Comments on: Space Update: NASA’s Mission – “Catch a Falling Star and Put it in Your Pocket” https://techsomogro.com/space-update-nasas-mission-catch-falling-star-put-pocket/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=space-update-nasas-mission-catch-falling-star-put-pocket Science, Technology and the Future Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:35:13 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 By: lenrosen4 https://techsomogro.com/space-update-nasas-mission-catch-falling-star-put-pocket/#comment-8341 Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:35:13 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=9674#comment-8341 Niccolo5. I concur with your observations. To me there are better ways for NASA to spend money that this hare-brained enterprise. The human factor shouldn't even be part of the equation since robotic spacecraft controlled from the ground can do the job without us adding to the cost. If humans are going into Deep Space then we had better perfect propulsion systems and space habitats that get us to where we are going a lot faster and provide closed-environments that can truly sustain us while protecting us from the dangers outside. We aren't even close to achieving such technology breakthroughs as of yet. Where is VASIMIR or NERVA or any of the propulsion alternatives that humans would need. For robots solar sails and ion propulsion will do just fine. Hardened machines don't have to hurry. It is us soft humans that need a heck of a lot of protective baggage and the overhead for our space missions is extremely high. If I were NASA I'd be taking the money and putting it into building low-Earth assembly and new propulsion system testing on human space presence while leaving Deep Space to robots.]]> In reply to Niccolo5.

I concur with your observations. To me there are better ways for NASA to spend money that this hare-brained enterprise. The human factor shouldn’t even be part of the equation since robotic spacecraft controlled from the ground can do the job without us adding to the cost. If humans are going into Deep Space then we had better perfect propulsion systems and space habitats that get us to where we are going a lot faster and provide closed-environments that can truly sustain us while protecting us from the dangers outside. We aren’t even close to achieving such technology breakthroughs as of yet. Where is VASIMIR or NERVA or any of the propulsion alternatives that humans would need. For robots solar sails and ion propulsion will do just fine. Hardened machines don’t have to hurry. It is us soft humans that need a heck of a lot of protective baggage and the overhead for our space missions is extremely high. If I were NASA I’d be taking the money and putting it into building low-Earth assembly and new propulsion system testing on human space presence while leaving Deep Space to robots.

]]> By: Niccolo5 https://techsomogro.com/space-update-nasas-mission-catch-falling-star-put-pocket/#comment-8333 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:40:57 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=9674#comment-8333 Smells like another pointless and costly NASA PR boondoggle, but there is a small chance it won’t be. The main trick to economically exploiting anything in space is either extremely high specific impulse, or lots of reaction mass already out of the Earth’s gravity well, i.e., an asteroid with potential fluid constituency. Suppose there were a really big chunk of water ice or frozen methane that could be herded into stable Earth orbit using solar sails or ionic propulsion. Then spacecraft, once in orbit, could rendezvous with the asteroid and in principle take on reaction mass and use solar radiation or nuclear fission for propulsion energy. One could envision robotic systems locating and parking reaction mass asteroids near every likely mission destination. For example, a manned Europa mission might take on robotically pre-positioned return reaction mass in orbit around Europa.
I don’t see any rational role for men in vacuum suits fooling around in EVA mode with a captured asteroid.
The hypothetical mission aims to capture an object with a mass of 500-tons. Objects that might seriously threaten Earth would have masses thousands of times greater. Seems unlikely perfecting any technology that would make sense for a 500-ton object would scale up a thousand times.

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