So, Why Send Men to an Asteroid?

[Jonathan]

“One of the things we need to work on is figuring out
what you actually do when you get to an asteroid,”
said Josh Hopkins from Lockheed Martin, who is the
...[ah hum]...Principal Investigator for Advanced
Human Exploration Missions."


Um, sorry to be a critic, but isn't it best
to start with the 'why'...before...planning
a program that could rival the costs, time
and effort of Apollo?


This asteroid program about as silly as saying....
'let's go build a gigantic castle in the middle
of the Atlantic just to see if we can, just to
spur public excitement.'

Why you might ask? Ah, we'll figure that out later.



"And, Schweickart added, the excitement factor of
such a mission would be off the charts. “Humans
going into orbit around the Sun is pretty exciting!”
said Schweickart, who piloted the lunar module during
the Apollo 9 mission in 1969."



What? Huh! Orbit the sun? Have you guys lost your minds?

I'm assuming Nasa has a rocket that can accomplish
this task? Oh wait...



"This is an essential capability in order to ultimately
get to Mars, and a relatively short mission to a near-Earth
asteroid is a logical first step in establishing a
deep space human capability.”
http://www.universetoday.com/88384/human-mission-to-an-asteroid-why-should-nasa-go/



Why send men to Mars?
Why have a manned deep space capability?

Oh that's right, that's all to be figured out
...at a later date yet to be specified.


I'm ashamed that NASA can't think of a more
worthy goal than make-work that's only
designed to keep their jobs.

That's the 'why'.



Jonathan




s

[Vaughn Simon]

Why go to an asteroid? Because as a far space test mission it makes
more sense (and is easier to sell) than simply going out to some
arbitrary spot in space and then returning without some scientific
payload.

On 7/3/2016 9:09 AM, Jonathan wrote:
> Why send men to Mars?

You can have the manned/unmanned debate with someone else. The fact
remains that scientifically speaking, Mars is a damn interesting place,
and we still have far more to learn.

> Why have a manned deep space capability?

To me, it goes to the very core of human nature. It is natural for us
to want to explore. Can we afford it? That's another question!


The above notwithstanding, you and I agree as to the futility,
glacial slowness and extreme expense of NASA's recent efforts. With two
companies offering truly heavy lift rockets, I don't see why a deep
space capability couldn't be designed using off-the-shelf boosters.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <nlb8df$phg$1...@gioia.aioe.org>, vaugh...@gmail.com says...

>
> Why go to an asteroid? Because as a far space test mission it makes
> more sense (and is easier to sell) than simply going out to some
> arbitrary spot in space and then returning without some scientific
> payload.

This. Because a manned mission to an asteroid means actual exploration
and sample return. This is something that could be done unmanned, but a
manned mission will surely return more samples and possibly better
samples (since human eyes on the scene can often spot things "robot"
eyes can't easily spot since they're in real time contact with a human
brain to do the processing).

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

[bob haller]

we should go visit that other moon in earth orbit. fairly close by. test all sorts of new tech.....

[Jeff Findley]

In article <4a26345c-9fa1-40c4...@googlegroups.com>,
hal...@aol.com says...

>
> On Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 12:54:31 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
> > In article <nlb8df$phg$1...@gioia.aioe.org>, vaugh...@gmail.com says...
> > >
> > > Why go to an asteroid? Because as a far space test mission it makes
> > > more sense (and is easier to sell) than simply going out to some
> > > arbitrary spot in space and then returning without some scientific
> > > payload.
> >
> > This. Because a manned mission to an asteroid means actual exploration
> > and sample return. This is something that could be done unmanned, but a
> > manned mission will surely return more samples and possibly better
> > samples (since human eyes on the scene can often spot things "robot"
> > eyes can't easily spot since they're in real time contact with a human
> > brain to do the processing).
>

> we should go visit that other moon in earth orbit. fairly close by.
> test all sorts of new tech.....

It's not a moon in earth orbit! It's an asteroid in orbit around the
sun which also happens to have some complex interaction with the
earth/moon system. In other words, it's a four body problem in orbital
mechanics. Moons can (largely) be simplified as a two body problem (the
moon and the planet it orbits).

But yes, I would think it could be a potential target for a manned
mission. Such a mission would be far more meaningful than ARM but at
the same time require a minimal amount of new hardware to be developed
(mostly a HAB module).

