Phobos & Deimos - Worthy targets for Martian exploration?

cIclops · 2007-12-02 08:23:14

To visit not-so-much; I mentioned earlier that all you really need is just a CEV and a tether - no dedicated lander nessicary although if they chose to develop one for NEOs the Martian moons would be applicable for it as well.

Orion won't have enough delta-v or supplies to perform a NEO by itself so it'll need an extra module. This could be the Lunar Lander, such a mission would make a great shake down mission. Astronauts would also have use of the cabin and its airlock giving them enough space and better access to the asteroid. Tethering to the Orion or the Lander may be safer than to the surface. Orion could stand off near the surface and use its thrusters to explore the whole body.

There's more discussion here

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-12-02 09:20:58

Your standard orion CM/SM is probably a little small for a NEO, and certainly doesn't have room for any amount of surface equipment. Especially considering such missions are expected to last up to 90 day.
A relatively simple inflatable hab, perhaps even an off the self Bigelow would provide all the extra space needed, along with an airlock and a mini-EDS. All of which would be short evolutionary step from either Lunar or LEO architecture, and a stepping stone to Mars. Its a good platform for post CEV lunar sorties consisting of a 6 man or more multinational crew.
In fact, If Mars is done right and we put the needed infrastructure in Mars orbit and on ground early on capable of supporting a growing population, we can dispense with large and complicated long duration transit craft and send one or several of these cheap little habs with 6-8 people on a sub 90 day trip either way when the launch window opens up. The short transit times keep the health risks of zero-g and solar flares to a minimum, and they can recover in Mars orbit, and they don't have bring everything with them, cause we did our homework on the surface. It's forgotten perk of the BSG method.;)
And yes, one of these is more than capable of Phobos-Deimos mission. Almost indefinitely if were bringing up fuel from the surface.

If we were to do a Phobos Mission, we'd have to stay for as long as a Mars mission though. They'd have to bring alot of empty fuel tanks into Phobos Orbit, and some kind of oven to bake out the volitiles and a means to collect the gasses and store them in the tanks, perhaps liquifying them first. Water might do, if we had a nuclear heating source, or we can split it into hydrogen and oxygen to be used in a chemical rocket. Now if they are going to be there for 26 months, is that too much time to collect all that fuel or not enough. If the astronauts collect all the fuel they need and they still have time left over then what?

Commodore · 2007-12-02 13:34:50

If we were to do a Phobos Mission, we'd have to stay for as long as a Mars mission though. They'd have to bring alot of empty fuel tanks into Phobos Orbit, and some kind of oven to bake out the volitiles and a means to collect the gasses and store them in the tanks, perhaps liquifying them first. Water might do, if we had a nuclear heating source, or we can split it into hydrogen and oxygen to be used in a chemical rocket. Now if they are going to be there for 26 months, is that too much time to collect all that fuel or not enough. If the astronauts collect all the fuel they need and they still have time left over then what?

Yeah, your still going to be limited to launch windows. But since were likely be using fuel derived from the Martian atmosphere, theres no reason we can't use that to support continuous Phobos-Deimos operation for a separate crew. All we need is some reusable fuel carriers.

John_Frazer · 2008-01-20 18:41:44

Long past time for this. The fixation on going to our Moon first, as if it had any relevance with "on the way to Mars" has been irritating. The whole Shrub space "vision" from the beginning has looked like it was thrown together from tabloid-level common-wisdom by White House PR flacks and Karl Rove (which, of course, it was)

