Re: Value of Manned Visit to an Asteroid

On Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:42:12 -0700, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout <joe@xxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article <1173290541.087159.108870@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"are" <Proponent@xxxxxxx> wrote:

There are rumors that because of budget cuts, the Constellation
program will be redirected from the Moon to an asteroid.

Where are these rumors?

There actually has been some talk of that. Not redirecting, but
perhaps doing an asteroid prior to a lunar mission.

It seems highly unlikely to me; a mission to an
asteroid would almost certainly cost substantially more than a lunar
mission. (Yes, the delta-V may be slightly less in some cases, but the
trip times are substantially longer, which will dominate the costs, not
to mention the risks.)

Longer, but not necessarily that long, and the mass you don't need for
the lunar landing and return gives you a lot of life support and
structure for a longer trip. It would also be a good testbed for a
longer trip to Mars. I kind of like the idea myself, as long as it
doesn't actually delay the lunar activities.
.

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