[Greg (Strider) Moore]

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
news:MPG.31e4415ad...@news.eternal-september.org...

Talk to Bigelow. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to sell something for
this. :-)


>
>Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

[Fred J. McCall]

Jonathan <writeI...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>“One of the things we need to work on is figuring out
>what you actually do when you get to an asteroid,”
>said Josh Hopkins from Lockheed Martin, who is the
>...[ah hum]...Principal Investigator for Advanced
>Human Exploration Missions."
>
>
>Um, sorry to be a critic, but isn't it best
>to start with the 'why'...before...planning
>a program that could rival the costs, time
>and effort of Apollo?
>

Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
built a rocket and a capsule without a mission. The only real
missions are 'Moon' and 'asteroid'. They've decided on 'asteroid
brought back to near Moon'. Now they need to figure out what the
point is, since they've selected the mission.

Pretty much ass backwards logic.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

[Jeff Findley]

In article <a2cmnb1mhknmvstkf...@4ax.com>,
fjmc...@gmail.com says...
>
> Jonathan <writeI...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >?One of the things we need to work on is figuring out
> >what you actually do when you get to an asteroid,?

> >said Josh Hopkins from Lockheed Martin, who is the
> >...[ah hum]...Principal Investigator for Advanced
> >Human Exploration Missions."
> >
> >
> >Um, sorry to be a critic, but isn't it best
> >to start with the 'why'...before...planning
> >a program that could rival the costs, time
> >and effort of Apollo?
> >
>
> Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
> built a rocket and a capsule without a mission. The only real
> missions are 'Moon' and 'asteroid'. They've decided on 'asteroid
> brought back to near Moon'. Now they need to figure out what the
> point is, since they've selected the mission.
>
> Pretty much ass backwards logic.

That's what you get when Congress funds SLS/Orion, but no actual
payloads or any actual missions.

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-07-05 19:50, Fred J. McCall wrote:

> Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
> built a rocket and a capsule without a mission.

In itself, that isn't the problem. The problem is that they simply
recycled Shuttle hardware instead of doing something truly new that
could benefit other endeavours. (NASA's mission has R&D in it, doesn't it ?)

Had NASA developped new method to build SSMEs more affordably, that
might have been interesting. But they litterally used the SSMEs from the
retired shuttles. So no manufacturing improvements to make such engines
affordable.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <577dcf81$0$12918$b1db1813$7946...@news.astraweb.com>,
jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...

>
> On 2016-07-05 19:50, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>
> > Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
> > built a rocket and a capsule without a mission.
>
> In itself, that isn't the problem.

Actually, that's a huge part of the problem. Ares V, and then SLS,
supporters keep saying we need a really big fracking launch vehicle to
go to Mars. The trouble is, we really don't know how to land large
payloads on Mars, like a manned vehicle! Mike Griffin put the cart
before the horse on this one. He's the one that chose to work on the
"transportation architecture" first, and picked the one with the biggest
launch vehicle possible, well before we had solid requirements for the
thing! That's dumb, dumb, dumb.

> The problem is that they simply
> recycled Shuttle hardware instead of doing something truly new that
> could benefit other endeavours. (NASA's mission has R&D in it, doesn't it ?)

You mean like X-33? This is a failed way forward too. NASA should not
be advancing the state of the art while simultaneously using that tech
to build their own launch vehicles. This is stupid because it stifles
innovation. We're seeing innovation and cost reduction out of launch
start-ups right now like we've never seen before and *none* of it
requires any truly "new" in terms of aerospace specific technology.

Yes, new tech like 3D printing is a part of this, but that's only
tangentially being directly driven by NASA. Mostly it's coming out of
the commercial 3D printing industry and the commercial aerospace
industry (adopting the technology).

> Had NASA developped new method to build SSMEs more affordably, that
> might have been interesting. But they litterally used the SSMEs from the
> retired shuttles. So no manufacturing improvements to make such engines
> affordable.

That's to "save money". But even if they are successful at making
disposable SSMEs cheaper to manufacture than the reusable ones, that's
completely backwards in terms of the direction of the industry.
Disposable LOX/LH2 engines which operate from sea level to vacuum are
just not useful! They drive *up* the cost of a launch *system*. Case
in point is how much more expensive Delta IV (LOX/LH2 first stage) is
compared to Atlas V (LOX/kerosene first stage). ULA wants to end Delta
IV production (except Heavy) due to its high cost.

