Diversification

From: "Ian Woollard"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Diversification

> Any idea what the delta-v to it is?
[snikt]

I don't know about Ra-Shalom in particular, but there is a lot of NEOs and
some of them have "quasi-terrestrial" orbits, with delta-vees less than that
for a trip to the Moon. Since carbonaceous condrites are often said to be
the most common type of asteroid, I would expect that some of those NEOs
"closer" than the Moon are carbonaceous. If we get one of those carbonaceous
things a kilometer long, then we would have tens of billions of tons of
water, assuming the so-called typical water content of 10%.

(Also, I remeber an estimation by Lewis saying that the total amount of
water in all NEOs would be enough to sustain a population of 30 billion
people. But of course I don't remeber all the assumptions underlying this
estimation...)

Lucio Coelho