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Asteroid Mining feasibility study from 1950's by US Steel.
Before space was nationalized in the 1960's, there was an earnest effort for business to go to the Asteroid belt and retrieve one in orbit. Not to catch one falling out of orbit.
It was feasible by using an Atomic Rocket Engine.
Basically, it is a kitchen table sized rocket engine with a narrow hole that has a super-heated ring (Atomic heated) that super expands hydrogen gas passed through it.
The efficiency is far beyond the German designed V2 style Chemical rockets used today.
Number 1 is the huge payloads and Number 2 is the lengthy sustained burn that could propel to speeds many times faster.
The problem was that the US Industry would have quickly surpassed anything the USSR economy could have produced. This was a threat to the USSR that like the West had nervous fingers on the launch buttons of war. So, President JFK banned nuke space travel and private industry and gave us NASA instead.
Without going into all the details, the nuke rocket is back for the us military under test. Like the movie "back to the future" they are testing out this very safe and simple effective design.
In theory, once in space the engine could maintain a constant acceleration of 25 feet per second per second until half way through the trip, then turn around and slow down at the same rate. This would basically provide artificial gravity.
More important, it has the effect of shortening the trip by the square root.
The Asteroid would be fit with atomic rockets and slowly navigated back to Earth / Moon Lagrange point. Or, basically the Earth and Moon would rotate around the Asteroid.
Trying to catch a speeding asteroid passing through the inner orbit would be impossible for exactly the reasons brought up. Recently, it appears that outside the Asteroid Belt, there is a Comet Belt.
Before space was nationalized in the 1960's, there was an earnest effort for business to go to the Asteroid belt and retrieve one in orbit. Not to catch one falling out of orbit.
It was feasible by using an Atomic Rocket Engine.
Basically, it is a kitchen table sized rocket engine with a narrow hole that has a super-heated ring (Atomic heated) that super expands hydrogen gas passed through it.
The efficiency is far beyond the German designed V2 style Chemical rockets used today.
Number 1 is the huge payloads and Number 2 is the lengthy sustained burn that could propel to speeds many times faster.
The problem was that the US Industry would have quickly surpassed anything the USSR economy could have produced. This was a threat to the USSR that like the West had nervous fingers on the launch buttons of war. So, President JFK banned nuke space travel and private industry and gave us NASA instead.
Without going into all the details, the nuke rocket is back for the us military under test. Like the movie "back to the future" they are testing out this very safe and simple effective design.
In theory, once in space the engine could maintain a constant acceleration of 25 feet per second per second until half way through the trip, then turn around and slow down at the same rate. This would basically provide artificial gravity.
More important, it has the effect of shortening the trip by the square root.
The Asteroid would be fit with atomic rockets and slowly navigated back to Earth / Moon Lagrange point. Or, basically the Earth and Moon would rotate around the Asteroid.
Trying to catch a speeding asteroid passing through the inner orbit would be impossible for exactly the reasons brought up. Recently, it appears that outside the Asteroid Belt, there is a Comet Belt.