On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:04:14 -0700, Shawn
wrote:

Cool idea. One of the Earth/Moon Lagrange points, L4 or L5, ahead of or
behind the Moon along its orbit around Earth might be a good choice. It
would be someplace some future astronomer might look for captured
asteroids in Earth orbit. Such an extraterrestrial time capsule would
be more likely to be found, and stay in orbit. Also, that high up it
would less likely to get nailed by some other satellite crossing its path.

I believe the masses of the Earth and Moon are sufficiently close to one
another that, with perturbations from the Sun, the Earth-Moon L4 and L5
points aren't terribly stable over long periods. Also, their tendency to
accumulate other bodies might make them an unsafe place to park for
millions of years. A simple high Earth orbit is probably cleaner,
although even there I doubt something would survive millions of years
without being hit by something major, being perturbed by something
major, or simply being sandblasted to death by space dust. The inner
Solar System has quite a lot of debris in it.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com