A robot will "tag and bag" it, then astronauts will take samples. Pics and vids at the link. On another board I post at, one of the folks there is a NASA engineer, and he's a bit mystified about this choice. He's not seen data on how they're going to stop the spin of the asteroid, and he thinks that the costs might not justify the mission. Of course, Musk was a big contributor to Obama's campaign and plans to get into asteroid mining, so perhaps having NASA pick up the R&D costs is Obama scratching Musk's back.
Let's just hope they get it right. God forbid they make a mistake between feet and meter lose control and now we've got a end of the world scenario.
Why bother sending astronauts to get pieces of the asteroid? Why not have the unmanned probe return samples? Yawn. No vision, no ambition. Just spending more money doing stuff that has little value for future exploration of space.
Yeah, this probably won't amount to anything: Then there's the potential for incredible mineral finds...enough to send the rare and precious metals markets plummeting. But you're right; on a practical level, unmanned probes could do the job. But why cheat the public of all that feel-good footage where they plant the flag and make speeches? And what about the astronauts themselves? Shouldn't they get to go and have fun?
Yep. Very little will actually be gained from sending a manned mission to rendezvous with the sample collection other than jacking up the cost and increasing the risk for little scientific gain. Sending a couple of guys to lunar orbit to rendezvous with a captured piece of rock is going to elicit a great big yawn on behalf of the public. It's not even going to have much public relations value. If we're going to risk sending a man out of Earth orbit, the mission should be one that requires a man.
And really if we can send man all the way out to the asteroid you might as well skip the asteroid and have him go to Mars.
Well, the mission as planned involves sending men to lunar orbit, little more than what we did way back on Apollo 8. And doing a lunar orbit rendezvous--whether with a probe hauling a small asteroid or with a command module--is nothing new. Going to Mars would be an exciting venture, but the cost would be 10-100 times what this asteroid mission entails. It would involve a much larger spacecraft, a much longer duration mission (or a more advanced propulsion system), and the facility to land on Mars and remain for an extended duration. Given budget constraints and the lack of any ambitious vision for the space program, I don't see it happening. Since a Mars landing would be a decade or more away if we started planning RIGHT NOW--and we aren't--I now predict that a manned Mars landing will not happen in my lifetime (the next 20-40 years). And probably not in most of yours, either.
It would have to have its spin stopped in order to be moved to a lunar orbit, I do believe. And if its spinning too fast, you run into problems like Armstrong had on his Gemini mission.
Because, unless you happen to find one in which the spin axis is aligned with the thrust axis of the rocket being used to push it into lunar orbit, you're going to have to cycle the rocket engine off and on rapidly in order to push it in the correct direction.
I basically agree. But then, such a mission will bring a lot of know how for future missions. However, they keep gutting NASA more and more. 17 billion? Damn, there's more budget for the military's toilet seats.
The entire order of toilet seats only cost $20,000. (That's 1000 @ $20 a pop). It's the gov't required paperwork that cost the rest of the 17 billion.
