NASA's Boulder Retrieval Mission Faces Likely Cancellation
Smith, Babin Request Info on ARM Press Release, Report
“As the incoming Administration evaluates ARM, it would benefit from clear guidance from both NASA and its advisory bodies. Similarly, it should be unencumbered by decisions made in the twilight of this Administration’s term. Contrary to the assertions made in the press release, numerous advisory bodies have questioned the merits of the President’s ARM mission. The NASA Advisory Council, the Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), and the National Research Council have all raised concerns with the mission since its proposal by the Administration,” the letter states.”
– NASA Boulder Retrieval Briefings: Look But Don’t Touch, earlier post (this congressional letter cites this NASAWatch post as one of its references).
– NASA’s Boulder Retrieval Mission, earlier post
Duh.
it looks like boulder retrieval project has Gorn to seed.
The project was not well conceived. For scientific purposes it is more practical to conduct asteroid research in situ with robotic probes and, if sample return is contemplated, to remove small samples and return them directly to Earth as demonstrated by Hayabusa. Training of flight crew in microgravity EVA and similar exploration procedures can be conducted in LEO.
As originally conceived in the lead up to 2010, the asteroid visit concept made a reasonable “completely arbitrary target to focus NASA on thinking about types of technology development needs for long duration manned spaceflight now that Constellation is dead.”
Not “for Science!”, just an arbitrary challenge to test their progress. In the same way that if you’re learning a shop technique, you’ll throw together a few random items to practice your craft, it doesn’t matter if they’re useful, it doesn’t matter if they’re more expensive than just buying one, that’s not their purpose.
And if NASA achieved that goal, hence developed the technologies required to carry astronauts to a NEO, a manned Phobos or Deimos mission would basically just be a longer duration asteroid mission. So Obama says “Go to an asteroid”, the next President says “Go to Mars’ moons!” That allows the next-plus-one President to say “Land On Mars Within Ten Years!” and have it be a goal achievable within a decade, with only the lander to be developed. Three major milestones in three Presidencies.
Plus a bunch of new technologies developed along the way. For example, things like orbital refuelling and depots, and the Prometheus reactor cancelled by Griffin.
The whole thing would have given NASA a sense of progress and possibility that it hasn’t had since Apollo ended.
Once Constellation was zombified into SLS/Orion, none of that was possible and an asteroid mission no longer made any sense.
Orion was useless for long duration spaceflight, SLS can’t manage a single-launch BEO mission, and SLS/Orion consumed all available funding from any potential technology development that could expand their capabilities. That led to the robotic-ARRM compromise, “bring the iceberg to the explorers”, which made the whole thing just stupid and lame.
I would have preferred if Obama’s “compromise” with Congress had been to surrender the asteroid mission in return for more funding dedicated to tech development, not “lets pretend we’re still doing this mission”.
That was Obamna’s original request, in fact when Constellation was cancelled the funding was transferred to a major new program in space technology. But when Constellation reanimated itself, space technology lost most of its funding. It didn’t help that Space Tech was mainly at Langely and Glenn, while SLS is at Marshall and had a more powerful senator.
I agree the flight reactor and the Phobos-Diemos (PhD) mission would have made more sense.
You’ve been singing this song since the project was announced, but I think you are wrong, at least in part. It’s true that there is much science to be gained with remote kit, but there is a much larger issue.
I’ve made the case that the true wealth of the solar system isn’t on Luna or Mars. It’s in the asteroid belt.
So many enabling technologies are needed, though; most basic is the simple ability to move rocks around. Mining and smelting next, then construction.
But as my accounting professor used to say: tiny steps for tiny feet. Start small, by learning how to handle the materials.
So how about this: Retrofit AXAF (Chandra) with new avionics and detectors. With the orbit it is in, you will get further from the Earth than we have since Apollo, and you get to exercise your new spaceship for a 2 week mission while passing through the radiation belts twice.
Add Ka-Band downlink capability and boost the spacecraft so that it does not pass through the belts twice per orbit any longer. With the loss of Hitomi, they already need to extend the mission