Update on NASA's Asteroid Boulder Retrieval Mission
NASA Calls for American Industry Ideas on ARM Spacecraft Development, NASA
“NASA’s ARRM is being formulated to perform a number of technology demonstrations needed for the agency’s journey to Mars, including the use of a 20-fold improvement in state-of-the-art deep space solar electric propulsion capability to move and maneuver multi-ton objects. The objective of the robotic segment of ARM is to acquire a multi-ton boulder from a large asteroid and redirect it to a crew-accessible orbit around our moon, setting the stage for future integrated crewed and robotic vehicle operations in deep space.”
NASA Virtual Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission Community Update
“NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission and the robotic component of the overall mission will be the topic of an online Adobe Connect community update on Friday, Oct. 23 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT. During the update, NASA leaders will share recent developments for the Asteroid Redirect Mission, including the recent spacecraft design study solicitation and the selection of the mission’s Formulation Assessment and Support Team members.”
Conceptual Studies for the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) Spacecraft
Orion Mission Evolution
1. Send humans to Moon
2. Not enough money, so postpone mission and send humans to Mars
3. No way to land on Mars, so send humans to an asteroid
4. Orion can only reach Moon, so bring an asteroid to Lunar orbit
5. Asteroid too big, so pick up a sample and bring it to Lunar orbit
The obvious next step would be to bypass the Moon and bring the samples directly to Earth as did Hyabusa. Maybe from Phobos. That would still provide a reasonable application for SEP.
It really would, but since they’re going to do the EM-3 mission anyways (we hope), they might as well have something to look at up close in orbit around the Moon.
At some point they were seriously proposing operating lunar tele-robots from lunar orbit down to surface. To eliminate the excruciating 2-second time lag from a terrestrial controlled robot.
Since robots are operated at distances far beyond human exploration, it would be more productive to invest in autonomous robots that could be sent to any planet and operate independently with occasional general instructions from Earth rather then sending humans almost all the way just to steer each rover directly.
“The obvious next step would be to bypass the Moon and bring the samples directly to Earth“
Except that the fundamental purpose of ARM has always been to create a mission for the lander-less cis-lunar Orion.
Dang! I knew I was forgetting something!
-2. Use old technology entirely supported by the USG
-1. No funding of alternative concepts (e.g. CCP)
0. Ignore VSE objectives to reach multiple destinations
“Keeping the SLS/Orion contractor army standing will be hugely expensive for a limited mission rate. In the end, this becomes a matter of opinion.”
NASA has presented options to perform the same mission sets for ~$57B cheaper than SLS/Orion. This is not an opinion. Taking a poll only confirms how many folks do not know facts like 1+1=2 or that humans do not cause GW.
“what exactly is this next generation LV?” capsule?
A few requirements: The goal is reuse, especially the first stage. Solids are expendable, create safety and performance issues with crew, and increase the costs to certify different configurations. Consolidate product lines to reduce costs. LH2’s high ISP suits NASA’s BEO mission (e.g. ACES).
Easy solution:
0 Single and tricore configuration (Delta or Falcon)
0 Multiple engines (say 5, not 2) on the first stage
0 LH2 upper stage, design intent of reuse
0 no solids
Capsules:
0 Russia + One CCP
ARM/ AR BM : Develop the vehicles and habitats required to travel BEO to meet the the decades old intent of visiting an asteroid as stepping stone to Mars. Cycle EP to return from asteroid or Mars or Phobos to L2.
Uh-oh. It looks like a number of groups within the agency – and outside of it – have fixated on the EM-3/ARRM mission as the Only Train Leaving Town (to the Moon), so now they’re all trying to get their favored projects stuffed on to it. I sure hope this doesn’t increase the complexity of the mission and result in further delays and expense!
Man, it is sad to think that barring the end of ISS or a sudden surge in NASA funding, there’s more or less nothing for SLS to do after EM-3. No lunar lander, no deep space habitat (maybe they’re hoping Bigelow will figure something out), nothing.
