How about direct delivery to the lunar surface? :) I'll have to work out just how big of a hole it would leave.
-----Original Message----- From: Michael Wallis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 11:04 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ERPS] Cute Asteroid [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > If by "return delta v," we mean a sample return, this could be quite low. > The inclination difference means only that one would have to time the Earth > encounter for the time that the Earth passes through the orbital plane. > Atmospheric braking will take care of the velocity difference due to > inclination. To raise or lower an apsis by .04 AU from a 1AU orbit takes > about half a km/s. Rotating the line of apsides or changing eccentricity to > achieve a coincidence may take less--I don't have time to do the calculation > right now. One of the concerns about letting just anyone have access to > space is that just anyone could do this. My concern is still the failure mode of some tired space miner shooting his pile of refined metal into the Earth instead of beside it. It's much too easy to flip a sign or transpose a digit (or use the wrong system of measurement) and throw several tons of metal at innocent people. The liability issues would prohibit getting insurance to return non-terrestrial matierial directly to Earth. My guess is that resources would be shipped to Lunar orbit or to a "catcher" at the L4 or L5 point. Michael ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Wallis KF6SPF (408) 396-9037 [EMAIL PROTECTED] President, Wallis International http://www.wallis.com Angela Cooke: "Hate is putting WAY too much energy into something you don't even like!" _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
