Manned missions to asteroids!

[DrPizza]

Cool!
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com//sc...nts-to-design-a-manned-mission-to-an-asteroid

I'm a huge fan of one of the ideas behind this - while some resources are scarce on Earth, they can be found in great abundance on asteroids/meteoroids. Stage one of the science can/should be to bring them into lunar orbit. (Just my guess - calculating trajectory adjustments for an odd shape of varying density, more complicated moment of inertia, etc., might have a bigger margin of error. Error bringing it into Earth orbit could be kind of bad if you drop one on a city.)

Note to Paratus: - Yeah, I know what you might be thinking. But one of the students involved in this project is a former student I had for physics, calculus, and precalculus.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Speaking of asteroids, and asteroid strike warning/prevention, when are we going to set up radar/etc stations at L3/4/5 Lagrange points? Perhaps even armed with nuclear devices; I know they might not have any chance to destroy a 20 mile wide asteroid, but if there was a detonation on the right spot of the asteroid while it's still millions of miles away, surely that could give just enough of a push to make it miss Earth?

 

[DrPizza]

Speaking of asteroids, and asteroid strike warning/prevention, when are we going to set up radar/etc stations at L3/4/5 Lagrange points? Perhaps even armed with nuclear devices; I know they might not have any chance to destroy a 20 mile wide asteroid, but if there was a detonation on the right spot of the asteroid while it's still millions of miles away, surely that could give just enough of a push to make it miss Earth?

By the time the asteroid is on "final approach" to the earth - I don't think something within the range of L3/4/5 would work - it's too late. (Well, for something of such a significant size that it's a huge problem.) An atomic weapon on the surface wouldn't provide that large of a push. To successfully divert an asteroid, it would be best to have a few decades advance notice, and then start the nudging.

 

[Exterous]

Error bringing it into Earth orbit could be kind of bad if you drop one on a city.)

So uh...hey Jakarta...we may have forgotten to do the conversions from metric. Sorry about your luck...

But I agree - very cool and lots of good potential applications

 

[Newell Steamer]

I wouldn't want any space rock that is the size of a city near or in our orbit. Also, lets say you completely mitigate and prevent it from trouncing a city - where would it go? Well, probably into the ocean. And then what? A tsunami.

Do this a few time and you have what, hundreds of asteroids at the bottom of our oceans, the size of cities. That will raise water levels considerably.

If anything, down it on Mars and harvest/transport back to Earth. No point in endangering all of civilization to get some Cerium for polishing powder.

edit: and send droids/drones to harvest the downed asteroid. Human beings do not belong on Mars.

 

[manimal]

in 20-30 years off the shelf drones should be able to achieve space flight. With the miniaturization going on with cell phones were seeing so many different industries benefiting from the tech from VR to space travel.


This is a great idea and rife with awesome sci fi potential.


The idea of mass drivers overhead made Londo Molari wake up in a cold sweat however.

 

[DesiPower]

Prepare for Armagetiton!!!

 

[Paratus]

Cool!
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com//sc...nts-to-design-a-manned-mission-to-an-asteroid

I'm a huge fan of one of the ideas behind this - while some resources are scarce on Earth, they can be found in great abundance on asteroids/meteoroids. Stage one of the science can/should be to bring them into lunar orbit. (Just my guess - calculating trajectory adjustments for an odd shape of varying density, more complicated moment of inertia, etc., might have a bigger margin of error. Error bringing it into Earth orbit could be kind of bad if you drop one on a city.)

Note to Paratus: - Yeah, I know what you might be thinking. But one of the students involved in this project is a former student I had for physics, calculus, and precalculus.

Member call out. Lock it up!

Glad to see you coming over to the dark side. :twisted:

I know NASA is starting to set preliminary schedules for Orion missions including the asteroid redirect mission.

I'll definitely be interested in seeing what comes out of the competition you linked to.

Seriously though, it's nice to see a teacher who cares about STEM, has students who succeed in those fields and follows former students. :thumbsup:

 

[DrPizza]

I wouldn't want any space rock that is the size of a city near or in our orbit. Also, lets say you completely mitigate and prevent it from trouncing a city - where would it go? Well, probably into the ocean. And then what? A tsunami.

Do this a few time and you have what, hundreds of asteroids at the bottom of our oceans, the size of cities. That will raise water levels considerably.

If anything, down it on Mars and harvest/transport back to Earth. No point in endangering all of civilization to get some Cerium for polishing powder.

edit: and send droids/drones to harvest the downed asteroid. Human beings do not belong on Mars.

Errr, uhhh, maybe you missed the part about using lunar orbits? Mars?? Also, city sized asteroids wouldn't raise the water level of the ocean by very much. The Earth is apparently a lot bigger than you imagine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU

Though, let's take Boston - 48 square miles. Let's make it a cube. 7x7x7 cubic miles; 343 cubic miles. That's roughly 1 millionth of the volume of the oceans. I'm not sure it would be advantageous to use such large asteroids, either. But, you certainly wouldn't crash something of that size into the ocean. That would be beyond bad.

 

[manimal]

Member call out. Lock it up!

Glad to see you coming over to the dark side. :twisted:

I know NASA is starting to set preliminary schedules for Orion missions including the asteroid redirect mission.

I'll definitely be interested in seeing what comes out of the competition you linked to.

Seriously though, it's nice to see a teacher who cares about STEM, has students who succeed in those fields and follows former students. :thumbsup:

wink wink you should let DR pizza visit the space stuffs with you in the interests of science and nef!

at least do a facetime with his kids in front of the module or something cool