Dont you know? Technology development is always done best in one big hail mary shot, cram everything onto the single train that is leaving. It worked so well for many past projects like X-33
Well the ISS will end in 2024, so the money will be there after that. I mean does anyone actually expect when the SLS is launching and Astronauts go into orbit around the Moon on EM-2 that Congress is ever going to continue funding a parallel manned space program, on a 25 year old space station with some components that will be over 30 years old at that point? There is not a chance. They aren’t going to put money towards “yesterday’s destination” once “tomorrow’s opens up”, so to speak. Low earth orbit and the ISS will look like old news.
As for where Orion will go after EM-3… well the weirdest complaint about the SLS, the one I do not get, and to be blunt, I think it’s ridiculous, dishonest and unfair, is the demand that folks have that every item on the agenda through 2030 be planned and paid for… what… 12-15 years before launch? It’s so dishonest and cheap. Really. It’s this new metric that the SLS is a road to nowhere just because there isn’t a carved-in-stone plan or money allocated, in the year 2015, for it’s 2027 or 2028 missions. The Space Shuttle was not planning for exactly what it needed to do in 1997, in 1982 besides general “Space Station stuff”. I don’t think there is a program in government or anywhere else already having their ducks in a row for a 15 year horizon. The closest analog would be the Navy 30 year ship building plan, which was turned upside down a decade ago, when the Zumwalt-class was abandoned for a Burke-restart. Go back a decade and compare it to today, and the 30 year plan looks worse in some areas, better in others. But it was way off. That’s the best an “Agency” with a $15 billion a year ship building budget can do. NASA? With it’s more limited resources? Sure it can have a vision for 15 years out. But saying that every waypoint on the “Journey to Mars” needs to be sorted and funded in 2015? No amount of money would make that happen.
So where will Orion go after EM-3? We can start worrying about that around 2020 and we can nail it down a couple years after that since “EM-4” would be in 2027 or 2028. If it’s a habitat in lunar orbit or a jaunt to a Near Earth Asteroid, it’ll have 6-8 at that point, to be detailed and funded.
It’s simply economics and excess launch capacity/ capsules. Other options are cheaper. It’s ~3B/yr to retain SLS/Orion, while the DOD will retain two non sole source LVs that are underutilized. Add two LEO capsules to be ISS certified by 2018 on DOD launchers, only to be dropped in 2024! Today, ~1B provides launch costs for a lunar sortie every year or 2-3 L2 flights/year. With depots, 3B provides sufficient mass for at least a Mars mission every two years at today’s prices (Agree, still no hardware).
Today’s launch costs, however, can be significantly reduced with reuse + increased flight rate–no such option with SLS/Orion. Yes, SLS ‘may reach 500M per launch’, but if its *not* launched there is no rebate. At the end of 2024, then even more $ from ISS to R&D and other space assets. Without ISS $, at least a $B or so is shifted to space hardware from SLS/Orion.
Stick with Russia and Falcon for ISS, and shift dollars to the next fleet of consolidated, cost effective LVs plus next gen R&D.
With all due respect this sounds all like a big “I hope next generation LV are cheaper”. Let’s examine the liklihood of that.
So we have SpaceX, which is going to do what they are doing anyway, independent of government funding. If Falcon gives way to something cheaper in a decade, fantastic! That’s happening regardless of the SLS or not.
So the next option is ULA. We’ve seen their vision of the next generation launch vehicle. Vulcan isnt exactly an inspired design. When it launches, it will be years behind sophistication in terms of what SpaceX is launching today. ULA sat on it’s hands while SpaceX made ever better engines, then better rockets. And now they’re what… like 10 years behind on the landing game?
Lockheed and Boeing could do it on a government contract, but they’re already doing that and that beast is the SLS.
We could turn to Orbital, but they just cannibalize ICBMs and Russian engines.
We know what Blue Origin and Aerojet’s vision for a “next generation” engine looks like. Those are happening anyway.
