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B612 Foundation and 2004 YD5 Asteroid Capture?

Posted by michael on from the long-arm-of-the-law dept.

aisnota writes "The B612 Foundation hopes to alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015 and seems ready to do the obvious and capture 2004 YD5. Slice it up, put the pieces into aerobrake containers like a simplified version of the Mars landers. Then just sell the pieces on EBay to fund more ambitious projects."

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Perhaps lobbying would be more effective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Also, in case you're wondering, B612 is the asteroid home of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's protagonist in The Little Prince.

    Did you just know that off of the top of your head or did you have to Google for it?

  2. Re:MORE ambitious projects? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    "On the other hand, after gracefully flying this big space rock into Earth orbit..."

    Gravity anyone?

    There is no way that you could hope to fly an object as massive as an asteroid into earth orbit without severe environmental impact.

    For one there would be wide spread flooding as the tides (currently governed mainly by the gravity tug of war between the earth, moon, and sun) are thrown entirely out of whack. It might make what just happened in Asia look like a fire cracker next to a bundle of TNT.

    Beyond that, the orbits of communication satellites, among other things, would be severely altered. And what untold other damage might this cause.

    It seems a simpler way would be to use a impact weapon to shatter a piece of the asteroid, collect it (cosmic sized net?) and return it to earth orbit for eventual collection.