Asteroid use

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, Marcel Williams

> MW: Again, Mars orbit is an excellent place for the
> processing of imported asteroids on a massive scale.

No it isn't - the asteroids themselves are the best place to process
the raw material. Mars is a massive gravity well barely halfway to the
main asteroid belt you're obsessed by... there are dozens of
Earthgrazers on Earth resonant orbit which pass regularly (ie, within
10mkm of the Earth's surface) every couple of years; & these objects
are a threat to the Earth already.

> But your askin' for trouble if you allow every Joe
> company in the world to import asteroids within the
> Terra-Luna system. Would you trust Russian companies,
> Chinese companies, Japanese companies, Brazilian
> companies-- a company from Texas-- to safely import
> hundreds of asteroids every year into the Terra-Luna
> system. Sure it could be done but why take unnecessary
> risk-- when you don't have to?
>
> Marcel F. Williams
> 1/5/01

Ignoring the racism of your comments, had you bothered to read what i
had written several times previously you would know by now that i'm
not talking about lumping great asteroidal masses around the solar
system because it doesn't make economic sense to do so. What you do -
if you actually want to do this... & i spent best part of two years
trying to work out any kind of economic model for spacemining which
made sense before i accepted this as the least worst scenario - is do
your processing in situ; & transport only value added product... not
great thumping rocks.

If the goal of this product is the Earth, you may have to send it via
a way station in Lunar orbit (particularly if you already have a
space industrial infrastructure); but it's quite possible that most of
your early production will either be massless (ie energy, the cheapest
export an asteroid can delivery); or intended for targets beyond the
Earth-Moon system... even Mars.

One of the obvious exports for an (manned... it's hard to see how any
current robotic system could do this) asteroid bases would be large
objects which require microG construction; such as sails & large
spacecraft; neither of which have any real value on Earth....

Robert