Which leads me to my point: what exactly is this next generation LV? Who builds it and how is it at all different from what all the likely manifacturers have very clearly said is their vision of the future of their businesses? Is it basically a Falcon Heavy clone with three parts that land? Because we’re getting that anyway. That’ll be available, for the government to purchase if it wants. And if anyone else starts today, it’ll be late next decade before they can do what SpaceX does already.
Yes. Keeping the SLS/Orion contractor army standing will be hugely expensive for a limited mission rate. In the end, this becomes a matter of opinion. It becomes a question of “what do you want out of your space program”. If you’re content with Low Earth Orbit Space Station stuff, this is hugely wasteful. I on the other hand would say your annual lunar sortie (at the very least) is well worth cost comparatively. Not my first choice of destinations, but anywhere is better than going to LEO and pretending it’s progress.
Thank you for this argument. I find myself nodding as I read your view, but in the end feeling somewhat hollow. I’m not exactly sure why.
I want my government to HELP settle the moon and Mars. NOT build Launch vehicles.
Okay then. So who is going to build your launch vehicles. You have three options.
You have SpaceX, which is doing everything right. But that’s just one company.
You have ULA, which like a good monopolist, spent most of the past 10 years doing absolutely nothing to improve on what they already have, pushing a competitor to a Falcon 9 that can land deep into NEXT decade. Has their been a company since Microsoft, who sat on Internet Explorer’s market dominance for years while the upstarts Firefox and Chrome methodically ate it’s lunch, that has deserved it’s fall from grace more richly? You want these people building your rocket.
And then we have Orbital ATK. Nice Russian Engines and surplus Peacekeeper MXs they got there.
This is not exactly inspiring stuff. In terms of rocket building companies, you got SpaceX, which is going to be doing everything you want anyway, ULA – the Microsoft of the rocket world, and Orbital, which is the incarnation of everything wrong most mid-2000s commercial space ventures (government hardware adoption).
I mean sure in a perfect world… yes absolutely you’re right. The one we’re living in though? Can we please deal with the Space Industry we actually have rather than the one we wish we had? Or we still crossing our fingers that Blue Origin won’t fall even more years behind? Or are we still hoping that Bigelow has some kind of commercial space station, even though they haven’t put anything into orbit since just after iPhone 1 debuted way back in Summer 2007. It will be 9 years between them actually doing stuff. That’s a really healthy commercial company that we should take seriously.
Commercial Space means SpaceX, Orbital and ULA, the last of which barely qualifies given the history and purpose of Delta IV and Atlas V. And again, we know all their visions of where they want to go with their technology through 2030. We know SpaceX is going to keep extending Falcon 9 and Merlin engine tech until eventually replacing it, maybe with Raptor. We know Orbital wants to leverage it’s ATK acquisition (and folks here just loveeeee solids, right?). And we know what ULA wants to do (Vulcan, which is still far more expensive than the already flying Falcon 9).
So again, where is this revolutionary commercial low cost launch vehicle? Who is building it if not these three? Maybe Blue Origin will be where SpaceX is today, late next decade, but that’s the only “Wild Card” there is. No one else is even remotely close.
There simply aren’t a lot of options to deliver what you want. SpaceX is doing it. ULA is as likely to exit the market as it is to fly the conceptually flawed Vulcan. Orbital relies on questionable technology, most of it inherited from prior government investment. So what could realistically happen?
Spacex will dominate until someone rolls up their sleeves and goes after them.
Reminds me of when I was young and model Ts were everywhere!! 🙂
We need a cots program to build a highway to the moon.
Not SLS
Imagine SpaceX and Blue Origin, under cots contracts, lifting depot hardware to build a highway/internet to the moon.
You are right our current Space program doesn’t work, therefore we need to change it.
NOT continue with the same old boondoggle like SLS.
Since as you suggest it take decades to turn the boat around, we need to turn the rudder now!!!
