Does anyone care?

Oh fuck yeah, it's NASA's first asteroid mining mission. May not be like the Japs' plan to bomb an asteroid, but it'll do cool science like figuring out if asteroids have amino acids and shit. Ya know stuff that life needs.

We have no samples of asteroids of this spectral type. Inb4 meteorites, those are shit samples and because 'you can't know nothing' we can't confirm that they actually came from an asteroid like this.

Those damn japs may beat us to an asteroid of a similar spectral type. Pic related actual image of japanese space probe

They didn't return with a sample though did they?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

Most of the mission objectives were missed but they did manage to send microscopic amounts of asteroid dust back

>that picture

JAXA is amazing at having tons of shit fuck up their missions and still getting something out of it

$800 million for a one-shot experiment to spend seven years fetching a couple of tablespoons of dirt from a space rock, with a high probability of mission failure.

The sheer idiot wastefulness of it is mind-boggling.

This isn't a prototype for a swarm of asteroid-mining drones. The money isn't being spent to get good at this sort of thing and make it affordable to repeat. It's just a science mission.

The budget is entirely out of proportion to the potential benefit. There's no reason not to put this kind of mission off until it can be accomplished more affordably, with cheaper launch (which over $180 million of this project budget is being spent on) and standard components.

Nigga we can't even begin to mine asteroids until we've done the science on them.

so why is dirt important? Well in all likelihood that's what we'd be mining. Scooping dirt takes less energy than turning solid rock into powder necessary for beneficiation and chemical processing.

Thing is dirt is hard to deal with. We can be pretty damn sure a parachute will work on Mars as the atmospheric composition and density pretty much tell use everything we need to know. This we can figure out with telescopes if we have to.

Granular materials are different. As far as we can tell things are dependent on particle shape, size, composition, electrostatic properties, relative humidity, and the phase of the fucking moon. Not to mention most of the properties we want to know when modelling granular materials can only be determined empirically.

Size, shape, and composition are not something we can figure out just using telescopes. Size/shape we can maybe figure out if we know what processes are occuring there, but we don't know. Meteorites are useless for figuring this out cause all the dirt got burned away. Labs aren't that great either because we can't simulate microgravity, and can't wait millions of years for results.

...

\jewcommand{\t}[1]{\displaystyle{#1 \atop {#1~~#1}}} \t{\t{\t{\t{\t{\t{\t{\triangle}}}}}}}

...and to people who say, "that's only $3 per American" or something like that, there's probably well under 80 million real net federal income tax payers.

There are only about 120 million federal income tax payers on paper. Those are adults with jobs or other income sources over a certain threshold. But over 20 million of them collect direct government paychecks. At least another 20 million owe their jobs to services performed under contract to the US government, goods sold to the US government, or goods and services provided to welfare-dependent people. These people are all net tax recipients. Their tax "payment" is really just a pay discount, and not an independent income stream for the government.

So this leaves something under 80 million working men and women whose net taxes (remember: even many net taxpayers owe a portion of their income to government business, which has to be deducted) have to first service a debt burden of about $300,000 each (doubled over the last decade), and pay for major entitlements such as medicare and social security costing around $30,000/year to each, before discretionary spending on things like defense, maintaining the roads, or science can be considered.

The worse it gets, the harder people try to escape the position of taxpayer, by becoming a net tax recipient, a nontaxpayer, through tax sheltering arrangements, by simply breaking the law to evade taxes, or even emigrating.

The funds actually available for such projects are quite limited, and pretending they aren't is the kind of thinking that's breaking the USA. A billion here, a billion there, soon it adds up to real money.

massive waste of money

like half the things they do.

inb4 space race scrubs, but, but muh satellites. That was far more organized and directed than these money holes.

I'd rather it to to this than illegal alien education and benefits.

>>There's no reason not to put this kind of mission off until it can be accomplished more affordably
>Nigga we can't even begin to mine asteroids until we've done the science on them.
This is not a step toward asteroid mining. Asteroid mining will require cost-effective transportation to and from asteroids. This project is being conducted without regard to cost-effectiveness.

Think back to the Apollo Program. That was half a century ago. Did it lead to a moon base and mining on the moon? No. Or think back to the X Prize of twenty years ago, which was won with SpaceShipOne a dozen years ago. Did it put us on an incremental path to reusable orbital launch? No.

Why not? In each case, they took something that you'd expect to be a step toward practial applications, and then they gamed the target, they solved it without regard to routine replication and practical use.

Compare the Wright Bros claiming the first powered, controlled flight milestone, or SpaceX accomplishing the first controlled landing of an expended orbital rocket stage on a solid surface (or Blue Origin accomplishing the same, slightly earlier of a suborbital rocket with a substantial, separable payload). Even the V-2 rocket, accomplishing the first suborbital spaceflight.

