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Can Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA's) be useful as Space Trams? Consider 2002 EZ11. It seems to already go between Earth and Mars quite often and rather closely during at least the next few years.
Can hitchhiking on such a body be possible and reasonable, and do the PHA and 'Risk' lists and simple object orbit viewers begin to contain useful information to these ends?
Rex G. Carnes
Rex G. Carnes
If the Meek Inherit the Earth, Where Do All the Bold Go?
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Just a quick thought - surely you'll still need to expend significant energy to first get *on* the asteroid, and also to slow down after departing it? However, as a possible source of resources, the asteroid could be attractive.
Editor of [url=http://www.newmars.com]New Mars[/url]
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If you find any information about the orbits of the near-Earth asteroids, let all of us know. I've seen a few sites, but the information is in a standardized format I don't understand.
Cyclers have to use Earth and Mars for gravity assists to correct their trajectories and keep them passing between the two worlds. This requires the cyclers to pass within a few thousand kilometers of each world, so their gravity changes the cycler's trajectory. Right now I suspect the world would not allow anyone to put a near-earth asteroid into a close-miss trajectory of earth! Too risky. But if one found ten such asteroids and put each one into an Earth-Mars shuttling orbit, then it wouldn't take much energy to dock with the nearest one, ride it to the vicinity of the other planet, and get off.
Advantages of such arrangements: the crew would have something to walk around on, explore, and do science on during their flight; the asteroid would provide significant radiation shielding; the asteroid might have materials that could be used to make fuel, which means once a fuel manufacturing unit were set up, the flight could pick up all the fuel it needs for manuevers at the other planet; the asteroid could eventually have greenhouses and other massive facilities utilizing asteroidal soil and shielding.
Disdvantages: It would be very hard to get the rocks into a useful orbit, even if they were small (say, 30 meters across); and if the orbit were set up wrong, collision with Earth might eventually be a danger. You'd probably want the perigee to be just a bit outside the earth's orbit and the apogee to be a bit inside Mars's orbit.
-- RobS
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Try this newly revised site for most anything about Near Earth Objects including a simple orbit visualization feature for objects listed:
Also, for a different view of the objects and their characteristics try:
http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neody … age:0;main
I agree that relative velocities might make it difficult to get on and off of the merry-go-round, but am hoping that those at ease with orbital mechanics might be able to find ways around the problem with non-intuitive orbit intercepts.
Other factors to be considered include highly elliptical object orbits crossing inside Mercury's, etc.
There seem to be, however, many objects with well known orbits which might be investigated.
Rex G. Carnes
Rex G. Carnes
If the Meek Inherit the Earth, Where Do All the Bold Go?
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