© Getty ImagesAsteroid Lutetia on July 10, 2010 between Mars and Jupiter. But for NASA right now, any asteroid would do.
NASA is looking for a rock. It has to be out there somewhere - a small asteroid circling the sun and passing close to Earth. It can't be too big or too small. Something six to nine metres in diameter would work. It can't be spinning too rapidly, or a speed demon. And it shouldn't be a heap of loose material, like a rubble pile.
The rock, if it can be found, would be the target for what NASA calls the Asteroid Redirect Mission. Almost out of nowhere it has emerged as a central element of NASA's human spaceflight strategy for the next decade. Rarely has the agency proposed an idea so controversial among lawmakers, so fraught with technical and scientific uncertainties, and so hard to explain to ordinary people.
The mission, which could cost upward of $US2 billion ($2.2 billion), would use a robotic spacecraft to snag the small rock and haul it into a stable orbit around the moon. Then, according to NASA's plan, astronauts would blast off in a new space capsule atop a new jumbo rocket, fly towards the moon, go into lunar orbit, and rendezvous with the robotic spacecraft and the captured rock. They'd put on spacewalking suits, clamber out of the capsule, examine the rock and take samples. This would ideally happen, NASA has said, in 2021.
Comment: Guess what? America has sucked in space since it killed JFK, RFK, MLK and other fountains of creativity. Coincidence?
By the way, this is the same Bolden who said this in the aftermath of this year's asteroid blast above Russia:
Here's the video NASA showed Congress to try to convince it to fund this mad science project:
NASA is little more than a PR front for the Pentagon's space programs, which is why the agency has been putting ridiculous ideas into people's heads about 'saving the planet from asteroids'.
Even IF the Powers That Be know about the planet entering potential comet/asteroid debris fields, from the increased warmongering in the Middle East, does it look to you like they plan to do anything to physically stop or mitigate it?
Comment: Perfect instrument for the Totalitarian state, as NSA and other spying agencies will be able to find and eliminate all those who have a negative emotional response to the ruling empire. Orwellian world indeed.