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Exploration

NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission Gets Wimpier

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 25, 2015
Filed under , ,
NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission Gets Wimpier

NASA Chooses Asteroid Mission Plan
“NASA Wednesday announced more details in its plan for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which in the mid-2020s will test a number of new capabilities needed for future human expeditions to deep space, including to Mars. NASA also announced it has increased the detection of near-Earth Asteroids by 65 percent since launching its asteroid initiative three years ago. For ARM, a robotic spacecraft will capture a boulder from the surface of a near-Earth asteroid and move it into a stable orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts, all in support of advancing the nation’s journey to Mars.”
Keith’s note: The original idea would have had astronauts actually go into deep space and visit an asteroid as part of a plan for longer duration spaceflight from Earth. There are some real operational applications to a mission like that. Then the policy wonks got involved and NASA started to lower expectations because they could not figure out how to do the engineering behind the press release images. NASA has now wimped out completely and decided to only grab a small boulder from an asteroid that a robot has already brought to lunar orbit as part of a pale Apollo reboot. Why even use humans at all for this? If NASA wants the boulder that bad why not just bring it back to Earth orbit where it would be much easier to access and study?
NASA wants everyone to think that this is actually part of the things they need to do to send humans to Mars. And they make sure you know that when they issue press releases with titles such as NASA Announces Next Steps on Journey to Mars: Progress on Asteroid Initiative.” Yet there is no budget identified for any of this. Congress is formally against it. The planetary science community is either against it or has been blackmailed into tepid support. And the White House wonks who pushed this idea on NASA will be gone very soon – and with them goes their support. NASA doesn’t ever address any of that, do they?
If NASA wants to send humans on a “journey” to Mars then it needs to aim at Mars – not at the lowest hanging fruit on their capability matrix – fruit that they keep lowering.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

36 responses to “NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission Gets Wimpier”

  1. Joe Denison says:
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    I am definitely not a fan of ARM (at least the human part of it. I do think there is a good argument for the robotic part in terms of SEP and “plucking” demonstrations).

    ARM was dreamed up by the policy wonks in the White House. It wasn’t because NASA, “could not figure out how to do the engineering behind the press release images.” It was in order to keep the Presidents promise of a “journey” to an asteroid by 2025 without giving NASA the proper resources to go.

    In my view this is all on the White House, not NASA. NASA actually has put forth some really good ideas for cis-lunar exploration but the White House keeps shooting them down. One can only hope that the next President is more pro-space exploration.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Congress shares some blame. The mandate to keep working on SLS is sucking up billions of dollars every year. I’d rather see them do a “commercial heavy to LEO” contract like commercial cargo to ISS and commercial crew to ISS. This is an area that needs competition.

      Such a plan would free up NASA to invest in developing technologies for reusable in space transportation technologies like fuel depots and reusable tugs and landers. We can’t afford another deep space program that plans on throwing away all of the expensive hardware on each and every misssion.

      • Joe Denison says:
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        SLS/Orion is “sucking up” a bit more than half what the space shuttle did. At least what is being spent on SLS can be used to great effect. Although I would have preferred a more open competition for an HLV at the beginning we are too far down the road now to re-compete SLS.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          You are falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy.

          • Yale S says:
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            SUNK-COST FALLACY
            (also known as: concorde fallacy)
            Description: Reasoning that further investment is warranted on the fact that the resources already invested will be lost otherwise, not taking into consideration the overall losses involved in the further investment.

            Logical Form:
            X has already been invested in project Y.
            Z more investment would be needed to complete project Y otherwise X will be lost.
            Therefore, Z is justified.

            Example #1:
            I have already paid a consultant $1000 to look into the pros and cons of starting that new business division. He advised that I shouldn’t move forward with it because it is a declining market. However, if I don’t move forward, that $1000 would have been wasted, so I better move forward anyway.
            Explanation: What this person does not realize is that moving forward will most likely result in the loss of much more time and money. This person is thinking short-term, not long-term, and is simply trying to avoid the loss of the $1000, which is fallacious thinking

            Now, SLS would fall outside of the fallacy if going forward was actually a good idea. However in this case the future funding and effort needs versus the actual “payoff” in planned mission skews strongly to it being throwing good money after bad, thus fitting the fallacy parameter.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            My argument is based on the view that going forward with SLS is a good idea. Given what happened in 2010 it is highly unlikely that the scenario you envision (give all the money to SpaceX and/or hab efforts) will come to pass.