The bottom line here is that commercial launch is just plain cheaper
than NASA building and flying their own launch vehicles. We've been
launching satellites and astronauts into orbit for more than half a
century (coming up on 60 years for Sputnik in a little over a year). We
didn't need NACA to build and operate airlines 60 years after the Wright
Flyer, did we? No? Then why would we need the same for spaceflight?
Makes no freaking sense at all.

Buying everything you can commercially saves money. Commercial cargo
for ISS has proven this and commercial crew should do the same (since it
will fly with people on it far sooner and far cheaper than SLS/Orion
ever will).


A better way forward would have been for NASA to start working on actual
Mars landing tech and working with the commercial space industry in the
US to develop other enabling technologies like LEO fuel depots and
inflatable HAB structures. But, the best we can hope for now is that
SLS will be killed sooner rather than later. But with a presidential
election coming up, I'd expect the inertia of the program to carry it
forward for at least another couple years (and several billion dollars)
before the new president takes notice (which they might not since space
is such a tiny part of the overall budget).

[Fred J. McCall]

Jeff Findley <jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> wrote:

>In article <a2cmnb1mhknmvstkf...@4ax.com>,
>fjmc...@gmail.com says...
>>
>> Jonathan <writeI...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >?One of the things we need to work on is figuring out
>> >what you actually do when you get to an asteroid,?
>> >said Josh Hopkins from Lockheed Martin, who is the
>> >...[ah hum]...Principal Investigator for Advanced
>> >Human Exploration Missions."
>> >
>> >
>> >Um, sorry to be a critic, but isn't it best
>> >to start with the 'why'...before...planning
>> >a program that could rival the costs, time
>> >and effort of Apollo?
>> >
>>
>> Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
>> built a rocket and a capsule without a mission. The only real
>> missions are 'Moon' and 'asteroid'. They've decided on 'asteroid
>> brought back to near Moon'. Now they need to figure out what the
>> point is, since they've selected the mission.
>>
>> Pretty much ass backwards logic.
>>
>
>That's what you get when Congress funds SLS/Orion, but no actual
>payloads or any actual missions.
>

Well, we got SLS because they wanted something that used big solids to
help keep ATK's ICBM motor business subsidized. In order to justify a
big solid like SLS, they tried to make it the only rocket that Orion
would fit on (which gave an Orion size and weight). Now they're
trying to come up with something useful to do with the hardware they
built.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-07-05 19:50, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>
>> Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
>> built a rocket and a capsule without a mission.
>
>In itself, that isn't the problem. The problem is that they simply
>recycled Shuttle hardware instead of doing something truly new that
>could benefit other endeavours. (NASA's mission has R&D in it, doesn't it ?)
>

Except that's not what they did. It's already been explained to you
that the ALS solids are different from Shuttle solids.

>
>Had NASA developped new method to build SSMEs more affordably, that
>might have been interesting. But they litterally used the SSMEs from the
>retired shuttles. So no manufacturing improvements to make such engines
>affordable.
>

Because it's ever so much cheaper to build new than to use what you
already own? Car salesmen must love you...

[Fred J. McCall]

Jeff Findley <jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> wrote:

>In article <577dcf81$0$12918$b1db1813$7946...@news.astraweb.com>,
>jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...
>>
>> On 2016-07-05 19:50, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>>
>> > Yeah. This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with NASA. They've
>> > built a rocket and a capsule without a mission.
>>
>> In itself, that isn't the problem.
>
>Actually, that's a huge part of the problem. Ares V, and then SLS,
>supporters keep saying we need a really big fracking launch vehicle to
>go to Mars. The trouble is, we really don't know how to land large
>payloads on Mars, like a manned vehicle! Mike Griffin put the cart
>before the horse on this one. He's the one that chose to work on the
>"transportation architecture" first, and picked the one with the biggest
>launch vehicle possible, well before we had solid requirements for the
>thing! That's dumb, dumb, dumb.
>

Even dumber was that they didn't build what they needed for the stated
goal. Look at the boosters originally called out in the Mars
Reference Mission before they started trying to push a particular
booster model and started resizing the payloads to fit.

