wall street makes a call to action and how to move an asteroid

> This article was printed by the wall street journal
> and I thought it may be of interest to this group.

Thanks for the clip. I always applaud an effort to get the gerneal
public thinking about space development.

> Often times we have looked at the prime motivator for
> boot-strapping (to steal tangoman's concept) our
> development to be SPS. But as has been discussed in
> the past, SPS has a rather small rallying cry.

Too true.

>

> The only other alternative is the use in situ
> resources. Assuming the asteroid was a CM2 or some
> other carbonaceous chondrite with water, we could land
> a processing facility on there to make the required
> fuel. Assuming that the asteroid was 10% water, and
> our propcessing plant was able to process about 240
> tons of material per day, we could produce enough fuel
> to move the asteroid safely away in 500 days, thus
> saving all of our lives.

I'm all for this plan. Let's not forget that we could also construct
a solar mirror in orbit. It could be made of mylar or such and not
have to be very dense. Once completed it could track a threatening
asteroid. The extreme concentration of solar energy could boil off
the water content of the asteroid. This boiling off would change the
delta-v by reducing it and change the orbital characteristics of the
asteroid. The effectiveness of the campaing can be judged from Earth
by orbital observation by measuring the orbital characteristics of
the asteroid.

I'm not advocating this approach instead of the mass-driver,but just
offering it as food for thought.

> Should this be the argument we are looking at to
> finally get something going? Currently, we don't have
> the capabilities to create such a facility or even to
> detect the oncoming asteroid threat. Fulfilling this
> plan to me makes a heck of a lot more sense than
> arguing over whether or not SPS is needed. And it
> certainly makes an easier sale.

This plan definitely has the scare factor associated with it.
Playing to people's emotions could be a powerful (Soviet Moon)
motivator.

On the other hand, if the plan only requires having a mass-driver on
stand-by in orbit, that doesn't get us that far in the drive to
*industrialize* orbit. The equipment is launched from Earth and
stockpiled until needed.

TangoMan