3 ms·

That's true, but in all likelihood companies will cluster their operations together for this very reason. It's worth sharing some kind of common infrastructure

That's true, but in all likelihood companies will cluster their operations together for this very reason. It's worth sharing some kind of common infrastructure in a specific location to protect workers/assets. Besides, a few days/weeks is a better response time than a few months.

philwelch 7y ago
Sure, but then you need at least two central points for the Space Coast Guard to operate from: Earth itself (inevitably) and whichever "cluster" in the asteroid belt you want. And there's really a limited size of an asteroid belt cluster you could get. If you start from Ceres and go a few hundred (even dozen!) meters either towards or away from the sun to reach another nearby asteroid, that asteroid has a completely different orbital velocity and will not line up with Ceres again until either it or Ceres completes another full revolution. That means you have to be in essentially the same orbit and travel either clockwise or counterclockwise, which is most efficiently done by making a more eccentric orbit (so your aphelion is the same as Ceres' but your perihelion is lower, or alternatively your perihelion is the same as Ceres' but your aphelion is higher) and then readjusting once you reach the target. But even this maneuver requires going the long way around the sun. Similarly if you want to go up or down relative to your orbital plane (i.e. change inclination). If you want a cluster of bodies in space that stays relatively the same distance from each other, you have to have a smallish orbital system. The Earth/Moon system is one of these, and it's going to be a lot more feasible to capture near-Earth asteroids and stash them in Earth orbit than to try and find a meaningful cluster of belt asteroids that actually stay close together over the long term.

3 ms·

That's true, but in all likelihood companies will cluster their operations together for this very reason. It's worth sharing some kind of common infrastructure

by cameronbrown 7y ago

philwelch 7y ago
Sure, but then you need at least two central points for the Space Coast Guard to operate from: Earth itself (inevitably) and whichever "cluster" in the asteroid belt you want. And there's really a limited size of an asteroid belt cluster you could get. If you start from Ceres and go a few hundred (even dozen!) meters either towards or away from the sun to reach another nearby asteroid, that asteroid has a completely different orbital velocity and will not line up with Ceres again until either it or Ceres completes another full revolution. That means you have to be in essentially the same orbit and travel either clockwise or counterclockwise, which is most efficiently done by making a more eccentric orbit (so your aphelion is the same as Ceres' but your perihelion is lower, or alternatively your perihelion is the same as Ceres' but your aphelion is higher) and then readjusting once you reach the target. But even this maneuver requires going the long way around the sun. Similarly if you want to go up or down relative to your orbital plane (i.e. change inclination). If you want a cluster of bodies in space that stays relatively the same distance from each other, you have to have a smallish orbital system. The Earth/Moon system is one of these, and it's going to be a lot more feasible to capture near-Earth asteroids and stash them in Earth orbit than to try and find a meaningful cluster of belt asteroids that actually stay close together over the long term.