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I'm pretty sure that would require substantially more energy, unless the asteroid is already in a similar orbit to Earth's, or will coincidentally be crossing p
by wahern 4y ago
I'm pretty sure that would require substantially more energy, unless the asteroid is already in a similar orbit to Earth's, or will coincidentally be crossing paths at just the right moment that a gravity assist can be arranged at sufficiently low cost.
- visarga 4y agoYou just give it a little bump at the right moment and it eventually gets there.
- AlecSchueler 4y agoThe post your replying to agrees with this but the conditions they made are the only ones where they believe it would be more cost effective than the above mentioned solutions.
- sdenton4 4y agoIt costs a lot of Delta v to move an ice asteroid... But on the bright side, there's a lot of ice on the ice asteroid which can be split into hydrogen and oxygen to help.
- gpm 4y agoYour plan is to take water, split it into hydrogen and oxygen, and pump it through a rocket engine that turns it back into water? I'm pretty sure that we can do better by just using the energy used to split the water to accelerate it instead.
- Fatnino 4y agoHow do you plan to convert solar energy collected on a PV panel into thrust?
- gpm 4y agoAn ion thruster probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
- Fatnino 4y agoThat still needs mass in the form of a gas to push against.
- gpm 4y agoSuch as the aforementioned water...
- Fatnino 4y agoThis led me to Google around a bit and I came across this slashdot article from 10 years ago with a dead link https://m.slashdot.org/story/188821 https://m.slashdot.org/story/188821 I don't know why I didn't consider h2o molecules as ion engine propellant.
- sdenton4 4y agoHydrogen and oxygen are propulsive fuels. Electrolysis and a source of water then gives you a pathway from electricity to propulsion. Where you get the electricity from is up to you; giant solar panels, nuclear reactors, etc. For moving an asteroid around, it's probably OK if it takes 10 years to get it on the right trajectory... Here's an example of Nasa using electrolysis + water for maneuvering cubesats: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/ptd-1 https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/ptd-1