[url=http://www.aviationweek.com]www.aviationweek.com
Space Leaders Work To Replace Lunar Base With Manned Asteroid Missions
Jan 18, 2008[/url]
By Craig Covault
Some of the most influential leaders of the space community are quietly working to offer the next U.S. president an alternative to President Bush's "vision for space exploration"--one that would delete a lunar base and move instead toward manned missions to asteroids along with a renewed emphasis on Earth environmental spacecraft.
Top U.S. planetary scientists, several astronauts and former NASA division directors will meet privately at Stanford University on Feb. 12-13 to define these sweeping changes to the NASA/Bush administration Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).
Abandoning the Bush lunar base concept in favor of manned asteroid landings could also lead to much earlier manned flights to Mars orbit, where astronauts could land on the moons Phobos or Deimos.
Their goals for a new array of missions also include sending astronauts to Lagrangian points, 1 million mi. from Earth, where the Earth's and Sun's gravity cancel each other out and spacecraft such as replacements for the Hubble Space Telescope could be parked and serviced much like Hubble.
The "alternate vision" the group plans to offer would urge far greater private-sector incentives to make ambitious human spaceflight plans a reality.
There would also be some different "winners and losers" compared with the Bush vision. If the lunar base is deleted, the Kennedy Space Center could lose additional personnel because there would be fewer Ares V launches and no lunar base infrastructure work that had been assigned to KSC. On the other hand, the Goddard Space Flight Center and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration near Washington, along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, would gain with the increased space environmental-monitoring goal.
Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now fear a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the space program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars operations--the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions. The first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan.
If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead be flown to an asteroid in about 2025.
Participants in the upcoming meeting contend there's little public enthusiasm for a return to the Moon, especially among youth, and that the Bush administration has laid out grandiose plans but has done little to provide the funding to realize them on a reasonable timescale.
Planners say the Bush plan is beginning to crumble, with only companies that have won major funding still enthusiastic about the existing plan.
"It's becoming painfully obvious that the Moon is not a stepping-stone for manned Mars operations but is instead a stumbling block," says Robert Farquhar, a veteran of planning and operating planetary and deep-space missions.
The prospect of challenging new manned missions to asteroids is drawing far more excitement among young people than a "return" (as in going backward) to the Moon, says Lou Friedman, who heads The Planetary Society, the country's largest space interest group.
The society is co-hosting the invitation-only VSE replanning session with Stanford. A lot of people going to the meeting believe "the Moon is so yesterday," says Friedman.
"It just does not feel right. And there's growing belief that, at high cost, it offers minimal engineering benefit for later manned Mars operations."
Under the alternative VSE, even smaller, individual lunar sorties would be reduced, or perhaps deleted entirely, says Noel W. Hinners, who had extensive Apollo lunar science and system responsibility at Bell Laboratories before heading all of NASA's science program development. He also led Lockheed Martin Spaceflight System.
Hinners believes the group should examine dropping all the lunar sorties to accelerate the human push to Mars in the revised VSE proposal to the new administration.
The James Webb Space Telescope, with a 21.3-ft.-dia. mirror, will be launched in 2013 to one of these "L" points. With little fanfare, it was recently approved to carry a lightweight Crew Exploration Vehicle docking system just in case a manned CEV has to make a house call a million miles from Earth for emergency servicing. A growing corps of scientists, engineers and astronauts are emerging to argue for this chance to accelerate manned spaceflight operations outward well beyond the Moon--faster toward Mars than can be done by using the Moon as a stepping-stone only 240,000 mi. away.
"The notion that the Moon could serve as a proving ground for Mars missions strains credulity," says Farquhar, who holds the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair for Aerospace at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He also was mission director for the Applied Physics Laboratory's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission that was the first to land a spacecraft on an asteroid (see photo, p. 27).
A return to manned Moon operations has become "a bridge too far" in the Bush administration's VSE, says Wes Huntress, another former planetary mission manager. Huntress is director of the Washington-based Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory and had a long career at JPL and NASA headquarters, where he led NASA space science development and operations--including the highly successful Discovery planetary mission series. He's also helping to organize the Stanford workshop that will have about several dozen participants, including several top NASA and contractor exploration managers.
"There is little left of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration except the real need to retire the space shuttle," he says. "Even this goal is being pursued with great sacrifice from all other parts of the agency because the administration has simply not put its money where its mouth is."
"Inadequate NASA budgets are leading to collapse of the VSE Moon focus and to incredibly slow progress for the Moon," says Hinners.