These people didn't game the target. They honestly approached it as just one milestone toward a greater goal, and solved it in ways that had significance for moving on to bigger and better things.

The Wright Bros kept their aircraft affordable to construct, and made sure it could land in good condition to fly again. Compare the high-budget, crash-landing Langley Aerodrome, which would have offered no incremental path toward routine aviation even if it had succeeded.

We could be doing asteroid science as a step on the path to asteroid mining, but this is not that.

Mapping an asteroid we'd probably use as a first mining target can't be used for mining and taking incredibly high res images can't help mining? Seeing how particles act when we take the sample and blast it? That alone will teach us a lot.

>can't be used for mining
>can't help mining
Do you think the information gathered by and technology developed for the Apollo Program is of absolutely no use for building a base on and mining the moon?

Yet, in half a century, has it been used for that purpose?

I'm not talking about the theoretical possibility that some of the information gathered might be of some use. I'm talking about whether, if you have $800 million to spend, and you want to mine asteroids, this is how you should spend it.

It's not.

We're living at a time when the cost of launch is likely to plummet in the next few years. It's possibly that before 2020, the $180 million spent on launching this payload could send 20 such vehicles, and by 2025 it could send hundreds.

Can you imagine that under such circumstances we will look back at this and say it was good we spent the money now, and didn't save it for more efficient programs where low-cost technology could be space-tested in rapid iteration, and then deployed on a grand scale?

Developing cost effective space transportation is not NASA's job, it's a job for private companies like SpaceX. Neither should it be NASA's job. NASA's job should be to do ground breaking science and tech development private companies won't do. Reusable launch? Well as you pointed out SpaceX is already doing that.

Physical samples are very important in terms of science. There is only so much science we can do in situ. As an example, we have been able to do new science with lunar regolith samples from the moon because instruments got better.

>> rapid iteration
Will be hard, even with 'cost effective' launch, it takes YEARS to get to asteroids. An iterating through several designs over a period of years will be expensive. Time is money.

Now if we have samples of asteroid regolith, we can replicate it, launch a bunch of it into orbit and then iterate by sending stuff to the regolith pile rather than having to send stuff all the way to an asteroid.

Now it's funny you should mention the Wright bros. While langley demonstrated powered flight with a model he just went 'lol it works, let's scale it up!'

The wright bros on the other hand, built a glider and realized 'oh shit it works, but our calculations are wrong everything we know about aerodynamics is fucking wrong.' Then they built a wind tunnel and figured out the science of wings so they could be pretty damn well sure something would work before they spent a bunch of money testing it.

>>apollo program data not used for moon mining
Probably because we didn't have a good enough reason to mine the moon

>Developing cost effective space transportation is not NASA's job,
Well, that certainly explains the space shuttle and SLS. I guess it's their job to develop space transportation, but it's important for them to keep it from being cost-effective.

>it's a job for private companies like SpaceX
Who NASA is currently funding (to the tune of billions of dollars), lending technical assistance and advice to, and obstructing, by taking half a year to do reviews that are supposed to take a couple of weeks. SpaceX is as much a NASA creature as JPL.

>>> rapid iteration
>Will be hard, even with 'cost effective' launch, it takes YEARS to get to asteroids
It takes years to get to asteroids if you're shit at getting around in space. There are lots of asteroids that pass near Earth (within a few tens of the lunar distance). You just need the delta-v to rendezvous with them.

I mean, check this out, every day there are asteroids that we could easily slam into by launching a couple of weeks ahead of time:
neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

Hell, look at (2015 KE). Passing within 15 lunar distances on Saturday at only 2 km/s relative velocity!

Anyway, I was talking about rapid iteration of testing systems that need to work in space. You can just test things under realistic conditions, and you get the most accurate results, or you can sweat blood and throw hundreds of millions of dollars into labs trying to make things work without being field-tested.

>we didn't have a good enough reason to mine the moon
The moon's much more interesting to mine than asteroids. Why? Because it's permanently close to Earth (and inexhaustibly huge). We can get to it in a couple of days and easily launch large amounts of material from the moon to Earth orbit, bootstrapping our space industry.

>Veeky Forums is full of people claiming that science is a waste of money.
Seriously?

Money could be going to helping those on welfare and other social programs. It's a waste for some fucking Rock dirt.

This isn't science. This is big old nugget of profiteering with a thin science shell.

They're not spending $800 million to get this data. They're using this data as an excuse to get $800 million.

Remember that money is never destroyed by spending, it is always going into someone's hand.

But mining astroids is totally science and not done for profit at all

>Developing cost effective space transportation is not NASA's job

It's only not NASA's job because they tried and dramatically failed.

Do you understand the difference between earning and embezzling?