Think how SpaceX used nasa to fund their reusable rocket tech. Well Nasa should do the same with Blue Origin with a COTS moon program.
And Bigelow will soon finally have a taxi service. And they to would benefit from a COTS moon program NASA should be their anchor tenant.
You don’t need a perfect world you just need a new policy.
You want to REALLY go to the moon???
Well go here and sign
http://lunarcots.com
http://lunarcots.com
Point taken, although I’ve heard it’s actually 2028 now for an ISS mission end. And that raises the issue of what will happen if they have a major problem between now and then and have to make the choice between abandoning ISS early or diverting billions to repair – which would probably come out of funding meant for any SLS missions.
I believe they will have time to see the start of commercial crew, test the bigelow module and have bigelow’s first BA 330 in orbit before that 2028 decision has to be made?
If commercial crew is operational along with Bigelow, I believe that 2028 might be a hard sell to the NON congressional space states.
I’m not optimistic about Bigelow at all. Lots of promises. Little results. BEAM is years behind schedule and far less ambitious than their earlier proposals for ISS test modules.
I don’t expect them to ever launch a Space Station. I think we’re far more likely to see Elon Musk + SpaceX throw together a quick and dirty Tiandong-1 sized space lab.
In my opinion, Commercial Space means SpaceX and basically nothing else. I mean what else do we have? Sure Orbital has Cyngus. But it also, like most mid-2000s Commercial Space companies, spent years cannibalizing government rockets and engines, giving us a rebranded Peacekeeper MX a “the Minotaur” and the Antares using 50 year old Nk-33s. We have Seirra Nevada which is still years away from flying anything, and even then will rely on someone elses rocket (likely a comparatively hugely expensive Atlas V) to do it. Oh and I suppose we have Boeing with their capsule, which will fly on the government-space Atlas V.
It wasn’t money or time that was at fault. It was approach. Of the Commercial Space startups from the early-mid 2000s, only SpaceX built fresh capability… an engine, then an ever more capable launch system and then a capsule. Everyone else? Either long on promises (Sierra Nevada, Bigelow) or bolting together government-sourced retired parts.
I’ll believe in Bigelow, in this case, when they get more private sector money and manpower behind their vision. They’ve been around for 15 years and at this point, they should have done a lot more.
Moreover, a SpaceX station of some sort is the next logical step after a reliable crewed DragonV2. After all, let’s say it starts flying with regularity around mid-to-late2019 after a 2018 “first flight”. Was Commercial Crew only for 5 years of use… let’ say 20 trips total, split between Boeing and SpaceX? Hard to believe. More likely SpaceX won’t bet it’s future on the continued existence of the ISS and will build their own small station.
Your argument is compelling so far, but I’m stuck on a SpaceX station of any size. Why would a private company want to do that?
Beam is nothing more than a NASA seal of approval to the soverngns. Bigelow along with commercial cargo and crew is going to make it just to easy for any 2nd or 3rd tier country to swim in the deep end of the pool just like NASA.
Bigelow stated no IPO until domestic commercial transportation. Once Boeing and SpaceX go operational I believe the capital markets will really like what they see.
You have to remember, the commercial space act of 1998 is really not the old in relative terms. When President Bush laid out commercial cargo and COTS along with Part – D commercial space. It really was the first salvo fired at the congressional space states. What did the executive branch have to sign off to get commercial cargo? Constellion, which was no where to be seen in the VSE. Congress had to dump O’Keefe and bring in Griffin and the 60 day study to say that EELV’s where old, unsafe and to expensive so we needed the ESAS and Ares I and V. What did the next executive have to give up to get commercial crew? SLS and Orion.
The three legs of the stool will be operational by 2018-2020, commercial cargo, crew and destintion. Capital will no longer have to flow through congress/nasa but can spiral out on it’s own.
I don’t see any need for NASA missions to be planned in detail 30 years in advance; replanning sometimes occurs on the fly. But if we can’t find plenty of good reasons to permanently maintain at least one human settlement in LEO it will be even harder for the taxpayers to see why we would spend billions just to plant flags and footprints on the Moon and Mars, where it will be far more expensive.