            I am afraid that if we go down the road of canceling the PoR again we will just reset to 2010 and throw away all the effort we have given without gaining anything.The people in Congress aren’t going to abandon their districts. Also Mike Massimino was 100% right when he said that the whiplash of constantly canceled projects takes a great toll on morale.
            I have done the cost analysis several times and an SLS cis-lunar/Mars architecture can work. Over 30 years it will come in around the same as the shuttle but with far more capability. I think that is a deal.

            Even if BFR comes out and works as advertised (which I am cheering for) NASA is either going to need a budget increase or wait until ISS is gone in order to start building habs.

            I guess my point is that if we go down the road of canceling SLS now we gain nothing and could potentially lose our chance to get out of LEO for the foreseeable future. I don’t want that to happen.

          • Yale S says:
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            Thirty years is even longer than the oft-declared “Golden Age Of Unlimited Fusion Power in 20 Years”, which has been 20 years for the last 60 years..
            SpaceX has said in actual words that they are hopeful to have people on Mars by the end of the 2020s.
            And I think a privately held, dictatorially run, quite profitable, aggressive, innovative, ambitious and answering to only its investors, and which has specifically and directly stated that it is going to Mars and going to stay, is a better risk that NASA biz as usual.

          • Paul451 says:
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            More important than “sunk cost” is Joe ignoring the “opportunity cost”.

            What capability do you lose by continuing with SLS/Orion? How could that $3b/yr be better used?

            It’s not enough to say, “Sure it’s wasteful and expensive, but when it’s done it’ll be really useful.” You also have to measure its usefulness against the alternatives now lost by pouring $3b/yr down that drain for 20-30 years.

          • Yale S says:
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            That is exactly at the heart and soul of my problems with SLS/Orion. It simply consumes all before it and prevents alternatives.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            I am also looking at the politics of the situation which you are clearly ignoring. Remember what happened in 2010. Congress (controlled by the Democrats) didn’t go along completely with what the President proposed.

            If SLS/Orion get canceled there is no guarantee that the money is going to flow into your favorite project. So what will end up happening is that we will have no BEO program going forward (or we have to start all over again with a new version of SLS).

            If BFR does come online then yes it will make sense to phase out SLS and I will fully support that. That said just because Musk says they are building an HLV doesn’t mean it will succeed or be much more economical than SLS (although personally I believe they will succeed).

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I’d like to see SpaceX go after NASA and SLS the same way they have gone after ULA– “ours is cheaper!”. Won’t happen.

        • Yale S says:
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          No need to fight.
          They will simply do what they do for the commercial market. Say “we’re here, sign here”.

        • Paul451 says:
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          When BFR is a year away from launch, I’d expect to see a little more direct hostility towards SLS/Orion by SpaceX.

          Doing it now just creates unnecessary enemies.

          SpaceX began attacking ULA directly because of the deal with USAF to pre-emptively lock SpaceX out of USAF launches for a decade. It was a specific response to a specific corruption of the market.

          The current law requires NASA to build a 70 and 130 tonne launcher, which SpaceX isn’t building yet, and therefore there’s no commercial advantage to trash talking SLS/Orion because SpaceX are not currently competing with SLS/Orion. That’s completely different to the situation with ULA.

          Once BFR/MCT are nearing completion, it would be well worth SpaceX loudly contrasting the cost of SLS Block II or a specific SLS-based mission, with the cost of NASA simply buying seats on MCT.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            One thing I admire about Musk is that he seems to only attack something when he has something in his pocket that is better or at least competitive.

            Unlike many of his fanboys he is willing to put in the effort to make a better solution vs. only complaining about things.

