Topic: Obama's asteroid goal: tougher, riskier than moon

[sam]

Landing a man on the moon was a towering achievement. Now the president has given NASA an even harder job, one with a certain Hollywood quality: sending astronauts to an asteroid, a giant speeding rock, just 15 years from now.

http://www.physorg.com/news190653005.html

And? Are we afraid to push forward all of a sudden?

[Clive]

It's a very worrying development isn't it?  Besides, I thought that many asteroids are just piles of rubble loosely bound together by gravity?  They will have to choose very carefully! 

[sam]

yeah but think of the minerals. There are some pretty darn close ones - would be easier to get to than Mars...

[Clive]

It will be a logistical nightmare for them.  They would have been much better off going to the Moon and mining the asteroids from there.   

[sam]

well it will all be fun...