Astronauts plan $250 million asteroid telescope 'to stop disaster'

[AdamSmith]

A bargain at any price. Instead of the white-elephant Space Station, why doesn't NASA fund things like this?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10776057/Astronauts-plan-250-million-asteroid-telescope-to-stop-disaster.html

[RA1]

Richard Branson can and will (with the help of others). Governments can and sometimes do provide quality products BUT at enormous cost.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Yeah, but that is a little too broad-brush. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which would be the natural home for this kind of mission, is part of NASA but is managed, highly competently and cost-effectively, by CalTech. NASA Langley and other parts of the agency are similarly competent and not blind bureaucratic bumblers.

We have few enough centers of competence left in the US in whatever form that it seems worthwhile not to throw out the baby with the bath.

[AdamSmith]

New topic, but close enough -- there are now plans to build a telescope with a record 39-meter-wide mirror:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/20/spot-alien-life-european-extremely-large-telescope-chilean

Ground-based, not to look for killer asteroids but most everything else. Fascinating, Captain!

[Guest PasadenaCA]

The big issue is what happens after they identify a problem? I've wanted NASA to focus on these things for years, thinking it would drive research into cheaper, heavy lift capacity: a back door way to get people to Mars. They're going to have to change the trajectory of these things, pushing them into the sun, for example. Maybe this new telescope, with the ability to catalog the extent of the problem, will trigger a change in thinking.

[AdamSmith]

There is also thought that asteroid deflection is the real reason to get on with perfecting ion-drive technology: low-thrust, but the most efficient in terms of energy input and maximum reaction from propellant mass. (TY could doubtless explain that much better.)

Providing we get the capability to spot potential impactors in time.

[RA1]

There is no doubt that the JPL and Langley have produced some amazing results but I don't think they have gone so far as to use a common cork as a safety pressure relief valve, something that is perfectly safe, effective and incredibly cheap. This was used on the craft Burt Rutan built to win the prize for first commercial craft to go twice to 100 kilometers of altitude. (Just a little over 300,000 feet.)

The plains/mountain areas of Chile bear a remarkable resemblance to the surface of the moon, do they not? Interesting the lengths man goes to eliminating as much intervening atmosphere while still on earth as possible. Not only are many of these observatory sites remote but also at altitudes somewhat uncomfortable for the various workers/scientists.

Also interesting is how we almost never notice threatening asteroids until the danger is past. In some respects we might as well be blissfully unaware partly because we can to little to nothing to stop them anyway.

Best regards,

RA1