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Orbit is much more expensive than reentry and landing (thanks to our atmosphere). Crash the asteroid into a convenient desert or shallow ocean, then continue w

• TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  That sounds a bit dramatic. How big would an asteroid need to be for the economics of bringing it to the surface of Earth to make sense. That meteor that lit up the sky in Chelyabinsk was estimated to be 20m in diameter and weigh around 13,000 tones[1], it exploded in the atmosphere releasing the energy of 500 kilotons of TNT (about 1.8 PJ), about 29 times the energy released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.[1] Not sure I'd want to be on the planet when you crash your asteroid into a convenient desert or shallow ocean. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
  • jiltedfrog 10y ago
    You could make Soyuz sized chunks, strap them with mechanisms that deploy parachutes as it enters earths atmosphere. It wont burn up like a meteor that way.
• wyager 10y ago
  > Orbit is much more expensive than reentry and landing The asteroid already has to be going slowly enough to avoid burning up in the atmosphere, and circularizing at HEO is much cheaper than circularizing near LEO. You also probably don't want to crash anything of this size into the earth.