3 ms·

Putting an asteroid into orbit would take an ass ton of fuel, more than is reasonably achievable. However crashing an asteroid into the moon or into Antarctica

• lmilcin 6y ago
  > Putting an asteroid into orbit would take an ass ton of fuel, more than is reasonably achievable. That's simply false. First of all, asteroid is already on an orbit... You can move stuff around solar system with relative ease and little energy if you are patient enough. For this, you go very far from the Sun (ie. Kuiper Belt) where things fly very, very slowly and then you can use very little energy to nudge it in direction of Earth orbit. You can match velocities and use gravity assists so that the object is captured by Earth. Technically you can use as little energy as you want depending on how far you are willing to go, how long you want to wait and how precise you can steer the object. You take a nuclear reactor and you can use asteroid as reaction mass. If you are still not convinced, these guys also don't agree with you: https://space.nss.org/technologies-for-asteroid-capture-into-earth-orbit/ https://space.nss.org/technologies-for-asteroid-capture-into...