We'we'we gotta save the Bbbuilding and Loan!
Posted on 04/05/2013 1:21:15 PM PDT by oxcart
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top senator says President Barack Obama and NASA are planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon. Then astronauts would explore it in 2021.
Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth.
Nelson, who is chairman of the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee, said Friday that Obama is putting $100 million for the accelerated asteroid mission in the 2014 budget that comes out next week. The money would be used to find the right small asteroid.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
What could possibly go wrong?
/ does it need to be said?
We'we'we gotta save the Bbbuilding and Loan!
“Nelson, who is chairman of the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee”
and, therein, is the problem...
If we were to start today could we even get back to orbit by 2021 without hitching a ride from the Russians?
An Islamoroid? I didn’t know we had any of those. Well, if NASA can make if feel good about itself, I’m probably all for it too.
The astronut speaks...
Why do I think this story is running about four days late.
Dateline probably should have been: 4/1/13?
Just axing
Hows that new wooden Space Shuttle coming along?
It’ll never get off the ground, the tree huggers are protesting! :)
Wouldn’t it be faster if we land it on North Korea?
I wish Ears would leave science to the professionals and stop interjecting his 99 IQ into the mix.
To minimize the risk, this asteroid they're talking about had better be smaller than the one that just struck Russia last month (that baby could've conceivably taken out a large city, had the parameters been a little different), in which case, a hundred million bucks seems excessive.
Better to leave it where it is, imo, and send a robotic probe to it, than bring it back here. Then, if it's found to have lots of platinum, gold, rubies, whatever, let the robots mine it in place and bring the good stuff back, while leaving the worthless stuff where it is.
I thought NASA main objective was to make mooslims feel welcome
Lets not also dismiss the problem of gravitation. It won’t happen fast, but parking a rock at a sufficient distance from the moon could cause enough wobble to disrupt tides, weather, aurorae, etc.
This is a harebrained scheme that could cause real world problems. We’d be better off parking it at a La Grange point and taking trips out to study it.
Nelson is an embarrassment.
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