Or did I miss something? Was the Saturn V really kept in production for the last 40 years? Was Project Apollo extended until the present day? Is anyone who actually remembers the Moon Race still alive?
I’m alive and kicking, thank you very much!!!!
So first question is…. what’s the point of a permanent human settlement in LEO? What is the practical justification? Because that’s an expensive proposition to just have. Is it to prototype and test technologies and research biology for future, long duration missions? If so that’s been the great lie of the ISS, considering that it’s 2015 and anything involving Mars-planning as far as the ISS concern is still, at this point, still a wish. There’s no modules planned to fly. No suits going. No new life support systems. The closest we get is a things like that 3D printer and some biology stuff.
I’m going to be blunt. Just like the word “life” has been abused and thrown around recklessly at NASA in the race for dollars for everyone’s projects, after 15 years of promises, I’m at the point with the ISS where any mention of Mars or destination beyond LEO with the ISS as a stepping stone is greeted with a very heavy eyeroll. I don’t believe it. The fact that station boosters are already saying that – guess what, we need another successor station to REALLY prototype Mars hardware s time – makes me feel that opinion is justified. I’d frankly appreciate the honesty: some folks just prefer space stations to natural bodies and manned destinations, period.
THe other reason to have a permanent LEO presence is to “show the flag” so to speak, because the perfect attendance record the United States has had in space since 2000 is important… for some reason? If this is a justification, it is no different then planting a flag on the moon and leaving. It’s just a more protracted way of making a statement.
Frankly, I think you got it backwards. We have this amazing space station in orbit – a largely American built monument to human advancement. And nobody cares. And that’s because NASA is incapable of marketing itself in any kind of meaningful way. That’s because the ISS”s greatest achievement was being built. Our LEO Station is so invisible that the next time it will be the top story of the day is when it’s huge mass is deorbited over the Pacific and half the world sees it in the sky.
If you want inspirational in a way that continues to generate dollars, there isn’t anything that beats Man on Mars conceptually.
As for giving up Saturn V… like giving up the Shuttle… who cares? It’s just a tool. It did a job and then we were done with it and moved onto something else. A shuttle was the next logical step. Sure the flight/cost realities weren’t borne out, but the intent was sound. Adjusted for inflation, Saturn V dwarfs even the SLS in cost ($1.2 billion versus $600 million). Shuttle offered capabilities Saturn didn’t have. SLS offers capabilities Shuttle doesn’t have. One day we’ll abandon SLS for something different. That’s fine. It has to be fine.
I’ve seen this for years now. A fear of loss. Maybe it’s driven by institutional memory that in giving up Saturn V, we “lost” the ability to send humans beyond LEO, but that’s always been just a choice. It’s been a matter of choice and from that money to until this point, to first build a capsule and then put it on a very large rocket. The country could have done that almost any time since Apollo. It could have done SDLV 20 years ago. It could have put a no-frills capsule ontop of a Atlas V. It decided to take a detour, double down on the shuttle (twice actually) and build the ISS.
The point is, one day, we’ll give up our space station and our perfect attendance record for keeping an American in LEO will be broken. Big deal. On the flip side of that are we doing something more ambitious? More groundbreaking? That brings more to enhancing human spaceflight capability? If so, then what we’re “giving up” is entirely worth it.
I’ll say as I said before… are we supposed to feel some kind of angst that we’re paying the Russians for flights to a space station America largely built? Because that’s an emotional argument that crumbles if you think about it for a minute, because that’s just a choice we made, to do something better in the longer term. In a few years Commercial Crew will do the job at half the cost of a Soyuz. A few years after that, Americans orbit the Moon again, while Russians, in their ancient space taxi, check off their LEO perfect attendance sheet. Oh and on top of that they’re throwing money at Angara, the EELV clone rocket they needed fifteen years ago that’s a Model T compared to the Falcon family.
