5 thoughts on “How Soon Can We Go?”

  1. I note that LockMart still hasn’t put the Plymouth Rock study up on their website. I was assured it would go up Monday.

    Is it bad form to redistribute the pdf myself? 🙂

  2. The mass of asteroids is, well, astronomical.

    Of the 8 that have been identified as possible targets for human missions, the smallest has a “spherical radius” of ~2.5m and the largest ~45m.

    Densities of asteroids range from 2.0g/cm^3 to 7.8g/cm^3.

    So the range of mass is from 130,900kg to 2,977,287,360kg.

    Remember that there’s 7000+ near-Earth asteroids and more being discovered all the time.

    When you think about the low end it’s tantalizing to consider how exactly one can get 130t back to MEO or a lagrange point. Using ISRU of LOX/LH2 to power an impulsive engine will consume 30% of the mass, and no doubt the most valuable part. So perhaps some sort of solar-electric propulsion is in order.

  3. Pan-STARRS 1 finally went operational earlier this year, so NEO discoveries should continue to accelerate.

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