Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Mars, moon or NEO?

Re: Mars, moon or NEO?
gbaikie — (archived)

"However I claim that a crewed ~9 month NEO mission is better than a return to the moon."
There are tens of thousands of NEOs, we have detected and know the orbits for a couple thousand. Which NEO would you like to sent crew to?
Here my link page for NEOs:
http://members.tripod.com/~gbaikie/rocks.html

"Requires less delta V than landing and taking off from the moon and no landing craft R&D expense, which I think you underestimated in today's R&D climate."
Hmm, perhaps. But I think I know how I could land a crew of 2 on the lunar surface and get them back to Earth for about 1/2 billion- 5 billion should be more than enough if NASA does it right.

"Returns more new science and addresses the important question of what exactly are NEOs made of? Rocks or rubble piles, etc."

Certainly. And NASA and other govt agencies have and are planning a few robotic mission to explore NEOs. We should have more effort detecting NEOs and more money spent on finding out more about them. I would like to see a lot more effort [money spent] towards finding out about NEOs.
It's my opinion that at this point in time, it would cost around 10 billion for NASA to plan and execute a manned mission to any NEO. And as far as money being spent on NEOs- I would rather spend more money on detecting all NEOs down to say 50 meter in diameter- this would be in cost range of hundreds of MILLIONS- total program cost.
[Currently NASA is spending [for detection] a few million per year until 2009 when they expect to find 90% of NEA which are 1 kilometer or larger {tens of million total program cost}]

-Geoffrey Baikie

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (46 posts)