We just need to build SLS and Orion now. Stuff related to the late 2020s can wait until the early 2020s.
“Saturn V dwarfs even the SLS in cost ($1.2 billion versus $600 million).”
Cost estimates on launch vehicles that have not actually flown have been known to be wide of the mark – generally on the low side. SLS has a very high fixed overhead and so operational cost is rather sensitive to flight rate, never an easy thing to predict. It is my opinion that any vehicle that exceeds $100M in launch cost is not practical.
ISS might be needed as a fuel depot and assembly station, and it has some promise as a platform for Earth observation, a tourist hotel, a site for US/China diplomacy and a dock for reusable launch vehicles. Though it might also serve as a “stepping stone” for human flight to Mars I don’t think it should be justified based on this because there is no actual commitment to go to Mars anytime soon.
Isn’t there a boulder on Earth somewhere that they could have?
When I was a kid, pre 1965, I went to the big city, NEW YORK, to the museum of Natural History. I recall seeing a big shiny rock that looked like a lump of coal. They said it was an asteroid.
I would love for us to develop the ability to mine space. But as an excuse to fly SLS Orion, it just seems like a big joke to me.
I wonder if that rock really was a fragment from a meteor, or was that Bullshit too??
Done!
Wow. Tough crowd.
Ok I’m confused. It seems a decision has already been made that JPL does the ARM probe, for the most part, and this is an RFI asking to see if anyone out there might have an idea they missed, which they can steal, or some part they can buy cheaply? Where is the “innovative commercial, international and academic partnerships opportunities” in this?
I’m not sure about this, specific case. But it’s typical for large parts of the spacecraft, if not everything except the payload, to be subcontracted to industry. That’s a bid-review-selection process, and the terms will be set by what NASA (possibly through JPL) considers possible and at what price. A RFI is supposed to gather information to guide those considerations. In practice, companies can use as marketing. To make sure the eventual request of proposals matches what they are good at. (E.g. if a company has a great way to provide 75 kW solar power for almost the same cost as 50, pointing it out in a RFI response could result in language asking for 50-75 kW, rather than -50 kW. Which makes proposing 75 easier and more likely to be selected.)
Fly directly to an Asteroid which is big enough to walk on it. That would give cool and inspiring pictures – and there’s no need to construct a vehicle capable to catch and transport a sample.
“big enough to walk on it”
Even Ceres has less than 3% of Earth’s surface gravity, rocks handy to Earth typically less than 0.1% Earth gravity, so “walking” is an optimistic description.
Ok ok.. I know that… just meant it should be bigger than a 2-meter-boulder. Just imagine the Picture of an Astronaut “flying” across the surface of such an Asteroid.. make a touchdown, grab some samples… . That would be cool and the Pictures would become as famous as those from the first moon landing.
I wasn’t looking forward to having an asteroid brought closer to the Earth so I’m glad that idea has been abandoned. A boulder is not so near as dangerous.
At the sizes that were being discussed, neither is dangerous.
Asteroids land conveniently on earth all the time as meteorites fetching one makes no sense nor does a Mars sample return mission as there are Martian samples already sitting in labs.
I think these missions don’t make much sense, but not for the reason you suggest. Samples have very little scientific value unless you know exactly where they came from. Most meteorites come from asteroids, but that doesn’t tell you much unless you can say which asteroid. A few fairly clearly come from Mars, but where on Mars? Knowing exactly were is the point in favor of sample return missions. The point against, in my opinion, is the terrestrial experience that a small number of samples is inadequate. You really need a large number, from diverse locations, with multiple opportunities to go back and collect new samples after you’ve seen the lab analysis on the first batch. Since that isn’t practical, I don’t see the scientific value from a very limited number of samples.
I read this morning that the Orion will fly only two crewmen on this mission–because two seats will be taken up by the EVA suits.
Wow, that’s some Exploration Vehicle they’ve got there.