From: "redneckj"
Sounds like an ideal type body for asteroid material return.
300-1,000 tons of material if you can figure a capture to orbit
method.
The problem with such an object all by itself is that you don't
discover it until it's already whipping by, too late to change its
trajectory into capture, and it's so small you can never find it again.
But with a boulder dislodged from 433 Eros or similar asteroid, you can
find it easily and have plenty of time to plan nudging it into a
capture trajectory. How about this idea: Nudge it into a trajectory
that comes up from behind Luna and then loops around ahead of Luna
getting an anti-assist into capture orbit. After a few months it'll be
in the right phase with respect to Luna's orbit to pass too close to
Luna and be dislodged from that capture orbit, so during that time you
nudge it to such an orbit that it never gets close to Luna for years.
Maybe during the initial anti-assist, have it pass ahead and to the
side of Luna, putting it into an orbit that is seriously non-coplanar
with Luna's orbit, then it'll be relatively easy to nudge that orbit to
never get close to Luna's orbit at all so phase with respect to Luna's
position in orbit becomes irrelevant. The only problem with that idea
is that it's far from an equatorial orbit around Earth, so it takes
more energy to rendezvous with it to mine it. But if the boulder's
orbital plane is the same as ISS, then this may not be a real problem
given we're going to ISS anyway from non-equatorial launch sites.
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