"The nation's space enterprise is under great strain even to build Ares I and Orion CEV," Huntress stresses. "There are alternate destinations for human deep-space missions that do not require building a lot of new hardware to [come and go between Earth and the Moon]. These are missions to near-Earth asteroids or to scout the Sun-Earth Lagrangian points for future space telescope construction and servicing," he notes.
The Earth-Sun Lagrangian points (also called libration points) are at the very edge of the Earth's gravitational well, and a mission would represent a first excursion to the limit of Earth's influence in the Solar System--a significant step beyond Apollo, says Huntress. Missions sent to "L" points can stop just there, orbiting only above and below the ecliptic plane without any significant use of station-keeping fuel. Also, L points offer a much cleaner option for advanced astronomy than the dusty lunar surface, where you have to land everything in addition to launching it.
"As the nation seems to be turning to environmental threats to our own planet, a mission to a near-Earth asteroid to assess their nature for good or ill would also seem to be a real winner," says Huntress.
These stepping-stones would allow for the development of a broader vision of human spaceflight than simply reinventing Apollo.
Major lunar-related contracts for the Constellation Crew Exploration Vehicle Orion command ship, a lunar lander design and Ares V launcher have yet to be awarded, giving the next administration some breathing room in post-Bush administration VSE contracting.
Some basic asteroid mission design work--part of it volunteer--using the CEV hardware is already underway at the Johnson Space Center (AW&ST Sept. 25, 2006, p. 21). Other, more in-depth and long-standing manned asteroid analysis is underway under International Astronautical Assn. and Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum sponsorship.
Scott Hubbard, consulting professor in the Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics Dept., conceived the reassessment meeting. Hubbard was previously the director of NASA Ames Research Center and, before that, NASA Mars program director. "We have planned this invitation-only workshop to elicit frank and open discussion about the future of the 'vision' as the administration changes," he says.
"The Stanford workshop will address a broad range of issues touching on many elements of space exploration. The attendees will discuss the balance between space science and human exploration, the need for continuing and enhancing Earth science observations, the relative utility of humans and robotics, and progress or impediments to human exploration of Mars, asteroids and the Moon," says Hubbard. "In addition, the workshop will discuss the status of access to space and the emerging entrepreneurial space industry. "This is the kind of debate that will go on--beyond whether a lunar base really makes sense. But manned asteroid missions first--ahead of a lunar base--are drawing strong attention," he says. Hubbard and Friedman are co-hosting the event, along with former astronaut Kathy Thornton, associate dean of the University of Virginia's Science, Technology and Society Dept. Thornton flew on four space shuttle missions, including the initial critical repair of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.
The alternative vision would also include far greater private-sector incentives for participation at all levels, an area public surveys cite as very important. Missions to asteroids and Lagrangian points, for example, are likely to carry along Bigelow-type commercial inflatable modules. A recent informal space program survey by The New York Times found substantial public frustration about NASA's doing what entrepreneurs could do better.
Under the alternative concepts, astronauts using an upgraded CEV would initially be sent on long-duration missions, not to the Moon, but to land on asteroids where they would sample terrain perhaps more ancient than the Moon's. These visits would also help develop concepts for diverting such near-Earth objects, should they threaten a potentially devastating impact on Earth.
Although it may be hundreds of years before used operationally, an emergency asteroid diversion would be "the ultimate 'green mission'--one that could save a large portion of the Earth from impact destruction," says Friedman.
To reinforce that point, he notes that on Jan. 30, a 150-ft.-long asteroid will pass close to Mars. The asteroid visit and Lagrangian mission concepts would use much of the same CEV Ares I and Ares V heavy-lift booster infrastructure, but in ways that would be much faster stepping-stones to Mars than developing a manned lunar base. Asteroid and Lagrangian point missions would each last several weeks or months. Both the libration points and asteroids would be about 1 million mi. from Earth, requiring operations more like much longer trips to Mars at least 40-100 million mi. away.
Robotic options for all mission elements also will be reviewed, and one working group will be devoted to better defining manned versus robotic tradeýýoffs. Another issue is international participation.
Aviation Week discussed an unrelated European International Space Station topic with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin last week, who in comments aside also addressed the basic Moon/Mars issues between the U.S. and Europe (see p. 28).
"A large portion of the scientific community in the U.S. also prefers Mars over the Moon," he acknowledged. But "interest in the Moon is driven by goals in addition to and beyond the requirements of the science community. It is driven by the imperatives that ensue from a commitment to become a spacefaring society, not primarily by scientific objectives, though such objectives do indeed constitute a part of the overall rationale.
"We continue to experience intense international interest concerning our plans for lunar exploration," Griffin told Aviation Week.
With Frank Morring, Jr., in Washington.
This story appears in the Jan. 21 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology, p. 24

