Back in the Age of Cheesy Irwin Allen SF, there was a movie called "Around the World Under the Sea." The science mistakes in that one would have given ER apoplexy. The mission in the movie was to run this submarine all over the world, planting seismic sensors of some kind in strategic areas to form a worldwide seismic information net or something.
I could see constructing a monster spacecraft, probably with a nuclear power system, ion engines (at least), and an enormous load of fuel, and setting it off to plant transponders, one by one, over the years, on a large number of target asteroids. Someone with more on the ball than I've got in celestial mechanics would have to tell me how much delta-V it would take to jump from one "earth-crosser" to the other, over and over again.
As more an more asteroids are tagged, not only will it be easy to track them, but the gravitational and other pertubations that these bodies traverse can be more easily mapped, and used to predict the effects on asteroids that haven't been tagged yet.
Meanwhile, the probe's science package is studying many different kinds of asteroids (tagging some comets might be nice, but I think as a rule they're moving a lot faster than the earth-crossing asteroids). Maybe the tagging drones will have a way to kick some samples back to the Mother Ship.
And then, during a pass close to Earth, we could send out a fast ship from Earth or the Moon to match speeds and rendezvous with the Mother Ship. Pick up samples, do some repairs if needed, top off the fuel tanks, load up more tagging drones, wipe the windshield, and off she goes again.
Build two of them--at twice the price, of course--and a sister ship could cruise the asteroid belt among the non-Earth crossers, just doing mostly science. Although tagging some rocks out there with transponders might teach us a lot about Jupiter perturbations and other things.
Space/Science » in reply to It would be cool if there was a movement to tag all the earth-crossers...
Agreed...
The whole thread (53 posts)
- Should humanity deflect the NEO asteroid, Apophis, prior to 2029, or should we leave it alone?
- The fragments of Comet Schwassmann Wachmann 3 will be in our neighborhood in 2022
- An Idea...
- All the posters on this thread miss the point
- There's a small chance of making things worse by a failed attempt.
- re: miss the point
- Don't deflect it. Tag it.
- Our estimate of where Apophis will pass in 2029 is highly inaccurate.