A reason to go to Mars

Marcel wrote:

> A one thousand tonne asteroid impacting the Earth has the power of a
> thermonuclear weapon. And I'm not sure if I can trust the Iran
> National Asteroid Company or even a Russian or American Company to do
> it safely. And, of course, there's always the possibility of a
> terrorist hijacking of a light sail.
>
> I guess we could have the UN regulate these companies and serve as a
> watch dog. If trust the UN. Also, the insurance cost might be sky
> high for any company investing in such a venture.
>
> So why go through all of that and raise the anxieties of the people of
> Earth. Just import small asteroids to Mars or Venus orbit where they
> can be processed on a massive scale into safer raw materials for
> export to Earth or into finished products and chemicals.
>
> Marcel F. Williams

You don't have to import asteroids to Mars or Venus.
You have them already on a place where you can handle their mass a lot
better than in a gravity well.

You can take small independant lander spacecraft which collect their
materials from the asteroid and bring it to a orbiting processing site
directly near the asteroid.

Starting from and landing on the asteroid would be pretty cheap, since
they have to move rather grams of asteroid weight when collecting
materials which could have tons of earth weight.

Choosing NEAs inside of Earth orbit around Sun would be a good fit.
for instance:
Here are just 3 asteroids with rather round orbits inside the orbit of
Earth those are > 2004 XZ130 or 2005 TG45 or 2008 EA32

2004 XZ130 with 0.337 AU up to 0.898 AU looks pretty interesting to me
since it comes close to 0.25 AU.

2005 TG45 0.428 0.935

2008 EA32 0.428 0.804

Here you have a lot more energy available as at Mars level (at least
around 4 times up to about 35 times that much and would need smaller
solar cell arrays for your crafts or.

Since those are closer to Earth, bandwidth for remote operations (from
Earth) is also 4 - 35 times better and could deliver more data or need
less energy for transmission.

As we have already robots on Mars, remote asteroid missions with small
flying robot landers should be not so out of way.

Those landers with their preprocessed raw materials than could be
brought back to Earth with a solar-sail mothership.
Why take the hassle of a gravity well for doing this?

Frank
www.solar-thruster-sailor.info