    • Yale S says:
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      An unmanned sls/orion moon orbit (maybe) in 2018,
      a manned sls/orion moon orbit in (maybe) 2021, [which will bring us to 1968] and maybe a (maybe) 2024 sls/orion moon orbit with a spacewalk to snag a rock.
      For ~$3bill per year going backwards thru the decade and forwards forever.
      Utter, utter dead waste.

      The Rocket To Nowhere.

      The problem is not WH or congress directly. It is the procurement method. Everything the government buys in high tech is some vast multiple of its real cost for all the known reasons of inefficiency, cost-plus, politics, short-term planning, yadda-yadda-yadda. They spend billions for something that can be done for millions, and take decades rather than years.

      With a fatally doomed procurement method and zero money because of the Bush Catastrophe, pathetic dead-end trips to nowhere is the result. Yeah, we can go to L1 or L2 or some other stunt, but no real infrastructure and cadence can be created from little funds and a horror-show procurement system.

      Thats why I look elsewhere for my choice of futures.

      • Joe Denison says:
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        Well under the plan you seem to be for we will have exactly zero BEO missions thru 2025 even if SpaceX is successful with the BFR. How is that any better?

        SLS/Orion can be used to great effect in cis-lunar space and beyond. We just need the will and resources to use them.

        Also wouldn’t you agree that building a BFR without government funding will force SpaceX to make it more economical? My thought is we use SLS to do the ground work is cis-lunar space (maybe heaving a Skylab II to lunar orbit followed by a lander at some point). Then if BFR comes online we can use it for Mars missions (or a combination of the two if it works better that way). If BFR doesn’t get off the ground then we still have a HLV that can do the job.

        • Yale S says:
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          “SLS/Orion can be used to great effect in cis-lunar space and beyond. We just need the will and resources to use them.”
          (emphasis added)
          Exactly why it won’t “be used to great effect”. It is a black hole of time and money, suppressing rather than promoting space exploration.

          I would love to see SLS/Orion/ATV be economical, effective, and sailing the solar system. However it won’t. 3/4s of my post wasn’t technical issues, it was about the catastrophic funding and production process that is murdering SLS/Orion, NASA, and ULA.

          As to flying BEO, the FH is crew-rated. I suspect (and Musk has said) that they will fly cis-lunar. (He also suggested as an aside that he might land on the Moon as a challenge, but with less emphasis.)

          Of possible note, the Falcon 9, starting in June, will have a +30% performance boost.
          If the Falcon Heavy has that same edge, then it will have the same LEO capability as the SLS Block 1.

          “Also wouldn’t you agree that building a BFR without government funding will force SpaceX to make it more economical? “
          It is being built without gov funding, and on top of being totally reusable, SpaceX is doing it not to be just economical, but to be actually profitable

          Also, the choice of methane going forward is interesting. SpaceX does not reject fuel stations and methane can be passively cooled essentially forever.

          Also, Bigelow specifically is promoting its inflatables for flight BEO and for lunar bases, and has propulsion tugs in its plans.
          They are targeting the first BA330 for 2017/2018, just as soon as it becomes crewable. And they intend it to be profitable.

          SLS/Orion is simply a sad dead-end. It will eat irreplaceable time and money and then fade to black after the 2021/22 first human mission.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            Bigelow modules, Cygnus, and Jupiter/Exoliner are very promising for use as hab modules. If I was in charge I would add money for a competitive hab module development program (fixed-price) which would help develop a new commercial LEO station while also developing habs for BEO missions.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          How is that better? Because it is not costing the taxpayer as much?

          • Joe Denison says:
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            So you don’t want to go anywhere BEO in the next 10-15 years? The taxpayers supported shuttle level funding for 30 years. I am pretty sure SLS will get the same support.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Yes I do. As I have stated for the last decade. Stay out of gravity wells. Do road trips to different points in space like lagrange points for Earth, Mars, Venus and moons. Plus orbital trips. Work on developing Gas n’ Go, space based, reusable vehicles. THAT is what I want NASA working on… not launching rockets, that is a job for the commerical sector.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            This is what NASA should be developing .. nuclear propulsion and power. Modular designs,fuel depots etc…. As was laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration.

