Well, IIRC SpaceX’s Dragon 2 should be ready to start taking people into orbit sometime in 2017 (assuming the additional unmanned tests go well next year)…and their Falcon Heavy lifter could do the mission. So, I don’t think it’s beyond what NASA COULD do. Whether the mission survives the next administration would be more of where the optimism comes in…
I’ll have to recommend a stage one objective that we confiscate all their yardsticks and require them to work solely in metric measures to prevent a replay of the Mars Climate Orbiter incident.
Falcon Heavy Demo Flight 1 isn’t even scheduled to fly until mid-2016. The launch abort system test of the crewed Dragon likely won’t occur until the end of that year at earliest, and further flight tests to validate crewed Dragon operation and reentry before NASA would approve for Commercial Crew certification. SpaceX has a large number of commercial and CRS flights on manifest that have been stacked up because of the CRS-7 failure. There is practically no way that SpaceX could be conducting crewed flights by 2017. Late 2018 or 2019 is the earliest initial operational capability, and that is just to Low Earth Orbit, not to lunar orbit or a libration point.
Again, crewed transport isn’t of the capture and redirect segment. That portion will have to be performed robotically because of the duration, and the crewed segment would occur later after the object is placed into the Earth or lunar orbit.
Stranger
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Falcon Heavy Demo Flight 1 isn’t even scheduled to fly until mid-2016. The launch abort system test of the crewed Dragon likely won’t occur until the end of that year at earliest, and further flight tests to validate crewed Dragon operation and reentry before NASA would approve for Commercial Crew certification. SpaceX has a large number of commercial and CRS flights on manifest that have been stacked up because of the CRS-7 failure. There is practically no way that SpaceX could be conducting crewed flights by 2017. Late 2018 or 2019 is the earliest initial operational capability, and that is just to Low Earth Orbit, not to lunar orbit or a libration point.
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Maybe my drive by post was confusing, but you are talking about multiple things here. I was saying that (according to SpaceX, at least the last time I looked at this stuff) they are planning to test Dragon 2 unmanned next year, with possible manned tests in 2017. Yes, that would be to LEO. And yes, Falcon Heavy is a separate system that also is under development and needs testing. Putting it all together is the same. But we are talking mid-2020s for this possible mission, IIRC, so it’s not beyond the scope of reality. Engineering wise, assuming these systems all work out, it’s feasible. Politically and from a funding perspective, I’ll be surprised of the mission doesn’t get cut by the next administration and we start down some other path, which will get changed when the next administration comes to power.
Yeah, totally got that. Had it before in fact. As for the capture part, NASA has some vague plans for that already, but I don’t see that as anything beyond what they COULD do today if they really wanted to, assuming we are talking about something relatively small…in the 10 meters or less range, which is what I assume they are looking at. Getting to the captured asteroid I also don’t see as an insurmountable challenge, technically or from and engineering perspective with pretty much technology in development today. I don’t know the time table for NASAs own lifter/capsule system (Orion IIRC), but I’m pretty sure SpaceX could do the mission in that time frame if the funding is there.