This could be interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Asteroid_Mission

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Aim high (but don't blow yourself up)!- Homer Hickam

In Soviet Russia, UFO report you!- Phil Plait

Carl Sagan may have seen a pale blue dot, but I see a sapphire.- Doug Phillips, Discovering Alabama.

Clear skies Maksutov.

That's great! I'll believe it when I see it, though.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

You gotta love how casually they talk about "standard" Lunar missions that haven't happened yet using a ship that hasn't been built.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

This does emphasize that there are some NEO asteroids that are fairly accessible with low delta v requirements. That's important for space development: The moon is handy as a nearby source of material, but appears to be be volatile poor. I could easily see expanded "sample return" robot missions to NEO asteroids to return material that could be used fairly early in Earth orbit. Asteroid mining might happen before lunar mining.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

It's an area that definitely needs to be developed more. I hope that this is the start of a series of missions... Assuming this one actually happens, that is.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

There was an article about this in this month's PopSci.
It's a bit like saying
"When I win that contest, I will give all of my money to you." when the contest is still three days away. Thinking it encourages you to do your best and try to achieve it.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Well, positivism can sometimes be a good thing, but when it depends on the whims of a politically-controlled organization, I have difficulty being optimistic, based on how they've handled things recently. Plans change with every election; no, scratch that, they change with every handshake in Congress.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

If you can't smile, act it and think happy thoughts and soon you'll be smiling for real.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

...Now my face hurts and I'm still a pessimist.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Okay, after you read this post, shut your eyes and take a deep breath in, counting one, two, three. Then hold it for one, two, three and breathe out one, two, three. Get used to this rhythm, then visualise landing your Orion craft on an asteroid. Imagine steping onto the surface... saying the historic first words of a person on an asteroid... jumping around in the really, really light gravity. Fun, isn't it?
Know that you will always have this vision, and it will sustain you until it becomes reality.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Om... Om... On the range...

...or whatever replaces it when it's cancelled...
"I think I stepped in something."

I better start the longevity treatments soon, then.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

i don't think i'd want to be doing too much jumping around on an asteroid.
i know Bruce Willis did it, but a fairly healthy leap would probably put you in orbit around it.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

In that movie, there was a lot of unrealistic physics. Not to mention the downright silliness of driving a wheeled vehicle across the surface of an asteroid/comet head that was visibly jagged and uneven even when seen from hundreds of thousands of miles away!

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It is a bit premature talking about such applications when precisely zero elements of the Ares/Orion system have flown.

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Assuming Apophis is their target, how long would such a trip take?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Why would you all think that NEO asteroids would have more volatiles than the Moon, especially since their perogees are typically closer to the Sun than the Moon's.

Me either, actually. Doesn't jumping off a comet nucleus send you up so high it takes two weeks to fall back down?

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Depends on how high you jump, and how strong the local g is (can vary by orders of magnitude.)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It depends on the asteroid (iron nickel asteroids wouldn't be good candidates, for example), but a key difference is how the moon was formed. NEO asteroids originally come from the main belt, and from meteorites it appears some would be decent sources for volatiles. By the way, that doesn't mean iceballs, but minerals where you would at least some carbon, hydrogen, and so forth..

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

In theory a comet with water ice and other useful volatiles could be diverted to become a NEO; it would require a great deal of energy, but you'd have plenty of reaction mass at hand.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

In his book involving the twins Castor and Pollux (can't recall the name), Heinlein calculated that it just might be possible (given a less cumbersome spacesuit than we have today) to run (more like skip, actually), fast enough on one of Mars' moons to achieve escape velocity.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

The novel is Rolling Stones and I believe they were on Phobos.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The one where they sold bicycles on Mars. And Flatcats, the Tribbles of their day.

ADDED: They had a bit about asteroid mining there too, but it dates very badly. Back then the accepted theory was that the Belt was the remains of a planet.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

In the introduction to Comet, there is a description of walking on a cometary nucleus and being careful not to jump too high or you will not come down for a few weeks. The comet isn't named.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Time. The Moon's been sitting this close to the Sun a lot longer than most NEOs. It's had a lot longer to boil and bake off its volatiles.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort