Asteroid use

In the discussion of safely moving many small masses vs one large massinto the Earth-Moon system:
The other problem is your
small masses (relatively) will be coming with great frequency, one
per day, one per hour, ten per hour, a convoy of a hundred? Mylarge
mass would be only once in maybe a decade or maybe even longer fora
large mass. Yours is hard to keep track of, mine is easy. Bottom
line, big is safe, small is a potential weapon.
Where have I gone wrong?

Below a certain size threshold things burn up in the atmosphere or havenegligable effect on the ground. We are bombarded by small rocks constantly,every day. If you move small pay loads with large solar sails, theatmosphere protects earth just fine. Of course, orbital space settlementsdon't have such protection and would be vulnerable to small payloads. Likeevery society on earth, some form of defense would be necessary.
Al Globus
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an accident.
Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.
I think we should:
1. Devote half of NASA's budget ($7 billion) to reaching NASA's 2020goal of
reducing launch costs to Low-Earth-Orbit to $220/kg with a 0.01% failurerate.
This should enable space tourism. The resulting orbital hotels willneed to
develop efficient orbital life support and other necessary technologies.
2. Build orbital space colonies. The materials in the largest asteroidare
sufficient for orbital colonies with a combined surface area about500 times
greater than Earth's. Eros alone could make over ten thousand spacecolonies,
each with about about 10 square kilometers of 1g living area.
3. After a few generations of orbital living, people won't need theircolony
to be near Sol. Then small groups of colonies with populations in the
tens-of-thousands can set out on multi-decade journeys to nearbystars.
Except the launch goals, none of this is even a little bit official.