together….good luck with that lol