Mass drivers

The real position is probably somewhere in the middle. Go to a NEA
start mining operations and producing finished and semi-finished
products and use the waste material as fuel in a mass drive.

Bill

--- In spacesettlers@y..., rmenich@m... wrote:
>
> John Frazer wrote,
>
> "I'm still thinking of the asteroid retrieval mission. Latch onto an
800
> meter stony NEA, and drag it back. (missions like this have been in
the
> AIAA & such for years. The inventment is under $50 bllion, and the
return
> after a decade is hundreds of billions.)Send out the parts of the
mass
> driver which aren't just rolled & stamped metals and concrete &
wires,and
> build up the track length from local materials making up the bulk."
>
> Suppose that you had available the level of technology and
investment
> needed to
> * Despin the NEA
> * Either ship the components of the mass driver to the NEA or build
it
> there
> * Ship the regolith processing or mining equipment to the NEA
> * Mine, containerize, and fire off these pellets for as long as it
takes to
> move the NEA to the desired orbit (possibly years)
>
> If you had available the technology to do that, then why do it in
the first
> place? Why not instead process the NEO raw material into finished
> products right there at the NEO, and ship the finished products back
to
> HEO? Why is it that you prefer to ship raw material back to HEO
rather
> than finished products? Why not establish your manufacturing
facility at