Of course, there have been several threads dealing with these topics: I'll link to them (and others which have good mentions of them, while beating around other topics).

[url=http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4963&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=martian+moons]New Mars Forum Index -> Human missions -> Phobos & Deimos - Worthy targets for Martian exploration?
Sep 27, 2006[/url]

[url=http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2542]New Mars Forum Index -> Interplanetary transportation -> Phobos and Deimos - The importance of Mars's moons to exploration
Jan 18, 2002[/url]

[url=http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4735]New Mars Forum Index -> Human missions -> Near Earth Object (NEO) missions
Jun 15, 2006[/url]

RedStreak · 2008-01-20 18:49:01

I personally still favor going to the Moon. You won't get a target of signifigance any closer than it and it has advantages. If we said "Mars" we'd still be flying the shuttle and Mars with all it's precious dreamers would be stuck in a pipe dream like it's been since Apollo died.

samy · 2008-01-20 18:51:04

I strongly endorse this article.

cIclops · 2008-01-21 02:28:24

If this meeting of unnamed people happens and if it announces a new plan to visit NEOs and Lagrangian points instead of the Moon then this would be a bad plan. NEOs are interesting places to visit, but they are far longer voyages than the moon. They are not helpful for testing habitats or low gravity physiology research. Lagrange points are even less interesting, there's nothing there to explore. The Moon is far more accessible, has a far larger area for exploration, a great variety of resources for ISRU and low gravity. NEO's should be part of the plan to go to Mars but not the whole plan. It's would be a very limited and poor vision indeed.

samy · 2008-01-21 04:33:33

NEOs are interesting places to visit, but they are far longer voyages than the moon.

But shorter than Mars. We already know there isn't all that much interesting on the Moon, we might as well look at the next closest things before Mars.

They are not helpful for testing habitats or low gravity physiology research.

They can house any habitat that would go on the Moon. Same vacuum. As for gravity research, they will be much better for microgravity research than Moon with its fairly heavy gravity. And if we want higher gravity, we can finally make those experiments to spin asteroids for artificial gravity. You cannot try to implement artificial gravity on ISS (too small), Moon (too big) or Mars (too big) -- NEOs are the only viable option to learn how to do it right, and once that's accomplished, we can have *any gravity we desire* on any given NEO, whereas the Moon will always be locked onto a single setting.

Lagrange points are even less interesting, there's nothing there to explore.

But there are entire cities there waiting to be built!!

cIclops · 2008-01-21 05:10:00

The eighth continent is a vast unexplored area with an area greater than Africa. Knowledge of its composition, origin and internal structure is very basic. Only six small areas have been visited, all of them on the near side and around the equator. There's much to be discovered on the Moon.

Voyages to NEOs will take at least a month. Because they are in solar orbit, journeys will have launch windows several months apart, this makes supporting an Outpost very difficult and expensive.

NEO habitats will need to be a very different design from those on planetary bodies with fractional gravity. They will need to be anchored. Fast rotation rates will cause rapid thermal changes. NEO enviroments are much closer to ISS than the Moon. Building another zero gravity inspace habitat is a waste of resources. How can artificial gravity be implemented on a NEO?

It's the 1/6 gravity on the Moon that is most interesting! It's between the zero gravity of ISS and the 1/3 gravity of Mars. Studies of the effects of lunar gravity will help to predict what will happen to people on Mars. For conjunction class missions people will have to stay on Mars for over a year, it's very important to understand these effects.

Maybe a NEO Outpost can be setup, it could provide experience for a Phobos base, but it would need a huge increase in funding, otherwise it would delay Mars missions.

RedStreak · 2008-01-21 12:19:09

Regarding both the Moon of Earth and the Moons of Mars, both are underestimated stepping stone into space. The people writing these articles are slitting the wrists of the space community to put it utterly bluntly. Instead of ranting I'll elaborate on the pros/cons of visitng Luna, Phobos, and Deimos...

Luna is a rare body; unlike Deimos or Phobos it is a massive world not a spec compared to its parental planet. It is a 3-day journey away from Earth and far enough that we loose most of the protection Earth offered to LEO spacecraft except the fact that Earth is always close. Launch windows to Luna open up monthly rather than once every few years and would be done more out of our convienience rather than a celestial happenstance. When the time comes that strip mining on Earth proves unprofitable, unethical, and un-ecological it will not be Mars, nor the asteroids, but Luna that, while perhaps not as delta-v 'easy' as a NEO rendevous, will be relied upon. NEOs are still too massive to move by any human means, except by a full out nuclear assult which'd be best reserved for averting a colliding one. We have not mapped out NEO orbits, the compositions, or their orbital periods - any of which can provide problems. Certainly visit any asteroid we can predict and rendevous with safely, but they are still largely a matter for our robotic emissaries to proscpect for us. Luna, however, is even now being mapped by several foreign nations and been mapped by our own on several occassions. It is a familiar body we understand, and given a choice between the familiar and unknown when chosing a place to live, we go with the known while we peak at the unknown.