If someone goes out and collects ten tons of platinum-group metals, and brings it back to Earth and sells it, then the people they sell it to will be able to use it, for catalysts, and crucibles, and other useful things, which will increase industrial output and efficiency, making more and better goods available on the market at lower prices, benefitting society, and they're on a moral level with a factory worker, they're just better at generating value.

If someone does a song and dance for bureaucrats and then kicks a couple million dollars back to congressmen's campaign funds for their support, and collects hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money for doing a busywork project of completely disproportionate cost to it scientific value, then they're on a moral level with a pickpocket, they're just better at getting away with ti.

>embezzling

its not embezzling, its a boondoggle. big difference.

I'd argue that it shouldn't be NASA's job to develop cost effective space transportation. It is worth it for them to develop crazy new technologies that are too risky for private companies to invest in so that private companies can take it from there. There is no reason for the government to be doing things private companies will do.

>> SLS
Is not something NASA should be working on. We know how to build rockets, private companies can take care of that. NASA should be pushing boundaries working on ISRU, closed loop life support, robotics, and technologies that are less developed, not designing an old rocket but bigger

>> everyday there are asteroids we could easily slam into by launching a couple weeks ahead of time
Yes, there are, but ones large enough to have regolith are expensive to intercept with launches a couple of weeks before hand.

Asteroids smaller than 200 meters rotate fast, leaving little regolith to mine and making intercept more difficult.

space.com/33987-why-nasa-picked-asteroid-bennu-osiris-rex-mission.html

NASA has a handy trajectory search tool for asteroids. So searching for asteroids for a one way rendezvous with a max magnitude of that of bennu(20), asteroid size being roughly proportional to magnitude, with a 60 day (a couple weeks) transit duration, from now to 2025 there are 4 that take > field testing
Is expensive any way you slice it

>> moon's much more interesting.
We have samples of the moon, and from what we have found there is not much hydrogen(40-50ppm), nitrogen(100ppm), or carbon(80-200ppm).(data taken from lunarpedia).

Sure, there might be more in the Moon's permanently shaded cold trap regions, but such areas are hard to get to.

Carbonaceous meteorites have been shown to contain fuckloads of these elements relative to lunar regolith. Like up to 20% bound water, 6% organic matter, and 0.3% nitrogen.

So what does all this buy you for space industry? Fuel is an obvious one, but the big one is that these elements are useful for extractive metallurgy. Processing silicon, aluminum, etc can be done with such elements, it's just a lot harder. Carbon is also great because that enables you to make steel.

Not to mention carbonaceous meteorites have been tend to have large amounts of native metals too. It's everything you'd want for permanent space industry.

I totally agree we should mine the Moon, but carbonaceous asteroids could provide much of the resources the Moon is missing.

nss.org/settlement/spaceresources/resources3.html

Well isn't the big thing with asteroids how little delta-v it takes to return to earth? Much better than from the moon.

>Is expensive any way you slice it
It's not even a question of cost, needing things to work on the first time without field testing will always rule out the best methods of doing things.

Yeah, but rendezvousing with them when they are near earth is pretty bad for getting back from them in terms of delta V.

>> SLS
>Is not something NASA should be working on. We know how to build rockets, private companies can take care of that.
Hah! We don't know how to build rockets, and that's exactly why it's important to have people working on it other than NASA's old profiteering gang!

At this stage in the game, the launch vehicle isn't some little chore to hand off, it's the most essential and improvable system to such an extreme degree that everything else is a rounding error by comparison.

Orbital launch should not cost more than a hundred times the market value of the energy of the object put in orbit in the form of electricity, but it still costs about a million times as much, just like it did when we first started. Expendable rockets are around 10% efficient at converting the higher heating value of their fuel to payload orbital energy.

The fuel is cheap. The rockets are reasonably energy efficient. What the flying fuck is going on? Well, not only do we still throw away the launch vehicle after one use, we build them in very expensive ways. It's been obvious from very early on we either needed to reuse the launch vehicle, in a way that requires only a little basic maintenance between flights, or build it very cheaply, with parts spit out by a fast-working machine taking cheap materials.

What did NASA do? They spent ten years and $40 billion building a pseudoreusable vehicle, and it was obvious in the first few flights that its marginal launch costs were not just higher than existing expendable vehicles, but several times the cost (the expendable fuel tank alone cost as much as a complete expendable vehicle of the same capacity as the shuttle). So they operated it for THIRTY YEARS with negligible improvements.

NASA is corrupt. Has been since the Apollo days. Not just inefficient in the usual clunky government agency way like road maintenance, things they do in space literally cost multiple orders of magnitude more than they should.

They proved the basic technology for large rockets. They do not need to prove it again. Once the basics of a technology are proven, private companies can take care of making it more efficient. They should be developing tech from TRL 1 to TRL 9 rather than just reusing a bunch of TRL 9 tech.

At least that is what's supposed to happen.

