Step 1. Ensure asteroids don’t collide with your hyperlinks.
…but a million pounds to an asteroid… wow indeed.
I note that LockMart still hasn’t put the Plymouth Rock study up on their website. I was assured it would go up Monday.
Is it bad form to redistribute the pdf myself? 🙂
The mass of asteroids is, well, astronomical.
Of the 8 that have been identified as possible targets for human missions, the smallest has a “spherical radius” of ~2.5m and the largest ~45m.
Densities of asteroids range from 2.0g/cm^3 to 7.8g/cm^3.
So the range of mass is from 130,900kg to 2,977,287,360kg.
Remember that there’s 7000+ near-Earth asteroids and more being discovered all the time.
When you think about the low end it’s tantalizing to consider how exactly one can get 130t back to MEO or a lagrange point. Using ISRU of LOX/LH2 to power an impulsive engine will consume 30% of the mass, and no doubt the most valuable part. So perhaps some sort of solar-electric propulsion is in order.
Pan-STARRS 1 finally went operational earlier this year, so NEO discoveries should continue to accelerate.
Step 1. Ensure asteroids don’t collide with your hyperlinks.
…but a million pounds to an asteroid… wow indeed.
I note that LockMart still hasn’t put the Plymouth Rock study up on their website. I was assured it would go up Monday.
Is it bad form to redistribute the pdf myself? 🙂
The mass of asteroids is, well, astronomical.
Of the 8 that have been identified as possible targets for human missions, the smallest has a “spherical radius” of ~2.5m and the largest ~45m.
Densities of asteroids range from 2.0g/cm^3 to 7.8g/cm^3.
So the range of mass is from 130,900kg to 2,977,287,360kg.
Remember that there’s 7000+ near-Earth asteroids and more being discovered all the time.
When you think about the low end it’s tantalizing to consider how exactly one can get 130t back to MEO or a lagrange point. Using ISRU of LOX/LH2 to power an impulsive engine will consume 30% of the mass, and no doubt the most valuable part. So perhaps some sort of solar-electric propulsion is in order.
Pan-STARRS 1 finally went operational earlier this year, so NEO discoveries should continue to accelerate.