NASA's Bolden Backs Away from Obama's Asteroid Mission

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA's Bolden Backs Away from Obama's Asteroid Mission
By Mark Whittington | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Thu, Dec 20, 2012.. .
 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden seemed to draw back from the idea of sending astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025 in testimony to a National Research Council (NRC) committee. The statement was made in the wake of criticism of that goal.
 
President Obama sets asteroid goal in April 2010 speech

President Obama, after he had cancelled the Constellation space exploration program that would have sent American astronauts back to the moon, proposed an alternate program that would send them to an Earth-approaching asteroid instead. The asteroid mission would serve as a deep space practice run for eventual missions to Mars.
 
National Research Council denounces asteroid mission

The National Research Council recently issued a report that denounced the asteroid mission. The report concluded, "However, we've seen limited evidence that this has been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA's own work force, by the nation as a whole, or by the international community." This lack of consensus plus what the NRC sees as a mismatch between budget and programs is inhibiting NASA's ability to explore space, the report also suggested. The report suggested that a national consensus be reached on achievable space exploration goals and that sufficient resources be allocated to achieve those goals.
 
Tom Jones suggests bringing an asteroid closer

According to the Space Politics blog, former astronaut Tom Jones, working from a study conducted by the Keck Institute of Space Studies, suggested that instead of NASA sending astronauts on a multi-month mission to an asteroid, NASA should divert an asteroid closer to Earth. He suggested that the asteroid should be placed robotically into an orbit around the moon. It would then be visited by astronauts at leisure. As a bonus, the asteroid would have valuable resources such as water and volatiles that could supply a proposed deep space station that NASA has proposed for the Earth/Moon Lagrange 2 point. Such a base would serve as a jumping off point to expeditions further into deep space and to the lunar surface.
 
Bolden's testimony

SpacePolicyOnline.com reports that Bolden, in testimony to the National Research Council committee, suggested that NASA need not actually go to an asteroid to fulfill President Obama's vow. There is the strong suggestion that relocating the asteroid and then visiting it, as Jones suggested, would be sufficient. However, such a mission might not test astronauts and space systems on a multi-month deep space voyage in advance of more challenging trips to Mars, currently envisioned for the 2030s and beyond.
 

http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-bolden-backs-away-obamas-asteroid-mission-175900682.html

[Green1]

The National Research Council are all board members of academia. A manned mission does not give money to the universities but to facilities like Stennis, Michoud, and companies like ULA or Boeing. Hence, they are always against anything manned.

I forsee a day when NASA will be a regulatory agency like the FAA. The only hope for manned spaceflight is commercial. A CEO is not at the mercy of politicians who must look for funds for various constituents every few years. Only profit.