Chinese Want To Capture an Asteroid

geekmansworld writes "The Chinese want to capture an asteroid into earth's orbit and mine it. From the article: 'At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those "what could possible go wrong" scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon.'"

Comments

Re:China, don't get ahead of yourself.

[Mindcontrolled]

Agreed, but in this case, you hit a particularly interesting story - the comment section will combine the new trends of technophobia caused by teenage faux cynicism and racism/nationalism, which have overrun slashdot lately. Sooner or later, the libertardians will join the fray and it'll be free for all. No idea where the nerds went. Sometimes you get a good discussion, mostly, though, I am just here to flame idiots these days.

Re:China, don't get ahead of yourself.

[chudnall]

You want to move Mars and Venus into Earth orbit?

Re:China, don't get ahead of yourself.

[Zomalaja]

Falling off of a playground gym won't result in a crater the size of a medium-sized city.

If it was my sister that fell it sure would.