Phobos and Deimos are vastly underestimated, and the Russians obviously know this. Problem is their budget at best can do piddle otherwise they'd have sent numerous craft to both moons and Mars itself. They are light bodies that may be tantalizing resources and in an optimal position near a planet that will retain our fascination for centuries to come! Deimos I vote for because its orbit is slightly more accessible to an incoming spacecraft and it's near-syncronus orbit with Mars; if we ever practice modifying orbits Deimos could be lowered into a syncronus orbit around Mars. I think, like Luna, Deimos and Phobos could be used as Martian testing grounds...and in turn staging points if they prove to have readily extractable resources.

The Vision is meant to apply to many things, not just the Moon. However don't shoot a gift horse in the mouth like these article writers seem crazy enough to.

John_Frazer · 2008-01-21 13:46:58

If this meeting of unnamed people happens and if it announces a new plan to visit NEOs and Lagrangian points instead of the Moon then this would be a bad plan. NEOs are interesting places to visit, but they are far longer voyages than the moon.

but there's something there to work with, immediately on the first mission's touchdown.
There's free energy, as much as you want, 24/365 (or whatever the particular rock's day/night cycle is, it's irrelevant because you can aim mirrors and power beams from/to anywhere near/on it)

They are not helpful for testing habitats or low gravity physiology research.

With free access to anything from zero/microgravity to any level of gravity you might want? With relatively easy possibility of building/booststrapping habitats with full shielding and full Earth gravity to remove any pressing need to rotate crews home... The list goes on & on, of things you can do which are utterly impossible on/in any large body.

The Moon is far more accessible, has a far larger area for exploration, a great variety of resources for ISRU and low gravity.

They call the Moon the slagpile of the solar system, beause its "resources" are about what an asteroid miner would toss out as not economical to process further.
It makes more astronautical sense to go to NEAs to start an infrastructure, to allow reasonable access to the Moon. By the time you've got asteroidal resosurces, the Moon is irrelevant as a resource base.

NEO's should be part of the plan to go to Mars but not the whole plan. It's would be a very limited and poor vision indeed.

By giving us leverage to open the rest of the solar system? I don't see it.
Not only volatiles, which the Moon almost utterly lacks, (unless you posit all the infrastructure to get at the little at the Lunar poles -which came in from asteroids in the first place) but metals which could finance the entire space effort and organics & volatiles which are needed before you can open the Moon's surface to regular access.

NEOs are still too massive to move by any human means, except by a full out nuclear assult which'd be best reserved for averting a colliding one.

Not according to a few decades worth of studies in all areas of astronautical engineering. There have been plans since the late '70s to bring back a small one or a chunk of a larger one, and they're all far more beneficial than going back to our Moon, or more likely than colonizing Mars (with expendable rockets).
The valuable metals in a small, typical stony asteroid would more than pay back the mission investment, but pay off the national debt. You'd still have several hundred kilotonnes of iron, aluminum, rare earths, organics and water to play with, building GEO antennae platforms for more profits, interplanetary stages for travel, and space habitats for the workers & scientists.

I fail to see the problem with a longer trip time, than going to our Moon. If you want to test long duration space flight, you need to be in space, not on the Moon, and if you want to experiment with variable G spin R&D, you need to be in space. If you want to bootstrap our way to a more robust space infrastructure, you need more than the dry desert on the Moon.
So it's a shorter trip to get to the Moon: You can take more payload to an NEA, you get better resources, more easily, with cheaper, more efficient rockets (even a solar heated steam rocket, for that matter. Lots safer than the contained explosions we need to get down to & off from the Moon. Working at an NEA you can also get fully shielded full Earth G, which is impossible on the Moon.

BTW, the only application for nuclear power seems to be reactors for power generation in small compact applications that can't manage large mirror areas, or nuclear thermal rockets (or nuclear pluse, IMO). Nothing about nuclear arsenals or "assaults" to it.

samy · 2008-01-21 16:26:58

The valuable metals in a small, typical stony asteroid would more than pay back the mission investment, but pay off the national debt.

