Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 20:57:14 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] Engineers Identify 12 Asteroids We Could Capture With Existing Rocket Technology
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
By looking through the catalog of known asteroids, aerospace engineers
have identified 12 candidates that we could reach out and capture using
existing rocket technology.

Long overlooked as mere rocky chunks leftover from the formation of the
solar system, asteroids have recently gotten a lot more scrutiny. A coupl=
e
years ago, researchers outlined a seemingly daring plan to lasso and brin=
g
an asteroid back to Earth. NASA doesn=C3=A2=C2=80=C2=99t seem to think th=
is is too crazy,
and is moving forward with plans to capture, tow, and place a small
asteroid somewhere near our planet. There are also two different private
space companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, with plan=
s
to seek out and mine precious metals and water from near-Earth asteroids.=

And finally, the widely filmed Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded over
Russia in February, has focused international attention on the fact that
we may one day want to deflect a potentially catastrophic Earth-asteroid
crash.

The question is how best to go about moving one of these flying space
rocks. After all, most are too far away or traveling too fast to be of an=
y
use. Changing their orbits would require massive amounts of fuel or a
gravity tug that would take decades or centuries to work. So three
engineers from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland took a look at
the current catalog of known asteroids =C3=A2=C2=80=C2=94 which recently =
surpassed 10,000
objects =C3=A2=C2=80=C2=94 and identified a new category: Easily Retrieva=
ble Objects or
EROs.

These EROs are all fairly small asteroids, ranging in size from
approximately 2 meters to 60 meters in diameter. They already come
(cosmically) close to our planet, and it would take a relatively small
push to put them in orbits around Lagrange points near Earth.
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/08/easily-recoverable-asteroids/>=

       mark