          • Joe Denison says:
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            I see what you are saying Vlad. I am not married to a particular architecture. I don’t care if its SLS, BFR, Nautilus-X, Skylab II or whatever as long as we get back out there.

            That said I think that at the moment SLS/Orion are our best chance to go beyond low earth orbit in a near term time frame.

        • Paul451 says:
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          Well under the plan you seem to be for we will have exactly zero BEO missions thru 2025

          The current program has two “BEO” missions planned. 1) An unmanned flyby demonstrator. And 2) a manned flyby demonstrator, which, if yet more money is thrown at it, may be able to retrieve a few dozen kilograms of samples from a boulder pre-placed in RLO by a robot mission (because SLS/Orion aren’t capable of going further.)

          In other words, it has “exactly zero BEO missions thru 2025”. SLS Block II (SLS-130) isn’t scheduled to be delivered until 2032 on the current schedule, which is already slipping. And no proper BEO missions are possible with SLS/Orion until the SLS-130 is available. You’re looking at late 2030’s before a real BEO mission becomes possible.

          Well under the plan you seem to be for we will have exactly zero BEO missions thru 2025 even if SpaceX is successful with the BFR. How is that any better?

          Because it frees up $3b/yr for alternative programs.

          New engine program? A new modular, multi-vehicle-adaptable, refuelable BEO upperstage? A commercial HLV contest? A commercial space-station contest, allowing NASA to bring forward the end of ISS, freeing up another $3b/yr, without losing that capability? (Also paving the way towards BEO stations and long-duration BEO ships.) Some work on depots? (Because if SpaceX cracks reusability, fuel launches on end-of-life Falcon9’s will be virtually free.) Hell, even a proper asteroid sample return mission, bringing samples back to Earth without the phony SLS/Orion mission.

          All without increasing NASA’s funding.

          SLS/Orion can be used to great effect in cis-lunar space and beyond. We just need the will and resources to use them.

          You are making the common mistake that most apologists for SLS make, looking at the paper-capability of SLS and ignoring the time and cost.

          Yes, being able to launch 70/130 tonnes into LEO on an 8m diameter launch vehicle would allow a vast array of possible missions. But SLS doesn’t. That’s because SLS is not a 70/130 tonne launcher, it’s an expensive 70/130 tonne launcher. That difference is huge. The cost of SLS prevents you from developing any of those possible missions.

          If aliens came down tomorrow and delivered SLS-70, SLS-130, and Orion completed and ready, NASA would be struggling to be able to afford to merely use them. It would have to go to Congress for a budget increase in order to operate them and develop payloads/missions. (Or rather, to pay to preserve the capacity while not operating them, waiting for the development of mission hardware.)

          But, sans aliens, that is the position NASA will be in, sometime in the mid- to late-2030’s. We have to wait another 20 to 25 years until NASA can be blessed with the gift of a fully functional launch system it can’t afford to operate.

          But god forbid we should “throw away all the effort we have given without gaining anything”

          • Joe Denison says:
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            Again there is no guarantee that the money will go to your favorite project.

            A heck of a lot of BEO missions can be done with SLS Block IB. Cis-lunar missions, Lagrange point missions, science missions like Europa Clipper.

            NASA is already working on a BEO upper stage for Block IB.

            NASA has already agreed to ISS thru 2024. No changing that now.

            If I was in charge I would add money for a competitive hab module development program which would help develop a new commercial LEO station while also developing habs for BEO missions.
            I would like to see some work done on depots but given the direction both NASA and SpaceX are going I don’t know if depots are the best way to go.

            Also NASA’s budget will have to be increased in order to do anything long term because of inflation. Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world of unicorns where there is funding for everyone’s projects.

            The idea that SLS/Orion is too expensive is just untrue. Even assuming $3 Billion a year fixed costs SLS/Orion would cost about as much as the shuttle for 1-2 launches a year. That is exactly what NASA is planning for.