I agree with every other statement you've made, John, but can you back this one up?

cIclops · 2008-01-22 04:44:20

Thanks for responding in such detail. Your points:

but there's something there to work with, immediately on the first mission's touchdown. There's free energy, as much as you want, 24/365 (or whatever the particular rock's day/night cycle is, it's irrelevant because you can aim mirrors and power beams from/to anywhere near/on it)

There's the same amount of solar energy per unit area on a NEO as on the Moon. Constructing mirrors and beaming power around is also applicable on the Moon. It's also very expensive, complicated and unnecessary for the first missions.

With free access to anything from zero/microgravity to any level of gravity you might want? With relatively easy possibility of building/booststrapping habitats with full shielding and full Earth gravity to remove any pressing need to rotate crews home... The list goes on & on, of things you can do which are utterly impossible on/in any large body.

NEOs are effectively zero gravity environments. Full Earth gravity? How can higher levels of gravity be economically produced?

They call the Moon the slagpile of the solar system, beause its "resources" are about what an asteroid miner would toss out as not economical to process further.
It makes more astronautical sense to go to NEAs to start an infrastructure, to allow reasonable access to the Moon. By the time you've got asteroidal resources, the Moon is irrelevant as a resource base.

Starting an infrastructure is step two after the the initial exploration and science. It also requires a lot of new technology for ISRU, material handling and storage. This industrial infrastructure will be enormously expensive and will be highly specialized, probably first extracting Oxygen.

Hey no need to insult the Moon! The soil is more than 40% Oxygen, the most useful resource of all for space exploration and settlement. After extracting the Oxygen, the "slag" left over is 10% Mg, 12% Al and 22% Fe - all useful metals. The Moon is covered in impact craters, these are the results of asteroid impacts, asteroids of every type. They can also be mined and processed. However, what will will these metals be used for without complex expensive processing facilities to make alloys? And then what use are these alloys without even more complex and expensive production facilties?

By giving us leverage to open the rest of the solar system? I don't see it. Not only volatiles, which the Moon almost utterly lacks, (unless you posit all the infrastructure to get at the little at the Lunar poles -which came in from asteroids in the first place) but metals which could finance the entire space effort and organics & volatiles which are needed before you can open the Moon's surface to regular access.

The Lunar Outpost does not depend on discovering volatiles, it's merely a tiny base to support long duration exploration. Dreams of an industrial infrastructure are all very nice, but they are totally impractical and uneconomic with current technology and funding levels (or even double). This is work for the future, this will happen eventually but doing it first is wrong, it will slow down the very exploration and science that are needed to make it economically successful. The horse must be in front of the cart or it won't go anywhere!

samy · 2008-01-22 04:53:23

There's the same amount of solar energy per unit area on a NEO as on the Moon. Constructing mirrors and beaming power around is also applicable on the Moon. It's also very expensive, complicated and unnecessary for the first missions.

One advantage NEOs have over the Moon re: solar power is that facilities will be much easier to construct in microgravity. On the moon, an astronaut might be able to move a 100kg array -- at a NEO, an astronaut might be able to move a 1000kg array.

cIclops · 2008-01-22 07:34:34

One advantage NEOs have over the Moon re: solar power is that facilities will be much easier to construct in microgravity. On the moon, an astronaut might be able to move a 100kg array -- at a NEO, an astronaut might be able to move a 1000kg array.

It's also a disadvantage, things float about in zero gravity, everything has to be anchored or tethered.

samy · 2008-01-22 07:38:20

I suppose, but I think the ability to move much heavier things I think is a bigger gain so I think it's a net plus...but YMMV.

cIclops · 2008-01-22 07:45:08

Things also include the astronauts themselves. They won't be able to drive or walk about as they did on the Moon.

samy · 2008-01-22 07:46:11

No, instead they can fly...I'm not sure that's a negative.

RedStreak · 2008-01-22 11:43:41

No, instead they can fly...I'm not sure that's a negative.

True but it's not so much fly as "float" when you're talking about space. Unless they have an MME or "jetpack" of some sort on an astronaut is helpless adrift. Either jetpacks or tethers each have their merits, but since the MME unit developed from the shuttle is still considered bulky and not cost effective tethers might have the advantage of simpilicity and cost-effectiveness - but likely to put UP those tethers you'd need the jetpack I suppose.

So you need both

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