Mars transport name?

I think the attractive asteroids will be the smaller ones, not the larger
ones like Ceres.

A colony or manufacturing center would be best located in orbit about an
asteroid rather than on its surface due to the constant availability of
energy in orbit. This implies lots of trips between the facility and the
asteroid surface. To do that on Ceres would entail several hundreds of
kilometers per hour of delta-V each way. To do that on Eros would entail
only 20 kmph each way. To do that on a 1-km asteroid would be trivial ---
one could simply toss bags of regolith from the asteroid to the facility
using springs, with no usage of propellant whatsoever.

Not that several hundreds of kilomters per hour is insurmountable --- it's
a lot less delta-V than required to get off the Moon, and of course less
than is required to get off Mars. But why do that when you could reduce
that delta-V requirement by 2 orders of magnitude simply by choosing a
smaller asteroid?

Ron Menich

hollroa@...
Please respond to
ssi_list

>>>>But if you get on an island-2 colony, why get off at
Mars? This assumes life on Mars will be better than on the island-2
colonies. I admit that is possible, but I think unlikely, and there are so
many asteroids and only one Mars.>>>>

I can't think of one good reason.

How much is known about the asteroid Ceres? It is the largest known
asteroid and contains about half of the material in the belt, but I can
find little or no information on it. Are there any telescopic maps of its
surface? Has the signature for water ever been detected in its emission
spectra? Given its large size, we would expect to find a planetary
arangement of a mantle, core and crust. Asteroid Vesta, showed large,
ancient lava flows on its surface. I have heard reports that Ceres is of
carbonaceous nature. If this is true, then early internal heating could
have resulted in pockets of liquid water existing in the interior of the
asteroid. This body could have some interesting geology.
In 'The High Frontier', O'Neill gave details of a mass driver driven ship
(Beagle-2) that would be sent on voyages of exploration to interesting
asteroids. Ceres is a bit further away than most of the NEO asteroids that
he had in mind, but it would make an interesting target.

Tony