Tranquility To An Asteroid?

A group at NASA is looking at the possibility of using the Tranquility module installed on ISS in February as the core of a ship to take astronauts to an asteroid in 2025. Tranquility would be removed from ISS after 2020, fitted with a propulsion and guidance unit and perhaps with inflatable modules like the ones being pursued by Bigelow Aerospace. The inflatable modules would add living areas for the crew.

It's an interesting idea. For one thing, the proposal seems to recognize that flying weeks- or months-long missions in a capsule is impractical. Deep space ships will of necessity be large, multi-module vehicles that are assembled in Earth orbit. Because of their size and cost, such ships should also be designed to fly several deep space missions, not just one.

By 2020, however, the situation in manned space could be radically different than it is today. Several space stations built with Bigelow's inflatable technology could be in Earth orbit. In that case, building a deep space ship using BA's technology for the entire ship might be the obvious way to go. By then, too, private companies may have established lunar bases. Both BA and Interorbital Systems, for example, are looking at precisely that. In such circumstances, NASA may have more options for manned deep space exploration than we can currently imagine.