Plan for human mission to asteroid gains speed

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Plan for human mission to asteroid gains speed
Trips could build confidence in long-duration stints at the moon and Mars

By Leonard David
Space.com’s Space Insider columnist
Space.com
updated 6:02 p.m. ET, Mon., Nov . 23, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. - Call it Operation: Plymouth Rock. A plan to send a crew of astronauts to an asteroid is gaining momentum, both within NASA and industry circles.

Not only would the deep space sojourn shake out hardware, it would also build confidence in long-duration stints at the moon and Mars. At the same time, the trek would sharpen skills to deal with a future space rock found on a collision course with Earth.

In Lockheed Martin briefing charts, the mission has been dubbed "Plymouth Rock — An Early Human Asteroid Mission Using Orion." Lockheed is the builder of NASA's Orion spacecraft, the capsule-based replacement for the space shuttle.

I would only support this if they sent Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck

Seems cool - I have heard before that the first ever trillionaire would be the guy behind getting this sort of technology to work and building a business out of it.

Basically one of the main things would be hooking up with asteroids and probably putting them into orbit around the moon for mining and research etc... Also the automated mining of both the moon and these asteroids and the automated transport back and forth... It's technically possible even now, just the procedures and the actual machines that need designing.

Isn't that the way for modern man, to see it in the movies first before it becomes a reality a few years later.

Humans have managed to crashland on an asteroid, we managed to blow a large hole in one and now we continue to follow in the footsteps of Hollywood to land men on one.

I wonder if this is telling us about a long term plan in the making for one of Apophis's passes?

reply to post by Pauligirl


Great article, good to see more proactiveness in sending missions out to our celestial neighbours.

The doomsdayers will lap up the landing on an earth bound asteroid though, especially when it has been done in the movies!

Any bets on when we'll see thread suggesting that this mission is actually to divert an incoming earth killing asteroid?

I would rather see the money spent on sending people to the moon or mars.At least that could actually lead to something productive,like an off world base.
Aiming for an asteroid is all well and good,and may help iron out hardware issues I suppose,but I think by now we should be aiming higher.
I think with the backing of a trillionare or 2,we could realistically get a mars base set up within a decade.

We need massivley rich people to wave blank cheques at people for this to happen...none of this NASA pussyfooting will get us there any time soon IMO.

Forget it! Let's just sit here on Earth and wait for ET to come and show us how to do space flight the right way - without Lockheed Martin and Morton Thiokol rockets.

Originally posted by Larryman
Forget it! Let's just sit here on Earth and wait for ET to come and show us how to do space flight the right way - without Lockheed Martin and Morton Thiokol rockets.

Hmm, I don't think that being the technological beggars of the galaxy is a winning strategy. There's no guarantee that we'd ever encounter anyone that way, especially not before a comet or other space rock decides to devastate an entire continent or worse.

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by Larryman
Forget it! Let's just sit here on Earth and wait for ET to come and show us how to do space flight the right way - without Lockheed Martin and Morton Thiokol rockets.

Hmm, I don't think that being the technological beggars of the galaxy is a winning strategy. There's no guarantee that we'd ever encounter anyone that way, especially not before a comet or other space rock decides to devastate an entire continent or worse.

And if we develop the questionable ability to intercept and deflect an asteroid... how does that protect us from destruction from: a super-volcanic eruption, a nuclear world war, a cosmic ray beam from a super nova, a coronal mass ejection from our Sun, etc... it does not. The only way to protect us is the ability for mass evacuation from the Earth, when the need arises.

Better to put the rocket-development funds into a large inter-stellar message transmitter development program. Used to transmit: "This is Earth... we require anti-gravity knowledge for survival."

Originally posted by Larryman
...And if we develop the questionable ability to intercept and deflect an asteroid... how does that protect us from destruction from: a super-volcanic eruption, a nuclear world war, a cosmic ray beam from a super nova, a coronal mass ejection from our Sun, etc... it does not. The only way to protect us is the ability for mass evacuation from the Earth, when the need arises.

Better to put the rocket-development funds into a large inter-stellar message transmitter development program. Used to transmit: "This is Earth... we require anti-gravity knowledge for survival."

What if an Earth-killer asteroid comes along while we are sitting around waiting for ET to come save us with anti-grav technology?

Once we have this anti-gravity technology, where will we go? Who will go? All 6.8 billion of us, or just a select few? Will we leave for just any and all potential human-killing catastrophes, or will we try to prevent some from occurring, such as an asteroid?

Why do we need to do anything at all? Why don't we just send a message to aliens asking how the human race can survive by doing nothing -- no exploration, no discovery, no work in general. Perhaps farmers shouldn't tend to their crops, because ET could tell us how to feed ourselves without farming.

I would rather see the money spent on sending people to the moon or mars.At least that could actually lead to something productive,like an off world base.
Aiming for an asteroid is all well and good,and may help iron out hardware issues I suppose,but I think by now we should be aiming higher.

I'd have to disagree here.

It would take us many decades to establish an off world base and develop the technologies to make it successful and sustainable, and in the mean time we are potentially vulnerable to large NEO impacts.

Also, we might successfully establish a colony, only to find out there is an impact imminent, and without having developed the technology we need to mitigate the impact threat. We'd be up # creek without a paddle...

I'd argue that we need to find out how to deflect asteroids as soon as we can, and it should be made a priority. The first step would be a mission like the one proposed here, and it could give us invaluable information regarding the problem we are up against.

There is no reason why we could not invest some resources into establishing off-world colonies at the same time, but I think it would be a mistake to take our eyes off what is potentially our greatest threat, wherever we are. Let's not forget that big hit is long overdue, although it may not happen tomorrow or even in the next decade, but why take the risk?

A mission to an asteroid could actually be a good stepping-stone to establishing an off world colony too, and would be sure to teach us much along those lines, so I think it's more than worth the effort and cost.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Yes... save all 6.8 billion of us immediately. And mass produce Honda's Asimo robots en.wikipedia.org... to do the farming for us.

Originally posted by On the level
I would only support this if they sent Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck

...and I insist they also send a Russian Spetznaz major packing a tactical nuke!

Originally posted by Chadwickus

Any bets on when we'll see thread suggesting that this mission is actually to divert an incoming earth killing asteroid?

That's what I was thinking, too. I can see the headline now; "What is NASA not telling us?"