Thanks for the link, Larry! So it's been seriously studied already? I see robotic reconaissance is advocated first which is common sense I suppose, but couldn't groundbound spectrographic analyses reveal enough about a NEA to determine if it was worth visiting eg one that still has a some volatiles and organics - and of course H2O? It'd be really great if NASA was massproducing Deep Space 1 clones to zip all over the inner solar system seeking NEAs, but that ain't happening. I want to stay away from starry-eyed wishful thinking, despite my pseudonym! :-)

Your point about the distance vs delta-V is noted, though I was under the impression there were quite a few PHAs and NEAs that were going to approach Earth at a shallow angle and low relative speed in the next ten years that would be good candidates. Would it help to choose a target, say, 4179 Toutatis, which passes within 0.009AU 9/24/2004? That gives us 2 1/2 years! We need to do something fairly short-term to make the ISS worthwhile, and a NEA mission is definitely more practical than a Mars mission or maybe even a lunar exploration initiative.