another alternative to building stations.

in a previous thread, i suggested using solar sail thinking that it
worked off solar wind. after a little research i discovered that a
better name for them was light sail, as they actually worked off
photon, usually from the sun. one of the theories concerning them is
to use a earth based 600 gigawatt laser to speed a large ship to the
stars.

based on this i came up with an alternative to moving an asteroid.

2 solar powered satellite would be launched into an orbit just inside
of Venus. these would not use solar cells to power the laser, but
would be light pumped (that is they get the energy directly from
light) by the sun. in the shadow of the satellite a radiator would
release the waste heat from the laser. since the laser would be much
more intense than the sunlight, the effect would be about 1000 times
greater. this would drop the size of the sail to about 1 mile across,
and the weight to about a ton and a half. it would take about three
years to move a 100000 tone asteroid into the proper place. two
satellites would mean that you could have a new asteroid in earth
orbit every 1.5 years, give or take due to the location of the
satellites and their specific orbits. it would take at least that
long to mine the asteroid.