>> Had NASA developped new method to build SSMEs more affordably, that
>> might have been interesting. But they litterally used the SSMEs from the
>> retired shuttles. So no manufacturing improvements to make such engines
>> affordable.
>
>That's to "save money". But even if they are successful at making
>disposable SSMEs cheaper to manufacture than the reusable ones, that's
>completely backwards in terms of the direction of the industry.
>Disposable LOX/LH2 engines which operate from sea level to vacuum are
>just not useful! They drive *up* the cost of a launch *system*. Case
>in point is how much more expensive Delta IV (LOX/LH2 first stage) is
>compared to Atlas V (LOX/kerosene first stage). ULA wants to end Delta
>IV production (except Heavy) due to its high cost.
>

It's the difference between the "performance uber alles" engineering
approach and the "good enough for the lowest cost" approach.

>
>A better way forward would have been for NASA to start working on actual
>Mars landing tech and working with the commercial space industry in the
>US to develop other enabling technologies like LEO fuel depots and
>inflatable HAB structures. But, the best we can hope for now is that
>SLS will be killed sooner rather than later. But with a presidential
>election coming up, I'd expect the inertia of the program to carry it
>forward for at least another couple years (and several billion dollars)
>before the new president takes notice (which they might not since space
>is such a tiny part of the overall budget).
>

If they'd actually worked on a Mars rocket that might have been
useful, but that isn't what they did.


--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

[Jeff Findley]

In article <rttunb16vvued7mon...@4ax.com>,
fjmc...@gmail.com says...

> >A better way forward would have been for NASA to start working on actual
> >Mars landing tech and working with the commercial space industry in the
> >US to develop other enabling technologies like LEO fuel depots and
> >inflatable HAB structures. But, the best we can hope for now is that
> >SLS will be killed sooner rather than later. But with a presidential
> >election coming up, I'd expect the inertia of the program to carry it
> >forward for at least another couple years (and several billion dollars)
> >before the new president takes notice (which they might not since space
> >is such a tiny part of the overall budget).
> >
>
> If they'd actually worked on a Mars rocket that might have been
> useful, but that isn't what they did.
>

Maybe, but the empirical evidence suggests it would still have been 5x
to 10x more expensive if the program were run like Ares/SLS (i.e. NASA
running the program and contractors getting paid with cost plus
contracts). Unfortunately a the time the decision was made, ULA was the
only game in town. So, just handing over a "commercial" contract to ULA
likely would not have resulted in much savings over running the program
cost plus, since that's the cost model they have used for everything
they do up to that time.

ULA has done *nothing* to reduce launch costs until the Russian RD-180
became an issue and SpaceX became certified to launch DOD payloads.

Love him or hate him, Elon Musk has done more real work to lower launch
costs in the US than any other person to date.

[William Mook]

People throw away soda cans because the cost of the can is a small fraction of the value of the beverage. The cost of the beverage to the maker is something else entirely.

As late as 1990 when I was promoting my company Orbatek to NASA folks in Huntsville, and DC, and TRW execs in California, this idea was the way folks thought about space launch. An engineer that started life at Convair and built the original Atlas 'balloon' structure, was fond of the soda can analogy. This carried the day at NASA when they were designing and re-designing the space shuttle external tank.

Many issues in their minds.

One issue not discussed broadly is if you recover and reuse vehicles, and they're certain to crash or fail destructively within 25 flights, then its a certainty ALL of your vehicles will end up a greasy spot somewhere and become an embarrassment to the builders. This is what happened to the Space Shuttle program after two losses of five vehicles the fleet was retired.

Another mind set to overcome is selling services or participating in underlying value, rather than selling hardware. If you're selling hardware, you like throw-away products. Or your reusable products become very expensive because they need extensive rebuilding. How else are you going to maintain income? That's what many say.

However, if you're selling services, you like long lasting products. Better yet, if you're participating in growth of an asset in the frontier, you like inexpensive long lasting products.

SpaceX has purchased the pintle fed engines and other assets from TRW's aerospace division. They are making a vertical take off and vertical landing multi-stage RLV. Very good choices all around.

They have yet to crack the high reliability requirement (one loss per 1000 or more vs. one loss per 25 or less). They do that, and they'll take aerospace to the next level! At that point, they will need to make more good decisions to instil a mindset among their engineering management to promote growth of off world infrastructure by making long lasting reliable and inexpensive launch products.

At that point, the space program will have truly arrived.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>As late as 1990 when I was promoting my company Orbatek to NASA folks in Huntsville, and DC, and TRW execs in California, ...
>

Oh, lord. More self-aggrandizing Mookery...

In a word, bullshit.


--
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the
soul with evil."
-- Socrates