Comments on: Invaders from Vesta!

By: Fred Olsen

Fred Olsen — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:50:49 +0000

The berthoud display was mine. I do hope you enjoyed it. I am fully aware that the Vesta connection is conjecture. But Dawn is on the job! Also, while the town of Berthoud is mostly in Larimer County, the Berthoud eucrite meteorite landed 3 miles east of the town in Weld County. The only county in America to have two “Vestian” meteorites land within it’s boundries.

By: The Meteorites That Fell To Earth | wpgrabber

The Meteorites That Fell To Earth | wpgrabber — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:01:05 +0000

[...] on the various minerals that make up Vesta, although here there is a little less mystery, thanks to meteorites — pieces of Vesta that broke off and fell to Earth — that have been recovered and [...]

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:06:27 +0000

@26 Tom: For mining, perhaps, but in terms of habitation…
One of the major problems with space habitats is the lack of an atmosphere (and magnetic field, unless you’re in low Earth orbit) to shield the station from cosmic rays and solar radiation. Drilling through a large asteroid gives you the raw materials and protection from radiation you can get from a planet, without the pesky gravity well. You can build a rotating habitat inside the asteroid to provide ‘gravity’, and you’re golden. Some asteroids also have a lot more volatiles then the moon, and more per square mile even then Mars. Ceres is thought to have more water under its crust then the combine freshwater reserves of Earth. And the moon is fairly metal-poor, at least on the surface, as far as we can tell.

Between the low gravity environment, the availability of certain key materials, and the low delta-V required to get home, a very good case could be argued that large asteroids would be the easiest targets for colonization, before even the moon.

@Gary Ansorge: I love the “train habitat” idea. The great thing about it is that you can simply add more “cars” as you need to, as opposed to a “wheel” type free-floating station, where you’d need to balance the thing fairly carefully once you spun it up, so it wouldn’t wobble.
Also, unlike the idea of a station with a despun “zero G” module (for docking, etc), you wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of an enormous, motorized, air-tight rotating joint. You can just have “spurs” off the main track that let you bring modules in or out of the “train” (and even store them). Regular old airlocks would be all you’d need.

By: Michael Berry

Michael Berry — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:03:10 +0000

This article is interesting, but I love the comments here. I clearly have nothing to contribute except to say that this discussion is fascinating! Thanks for making my boring shift at work entertaining, everyone.

(And now…please continue!)

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:57:59 +0000

Actually there is little need to drill a tunnel through Vesta; there are many small, nickel-iron asteroids, both in Earth-approaching and Earth-crossing orbits as well as in the main belt. MIT did a study of asteroid mining years ago, they wanted to return refined metal to Earth’s surface by molding the metal into re-entry bodies, similar to satellite return capsules.

There were some more interesting studies by Brian T. O’Leary and K. Eric Drexler. Brian wanted to return an entire small asteroid to Earth orbit, with a mass-driver reaction engine using asteroid material as reaction mass. Eric Drexler wanted to use light-sails to return packages of asteroid regolith to Earth orbit for processing.

By: Jess Tauber

Jess Tauber — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:06:23 +0000

One can multiply the power for the surface solar power station by putting a gigantic annular parabolic mirror on the far side of Vesta, focusing back to it, using graphene as the mirror substrate, so the total mass is low, and the entire thing can be folded up into a conveniently small volume. What surface area would do, folks, for the whole shebang? That’s all machinery, life support, energy for mining, for acceleration/deceleration of vehicles, including from/to offworld, etc.

By: icemith

icemith — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:15:38 +0000

@ 20. Gary Ansorge …

Yeah Gary, I did momentarily consider a type of linear accelerator/mag lev device, but wondered if the Solar Power Station on the surface would be feasible. Doubt whether Nuclear Power would make it now, or in the not so near future, given recent problems and vulnerabilities.

@ 21. Artor …

Shooting a stream of ore through Space towards the Great Industrial Precinct on the moon would be cool – until some Astronomers complain about obscured vision of some deep space observation!

Or the “No-go” restrictions anywhere near the stream of ore, as any disturbance in gravity would end up spraying it all over the moon’s surface. I guess one could employ focusing coils, a la old CRT technology as used in oscilloscopes and TVs, anchoring these in fixed orbits relative to the Moon at the lagrangian points.

(Oh boy, I also looked up “geodesic” trying to find out the “geo-xxx” word relating to that problem, and the maths on the second page in Wiki. was horrific! I think I hurt my brain. I’m going back to bed.)

Ivan.

By: Jess Tauber

Jess Tauber — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:10:48 +0000

Re 21: Heck you could convert the asteroid into a low rent Death Star wannabe mass driver, and shoot masses in opposite directions (maybe rocky waste away from the target) to prevent net movement of the parent body. That way the Earth will know who the real Boss is (call it the Springsteen Cannon if you must…).

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:04:27 +0000

“Well, according to Sagan we are all star stuff, so you hold star stuff in your hand when you hold yourself.”

Yo dawg…

By: Artor

Artor — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:33:41 +0000

How about a linear accelerator run through the middle, aligned with a drop zone crater on Luna? Then the ore from the core could be delivered homeward express- style?