This project would provide experience in more extended manned space flight and techniques for dealing with radiation. It seems like excellent practice for a trip to Mars. Going to the moon would be like practice for setting up a base on Mars, also valuable. Another note, a trip to an asteroid would not merely be a demonstration of our space skills, practice for going to Mars, and a mission in pure science. It would also pave the way for commercial trips to asteroids and potentially asteroid mining. The budget of NASA is trivial compared to that of the mining companies. Capitalism may have its faults, but any future in space is dependent upon it, as NASA has made abundantly clear.

I’m amazed at how little “space enthusiasts” understand about the use of the L2 Halo orbit.

Ares 1 is a dog, as many saw from the very start.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas

Not saying its a bad idea. Just saying that if we want to go to Mars, developing technology to vist a low mass/low gravity object is wasted effort. Now is not the time for it.

Practice landing on the Moon and you will be better able to actually land on (and take off from) MArs.

Obama missed the boat on this one (gee – there’s a surprise. I’m glad i’m not an amercian). Sadly – it looks to me like political ideology has trumped practicality. Especially since the article goes out of its way to differential Obama from his “predecessor”. *sigh*

Adam – some good ideas about the moon. Especially the telescopes. You would get images far supperior than hubble can yeild I’m guessing.

The fact that this is likely going to put an already exciting industry, the private splaceflight industry on steroids.

Who cares if russia and china have some nice capsules 5 years from now. When the united states could potentially have 4 different commercial space craft, and a commercial space station company.

Do you realize the potential to dominate the space market? America is still the leader in aerospace, barely, but this will energize us like never before.

However i do support a base on the moon, but not just for no reason. I believe we should set up a massive radio telescopes, and optical, IR, you name it. on the farside of the moon. It would give us a reason to practice construction methods, and give us an amazing new access to deep space. With out the atmosphere, and the low gravity massive telescopes could be built out of light parts.

Possibly even parts of it manufactured on the moon. I believe though that commericial space companies will beat every nation to the moon. Bigelow spacestation company has already said they believe they’re space stations could be easily adapted to a habitat on the moon. This could truly be an exciting time.

A return to the Moon, a rendezvous with an asteroid, a Mars mission – none will happen without that necessary One Big Step.

The Moon could and should have been the 51st state by now – instead, the high frontier is increasingly likely to be owned by bolder cultures from the East.

What a tragedy.

Also I heard Obama is trying to quit smoking.

If mining asteroids has any practicality, this would go a long way towards establishing that. Lots of interesting science opportunites there too.

Plus, if we found a planet-killer asteroid tomorrow, we really have no idea how we’d save ourselves. Yeah, sure, there are these ideas floating around, but who knows which are the best ones? You don’t want the Mission to Save Humanity resting on a totally untested version 1.0 effort.

We need to go back to the moon. I don’t care if we’ve been there and done that. The fact is that we haven’t escaped low earth orbit in almost 40 years (almost my lifetime) and we need the practice. Apollo should have been carried to completion and followed up with moon base program in the 70′s. If that had happened, we’d probably be on Mars right now. But the reality is that we didn’t, so now we need to go back and pick up where we left off if we’re ever going to have any hope of interplanetary travel. The moon via Constellation would have provided that.

Does anyone really believe that we’re going to just jump into a spacecraft and go on a 200 day mission to an asteroid after years of having no heavy-lift space capability whatsoever? Do people really believe that it’s a good idea to cede American space capability to Russia, China, and India? Do people really believe that NASA’s engineering base is going to stick around on some vague hope of a heavy lift booster at the end of the decade?

Wake up folks. What our President wants is to for us to quite literally take a back seat to other countries in space. I realize that some of you probably agree with him. Hey that just leaves more money for social programs, right? But for the rest of you who care about our position as the #1 space-faring nation, don’t be snowed by these pipe dreams of travel to asteroids and whatnot. It’s not going to happen under this plan.