crandles wrote: > Eric Swanson wrote: > > > > This is 81 million metric tons, still a very large quantity, to be > > sure. > > Certainly still a very large quantity if you are talking about lifting > from earth's surface into orbit. Just wondering about attaching a solar > sail to an asteroid to alter its course towards an fly past another > asteroid so that it heads towards the La Grange point (with further > steering via the solar sail). How much material could be transported to > the LaGrange point in this manner? Sure, flattening it could be > challenging to say the least but should such ideas be rejected without > consideration?
You appear to be forgetting orbital mechanics. Moving an astroid from one orbit to another involves deceleration as well as acceleration. A solar sail won't stop the mass, once it has been placed in an orbital trajectory from the astroid belt toward the L1 point. http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMM17XJD1E_index_0.html > I appreciate the comments about active control being a problem. If any > odd mass could be used for some sort of drive, then the mass can > probably be provided cheaply enough from somewhere other than earth. It > is engineered mass that would be expensive. Yes, please note that the calculations were for a mass of aluminum. The very thin reflector would need to be kept perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector, which would require that there would need to be active control. The structure would need to rotate once each year to match the change in the direction of the vector. Even if many smaller satellites were placed in orbit at L1, I think this would still be a very big problem. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
