NASA's New Target

to get public interest, sounds like NASA is getting into the entertainment field.

They should try astronaut trading cards first.

<Something like, say, landing astronauts on a distant rock hurtling through space at 15 miles per second.>

I thought Bruce Willis and a bunch of rednecks had already done this.

you said it,

whats that, fact imitating art.

wheres the purpose?

Are you saying that once something has been done in fiction, there's no point in doing it in fact?

The purpose is scientific research - asteroids are gold mines of early solar system materials; resources - at some point we'll want to harvest these puppies; and self preservation - the knowledge and ability to travel to and land on an asteroid (and deploy some kind of diversionary mitigation) will someday save the species, since the odds of a planet altering collision are 100%.

Hello bhankiii,

no, technology gain is worth the effort, what I am saying is how it was put. Doing a risky operation to gain public interest.

Its the marketing, as a engineer I can recognize the value, How its being marketed to the uninformed public as exciting adventure, instead of the value as a potential industry.

I realize that its taxpayers money that is going to subsidise this, but your will also get a lobbyist (that wants money for his project) that will take this taxpayer paid adventure and label it as such and nothing more.

I may have posted light banter to a degree, but you do get my point?

emphasize payoff, and not some vacation or movie, like your post;

"The purpose is scientific research - asteroids are gold mines of early solar system materials; resources - at some point we'll want to harvest these puppies; and self preservation - the knowledge and ability to travel to and land on an asteroid (and deploy some kind of diversionary mitigation) will someday save the species, since the odds of a planet altering collision are 100%."

I guess I don't know what you're talking about. This is an article by popsci.com, not a NASA press release.

But, space exploration is, by its very nature, an adventure. There's no reason not to sell it as such. Joe Tax Payer doesn't care about the pursuit of knowledge - he just wants us to go somewhere and plant a flag, send back pretty pictures so we can feel good about ourselves.

like I said earlier I may be talking light banter, but since you point out that is was not a press release, my mistake.

The point I was making is Joe Lobbyist, who is trying his damist, to get His share of the national budget is more of the threat.

Do you think we would have time to get people out to an asteroid after some unpredicted disturbance causes one to head for Earth? Remote modification of the trajectory (using e.g. laser ablation) really does look much more practical. That way we can steer clear of collisions for as long as there is a society worth saving (whoops - I really don't want to start that argument).

I suspect you would have to colonise an awful lot of asteroids to have any hope of being near enough to a disturbed one to have any significant advantage over using lower-solar-orbit based techniques.

"(whoops - I really don't want to start that argument)."

Now you did it, hypothesising an event is one thing, dealing with one that is happing is another.