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[sans_pants]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23039-nasa-mulls-plan-to-drag-asteroid-into-moons-orbit.html

Researchers with the Keck Institute for Space Studies in California have confirmed that NASA is mulling over their plan to build a robotic spacecraft to grab a small asteroid and place it in high lunar orbit. The mission would cost about $2.6 billion – slightly more than NASA's Curiosity Mars rover – and could be completed by the 2020s.

The Keck team envisions launching a slow-moving spacecraft, propelled by solar-heated ions, on an Atlas V rocket. The craft would then propel itself out to a target asteroid, probably a small space rock about 7 metres wide. After studying it briefly, the robot would catch the asteroid in a bag measuring about 10 metres by 15 metres and head back towards the moon. Altogether it would take about six to 10 years to deliver the asteroid to lunar orbit.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22504-hovering-moon-base-may-be-on-nasas-horizon.html

Just a day after US President Barack Obama was re-elected, rumours began to fly that he will back NASA plans to build a hovering moon base. This lunar outpost would be parked in orbit, about 60,000 kilometres from the moon's far side, in a gravitational haven called a Lagrange point.

There, the combined gravity of Earth and the moon would tug on a spacecraft with exactly the force needed for it to hover near the moon without spending fuel. Putting a spaceport at the Earth-moon Lagrange point 2 (EML-2) might assist human missions to an asteroid or to Mars – both on the list of NASA goals Obama announced in 2010.

An EML-2 spaceport could also allow astronauts on the base to explore the moon using robots controlled in real time. The three-second delay for radio signals to travel round-trip between Earth and the moon makes directly controlling a lunar rover from our home planet impractical. "It's as if you were driving drunk," says Lester. But EML-2 is close enough to the moon to erase that obstacle.

Similar strategies could be used on Mars, as either a prelude to or a substitute for landing humans on the surface. Having a telepresence in space could also take human minds to places where our bodies can't go.

"We could send human beings into orbit around [Saturn's moon] Titan and they could do virtual scuba diving in the methane lakes," Lester says. "When you think about doing exploration that way, all of a sudden there are many more destinations for human spaceflight than there were before."

Hopefully Obama can get the funding he wants for this (lol)

 

[GK86]

There is a thread floating around the OT orbit somewhere.

 

[MIMIC]

You should mull the use of the search option. LOLHAHAHAHAHA!!!11

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=506689

=p

 

[rexor0717]

This sounds so awesome and crazy.

 

[TimeEffect]

This sounds so awesome and crazy.

It's lunacy

 

[sans_pants]

someone delete this then

 

[Phaethon0017]

Wasn't this a James Bond movie?

 

[GhostWriter24]

It's lunacy

Brilliant.

 

[tearsofash]

Is the xzibit meme banned? An asteroid rotating around the moon, sounds classy.

 

[Dilly]

I would've though this would cost a lot more.

Wouldn't it also be interesting to develop this in case we have an asteroid that's on collision course with earth so we can safely move it?