            Until BFR enters SLS is the only BEO option and I don’t want to see it get thrown away because it isn’t the “perfect system.”

          • Paul451 says:
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            Again there is no guarantee that the money will go to your favorite project.

            And that’s your mistake. I didn’t offer “my favourite project”, I just gave a list of the many things that could be funded if SLS/Orion went away. Things that would actually enable future missions. I don’t care which mix of technologies they pick, as long as the zombie-rocket dies.

            In 2010, Obama wanted Orion-lite, a new HLV engine family, accelerating CCDev, and a bunch of other enabling technologies. Different to my list, but it would have been fine. Some would like a L1/L2 station, and a lunar-COTS program, including a refuelable EML2 tug. That’s fine too. Jeff Greason wants “spiral” development. And I’d be okay with that.

            Just stop building unaffordable systems.

            A heck of a lot of BEO missions can be done with SLS Block IB.

            {sigh} No it can’t. SLS can not be used for practical BEO missions because SLS prevents funding of those missions. Its very existence consumes so much funding that any actual missions are impossible.

            The path that NASA is on prevents the agency from progressing for at least two decades, in addition to the decade already wasted. Almost anything else would be better.

            SLS is the only BEO option

            No it isn’t. It’s the worst option. We’ve known that since Griffin forced his idiotic Ares plan onto NASA.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      Why doesn’t Congress just pencil it in? They did for SLS against what the Whitehouse wanted. Does congress even have enough votes for any other options?

  2. AstroInMI says:
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    I don’t like either Option, but couldn’t it at least be argued this is more in line with exploration as opposed to a big Hefty bag?

  3. Gerald Cecil says:
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    I predict that the next descope will drop loiter time from the 24-25 days mentioned to the minimum required to wield a hammer. Then they can enjoy the view and dream about going somewhere worthwhile. And uplink plenty of motivating ‘killer asteroid’ sci-fi in the long hours until it’s time to bring their pebble home in triumph. What a travesty.

  4. speragine says:
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    Hopefully all this ARM crap goes away when this President finally GOES AWAY.

  5. hikingmike says:
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    Keith’s caption is a good argument for robotic exploration and infrastructure in my opinion. We, and NASA, should progress robotics in space to do the preparation for humans on whatever body we are going to. They could do exploration, ISRU, and build stuff like habitats for humans. Long term incremental development. NASA spurred on the nascent computer industry, we all benefited and NASA accomplished its missions in the 60s. They can do the same for robotics (with a bit less money). They are cheaper to send up, no big deal if they break (unlike humans), build each new one better, and eventually you’ll have something accomplished on the surface. Humans can do it in less tries surely, but some equipment needs are the same and if we go robotics, we’ll end up with vastly more capable robotics which is a huge gain.

  6. Spacenut says:
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    Oh dear, just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, this just isn’t inspiring at all, Nasa seems intent on trying to convince people via glossy graphics and grand words that they are making a silk purse out of an ever ropier sow’s ear when the truth is they are like a floundering fish in an ever drier waterhole, going absolutely nowhere. Of course part of the blame lies fairly and squarely at the door of politicians with their personal agendas that have absolutely nothing to do with pursuing a viable and inspiring space program but Nasa really does seem to think that if they sit there long enough ramming various bits of jigsaw puzzle together willy nilly they might eventually get something that resembles a picture and that is just a recipe for a disastrous, disintegrating space program,

  7. TheBrett says:
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    I’m happy that it’s at least a near-future timeline (2020), even if it’s something that ought to be done by robots entirely. And it will be pretty cool if they can bring it back to Earth for study.

  8. Tim Blaxland says:
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    How big is a boulder? How long is a piece of string?

  9. LPHartswick says:
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    I agree with Keith. I can’t believe I said that! This is just an exercise to see how small we can make our expectations. We need to go back to the moon, land there, conduct additional scientific exploration, and research into insitu resource utilization, while learning to live and work outside of the magnetosphere. That’s more expensive, I know, how shocking, but it would be a worthwhile endeavor and one that would put us on the road to an eventual expiration of Mars.