Planetary Society Supports Asteroid Mission – But …
The Planetary Society Announces Strong Support for NASA’s Asteroid Initiative
“Our concern is that a rigorous and independent cost and technical evaluation of the mission has not yet been completed. We worry that the ARM effort will prove a great deal more expensive than is currently being suggested. As has happened too often in the past, cost overruns lead to budgeting difficulties for years into the future. NASA’s numerous other worthy science and exploration endeavors become difficult to manage and complete. We thus urge NASA as soon as possible to undertake as comprehensive a cost and technical evaluation as is feasible at this early stage in mission definition.”
This needs to be re-posted again. The opinion of scientists that study asteroids…
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/sba…
Though SBAG acknowledges that the Asteroid Redirect
Mission (ARM) is continuing to evolve as the concept development
matures, the current formulation has not resolved the issues detailed in
previous SBAG findings of July, 2013. The objectives, requirements, and
success criteria for the ARM are not clearly defined, including the
relevance to planetary defense. There are substantial issues and
challenges associated with the identification and characterization of
potential targets. Together these combine for considerable schedule and
cost uncertainty and risk for the ARM
… <continues>
—
I.e. over the last year, no substantial improvements to the mission definition have been made.
Planetary defence – Bagging and redirecting an asteroid are a proof of concept for defending the Earth against asteroids by diverting them. TRL 7 for small asteroids and TRL 3 for dangerous ones.
The methods are different; diversion requires a single impulse or continuous thrust be applied to a large, probably rotating body. The most urgent need for planetary defense is a complete survey of near earth objects.
Planetary defence needs both diversion and detection. (See Britain using both fighter planes and radar in the Battle of Britain.)
Bagging an asteroid needs a continuous thrust applied to a probably rotation body to transport it to lunar orbit.
However the vast majority of the ARM cost is in the SLS/Orion mission to lunar orbit.
That cost comes in a different year. If it is too expensive then that part may need changing to say a robot mission.
The Planetary Society’s tepid support for ARM is sad considering their members want Space Advocacy rather than weaseling. I miss Carl Sagan. Think I’ll stick with the National Space Society instead.
I thought about it and i think this announcement is a result of some deal that has been cut.
In the past, Planetary Society has been going out of their way to keep neutral or just slightly critical of SLS/Orion, even when it obviously tried to eat planetary sciences lunch. What they were doing was holding a card – they could either come down hard against SLS in public, and they know they have audience, OR they could go and negotiate. This announcement is the result of finally playing that card.
What i wonder about – was the deal cut with HEOMD or at congressional level, and what did they get in return ?
NSS board member John Strickland has been one of the strongest advocates of cancellation of the SLS/Orion, for which the ARM is the only currently proposed mission.
The robotic portion of the mission is at least reasonable. The biggest question mark is the cost and value of sending a human crew all the way to the moon to study the asteroid superficially when it could as easily be returned to the ISS when it could be studied continuously for years.
I don’t think anyone wants an asteroid to share an orbit with the ISS.
PS should be cautious. One more over promised and underfunded space program and the likelihood of any of us seeing humans on Mars prior to 2050 is vanishingly small. Do you want that? People seem to forget it’s not just the big space programs fumbling the ball that affects follow on programs, its everything else the Government has already spent money on and what it still needs to in the future to keep running. Note that OMB data shows NASA funding has been decreasing, year-over-year, as a percent of the total budget since 1966 – today resting at a pitiful 0.49%.
And people seem to keep missing the second part of the ARM equation. What we learn from ARM wont help us see any more objects if we don’t have the tools in place to look – which is not part of ARM. Statistically, the one that will gets us we will never (or too late) see coming.
I still say the Moon should be our next destination with full permanent manned presence but apparently I’m in the vanishing minority on that. For the asteroid mission, since it’s a flag planting exercise in concept right now, they should at least pick one that has water and demonstrate resource collection.