OFFICIAL and CONFIRMED: NASA to send astronauts to asteroid VESTA!

Originally posted by Daughter2
They have alread landed unmanned rockets on comets - not sure why an asteroid would be that different.

solarsystem.nasa.gov...

It's been 40 years since the moon landing. This doesn't seem THAT much more difficult. I wonder why something like this wasn't done before.

Prior to Shoemaker-Levy-9 striking Jupiter in 1994, a lot of people were skeptical about asteroids still smashing into planets. So that may help explain why it wasn't done prior to 1994. Since then we've discovered more and more Earth-crossing objects, so the possibility of actually discovering something that might hit Earth seems more real now than it once did.

The biggest problem I see is lack of an economical technology to protect astronauts against CMEs in an extended mission. We didn't have that in the Apollo missions either, but they were relatively short missions, and everybody knew it was a risk we were taking, but it's a smaller risk on a shorter mission.

Not surprisingly, it's a larger risk on a longer mission. This article calls it a "show stopper" for a Mars mission:

www.evms.edu...

Dubbed "Risk 29" by NASA's Mars scientists, the cosmic radiation risk remains a show-stopper because shielding a spacecraft from all radiation could make it too heavy to reach Mars, which, at its closest, is 38 million miles from Earth.

An asteroid mission would be longer too, so it's a big problem, and one for which the only solutions I've seen aren't practical.

Originally posted by zookey


When the space suits cannot be used to enter a nuclear reactor (confirmed by manufacturer) how do you expect the astronauts to go past the van allen belts into space to an asteroid for long periods of time and be healthy to do their job?

they used to say sailors/ships would fall off the end of the earth too, at one time.

turned out not to be the case.


landing on that doesn't seem to teach us anything, imo, it's a kin to

docking with ISS.

we should be getting up to speed, landing on higher gravity bodies, like the moon and mars.


things they want to do doesn't make alot of sense to me.

Originally posted by fooks
they used to say sailors/ships would fall off the end of the earth too, at one time.

No, I don't think so. But that's what I was taught in school, it turn out it's a myth that was taught as a fact.

Myth of the Flat Earth

The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical...
"The idea that educated men at the time of Columbus believed that the earth was flat, and that this belief was one of the obstacles to be overcome by Columbus before he could get his project sanctioned, remains one of the hardiest errors in teaching."

It makes me wonder what else I was taught in school that's not true.

Even today, when there are people making up fictitious things like the title of this thread, you have to be careful about what to believe.

"All this has to be ready to launch by 2025 by presidential order."

That part refers to Barack Obama's space policy speech which he gave back in April at the Kennedy Space Center:
en.wikipedia.org...

"Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start -- we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history."

So the OP is correct in a way, but the topic title is way too sensationalist. The plan for a manned asteroid mission was allready made official in April.

edit: But the fact that the topic starter refers to Vesta as being the OFFICIAL and CONFIRMED target is a blatant lie, plain and simple. There are only two references to Vesta in the entire article: the picture at the top and this quote "Just last week, a space probe began orbiting a huge asteroid called Vesta, which lies beyond Mars." but neither of them mentions a manned mission.

A few posts back someone linked a page at NASA listing all the possible earth collisions they know of. Did any of you actually look at the list, and notice the probability of impact? The numbers are so small they may as well have written “0” So no NASA is not going to an asteroid they “Think” is going to collide with earth; There is no such beast. They are going to pick one that has some interesting feature, or some useful facet, or maybe just the biggest one, or the nearest one. Who know which one they will pick? But most assuredly they will not be picking one they think will impact with earth, as this does not exist.

I hope they will bring back some interesting mineral data. I always dream that one day mankind will be excavating these huge rocks.

reply to post by piotrburz


again, very sorry for the mistake guys. I learned my lesson on this one (NASA didn't say VESTA). I just thought I'd say, HUBBLE found another moon around Pluto.

This is what robots are for.

Why send a highly trained and expensively trainer one at that, on a one way suicide mission. That is what it would be, because even if they got there, how are they going to return. Robots are perfect for this work, if we can send a receive signals into deep space, then a tethered robot would work just fine.

We could even send out relay repeater satellites to ensure better signal quality, and prevent horizon signal loss.

But then we wouldn't be able to brag about being the first to send man to some thing other than a moon...

What else does the government have to spend it billions of space program dollars on, besides bs projects.

In the words of Homer Simpson. "Woohoo!!"

Human brains/bones don't function well with the loss of a magnetic field.

It would be a severe waste of a heavy lift rocket to send man to an asteroid....when artillery is clearly the tool for the job.


5 satellites with massive mirror arrays to focus the suns energy on one tiny spot on an asteroid to blow it up.

Along with a directed energy laser on the moon....and backup nukes in orbit if all that fails.


If we can use HAARP to see inside the Earth....you could use such in space as well to see inside an asteroid and crack that puppy open with microwaves.

What's man going to do on an asteroid? Use a jackhammer and drill bits? Really?

check out the new thread on the first discovered "Trojan Asteroid" in the same orbit as Earth!

Originally posted by zookey
When the space suits cannot be used to enter a nuclear reactor (confirmed by manufacturer) how do you expect the astronauts to go past the van allen belts into space to an asteroid for long periods of time and be healthy to do their job?

Hard to say. Human beings are certainly not built for space travel, and no human has ever even gone as far as 1 million miles away from Earth. Space is extremely harsh and dangerous, and our robots are much better suited for the task.

Anyway, I think it would be a mistake to hold one's breath until this happens. This is the kind of stuff that always gets people wound up, and it then cut from the budget when times get tough or there's a new administration.

As the country goes bankrupt and 44 million people are on food stamps, the best thing I can do with your money is to spend it on sending trained chimps to an asteroid.

I would ask your permission before spending your money on such a pointless adventure, but I am the State, so I really don't give flying crap if you want to spend your money on it or not.

reply to post by N34Li3Z


I hope it's good, I entertained the idea of starting a thread on Trojan moons and asteroids complete with orbital dynamics. I don't believe it is the first Trojan moon of earth discovered. I have much too much work to do to make an intelligible thread right now and back then. But since I loaded a couple of examples for another thread that I was preparing for my thread, let me just post them here, and maybe you can give us a link to that thread.

The 'horseshoe' orbit illustrated first. Then another so called trojan asteroid/moon of earth. I'll not explain any further, the second one is easier to understand.