You keep talking about this stuff as if NASA is sufficiently honest and competent to perform the work, and it's just a matter of choosing what to put them to work on.

>They proved the basic technology for large rockets.
When NASA was formed, they were transferred complete teams and projects already underway from the US military, led by men promoted in the unforgiving selective process of WW II, and staffed with captives from the Nazi V-2 program.

People have this idea that "NASA is who put a man on the moon", but the truth is they inherited complete teams and nearly-ready technology, and mostly slathered thick layers of bureaucratic inefficiency for icing on the cake that was already in the oven when they showed up.

And people have this idea that "NASA is who has explored the solar system with robotic probes", but you can credit the fact that they get results (albeit very expensively) at all to the academic JPL (a Caltech lab running on NASA money) retaining considerable independence in their staffing and operations from the NASA civil service bureaucracy.

NASA shouldn't be doing anything. NASA should be burned to the ground, everyone involved sacked and banned from government employment for life, and a variety of smaller, more efficient agencies given its responsibilities.

>but you can credit the fact that they get results (albeit very expensively) at all to the academic JPL (a Caltech lab running on NASA money) retaining considerable independence in their staffing and operations from the NASA civil service bureaucracy.
You can try but JPL does not run every Solar System mission and the ones they do are under the stewardship of NASA. NASA sets the budget, NASA chooses the mission and deals with the technical studies. They're not very independent at all when it comes to actual missions.

>NASA sets the budget, NASA chooses the mission and deals with the technical studies. They're not very independent at all when it comes to actual missions.

>The customer sets the budget, the customer chooses the meal from the menu and deals with eating it. The restaurant is not very independent at all when it comes to actual meals.

JPL pre-existed NASA by two decades. It was not created by some decree from on high, like NASA was, it was selected and promoted from a number of private efforts for getting results, like SpaceX was. They manage their own talent. They build their own teams. They generate their own plans and designs. NASA just picks what it will pay for.

>The customer sets the budget, the customer chooses the meal from the menu and deals with eating it. The restaurant is not very independent at all when it comes to actual meals.
When you're talking about efficiency who is costing the program is rather important but feel free to ignore the point.
>They generate their own plans and designs.
No. The technical studies have been done at the point where missions are approved. At that point it's not clear which center will lead the program

>When you're talking about efficiency
I'm not talking about efficiency. I'm talking about the ability to get things done at all.

Gettings things done is sort of hard to do when every 4 years a new politician comes in and changes the previous politicians plans.

But as I said other groups do get things done, JPL does not have a monopoly on solar system missions.

Know why they do that? Because NASA can't get shit done.

Look at the whole Constellation shitshow, for instance. Can't build a capsule. Can't build a rocket to launch it on.

The Obama administration rearranged the furniture, on advice from the NASA people, not as uninformed meddlers throwing a wrench in NASA's carefully laid plans, but because Ares I and Orion should already have been flying at that point but were now on paper farther from being complete than they were when the project was announced, after years and billions of dollars.

Know why Commercial Crew isn't flying yet? Dragon has been, for all intents and purposes, a passenger capsule from its first flight in 2010. If SpaceX had been asked to fly in passenger-ready configuration (with a LAS and protocols for triggering it), by their own standards, from the first flight, then the launch prices would have been a little higher (LAS isn't free), but the schedule wouldn't have been different (solid-fuel LAS, basically missile-rocket technology rather than space-rocket technology, is something you can pretty much just buy from a contractor and slap on top of your capsule).

Even Dragon 2 could have flown years ago.

NASA's gone completely fucking apeshit with the safety qualifications. They want proof on paper that any capsule is ten times safer than Soyuz before it even flies. They're telling people that they'll do reviews of documentation in weeks, then taking months to do it.

Why? I wish I could say it was as simple as incompetence. They're doing it so they can blame the delays on insufficient funding, and pressure congress to give them more money.

He's being realistic. That happens more often than not. Also, there's no reason humans should be fiddling with space. No good will come of it. It wastes human resources.

wouldn't any asteroid we mine be irradiated as fuck anyway?

we'd have to wait months before doing anything with it.

You wouldn't expect a lot of radioisotopes. No worse than granite, anyway.

Space radiation is not neutron radiation, and relatively few of the cosmic rays are hard enough to cause spallation. It's ionizing radiation, but it doesn't generally make stable isotopes into radioactive ones.

>amino acids and shit. Ya know stuff that life
Life graves electrolytes.

Yeah, that's why we might find weird organic compounds on them. Before radiation, just, C, CO2, nitrogen, sulfides, oxides

Then radiation comes in and breaks bonds randomly, bonds reform randomly and we get shit that shouldn't be there like. Over a fucking long time periods of bonds randomly breaking and forming we get amino acids.

What this guy said.

Whoops fucked up here, radiation can form amino acids this way, but there were probably other processes at work here. Ignore this post.