Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

8 replies on “Asteroidal Confusion”

  1. I think NASA’s leadership would like to avoid such comparisons, as OSIRIS-REx as well as Japan’s recently launched Hayabusa 2 make the ARM look superfluous and generally wasteful as a model for asteroid science.

  4. “make the ARM look superfluous and generally wasteful as a model for asteroid science”

    On the other hand, a deeper future will thank us for developing the ability to move rocks around for better smelting placement. A space-living culture obviously needs this sort of tech (amongst others).

    This sniping at one sort of research in favor of another is inexplicable.

    1. It’s not the sample return part that people are sniping at. It’s spending 20 times as much to send a couple of astronauts 3 days from Earth so they can pretend to be exploring.

      Skip the HSF part and you could have one of these every year for a couple of decades.

      1. Or bring the asteroid back to the ISS where we already have a full time crew. In fact that was the original plan, before SLS needed a mission.

  5. NASA, the space enthusiast community, the nation as a whole, and ultimately the world, seem to be overtaken with tribalism, infighting, and sniping. In the US this isn’t helped when members of Congress spend most of their time demanding money from people who want favors and attacking people of different views. NASA has become a pile of taxpayer dollars that powerful members of Congress fight over, a jobs program for districts, not even a jobs program for the country as a whole.

    We have to work to change this situation. And when I say we, I mean all of us.

Comments are closed.