Later this month, NASA will start talking publicly about a plan to put humans on an asteroid and bring them back to Earth again. The Telegraph has a preview.

  • Sceadugenga

    I was excited until the “bring them back to Earth again” part.

    • zarray

      Lets send up Newt

  • MarcVader

     The way I see it: Putting robots in space = science. Putting humans in space (further out than our moon) = PR. I think this is true until we’ve truly mastered doing science with robots, and we’ve just started.

    Unfortunately this kind of PR with humans costs way more than doing science with robots. So even less real science can be conducted with NASA’s budget restrictions, much less! Makes no sense. Unless of course if you don’t care about science at all, but just want to see some Americans walking on stuff before anybody else. ಠ_ಠ

    • Cocomaan

      PR = the only way NASA is likely to get money.

    • chf64

      Robots can’t plant the Nuke that saves us from the asteroid about to impact with Earth.  Didn’t you watch Armageddon?

      This sounds like some kind of Cold War era planning for the future going on here.

      • bcsizemo

        And no mere human can either, only Bruce Willis…

  • digi_owl

     I only skimmed it, but i found no mention of a potential destination.

  • VicqRuiz

    I would love to support this, but I fear it will wind up with all the other “back to space exploration” proposals.

    They are stored in a crate right behind the Ark of the Covenant, next to the crate labeled “Middle East Peace Plans”.

    • Andrew Singleton

      …three crates over from Jimmy Hoffa’s body and a few rows up from the Roswell alien (I’ts being kept in case others show up wanting to take the body home.)

  • http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

    Has anyone seen a good graphical representation of what the Earth would look like from a near Earth object? Exactly how near is near?….and put me in the column of people who want to see people on the asteroid. Imagine what it would mean for little kids all over the globe to see a person, man or woman, standing there on a rock in deep space.

  • bcsizemo

    Bring them back, or bring it all back?

    I was always under the impression that an asteroid could contain lots of heavy metals and minerals.  If you make it there, why not design the ship to get it back?  (Obviously energy and thrust might be an issue, but hey go big.)

  • niktemadur

    Sorry for the political rant, but…

    Please please please, no links to Murdoch owned websites, his putrid media empire is not getting any traffic hits from me and I’m not about to uninstall the excellent Murdoch Block extension for Firefox (also available for Chrome).

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/murdoch-block/