Feasibility Of Asteroid Spaceships

[Spacescifi]

Try this scenario and science your way to completion.

So after decades of drone spacecraft pushing a kilometer wide/thick asteroid into low earth orbit, now it is up to us to figure out a way to optimize it as a spacecraft.

 

How? Drill holes into it for the crew. Place refinining facilities on it and a nuclear feactor for processing. Use processed chemicals from the asteroid as propellant.

Pros? You have a lot of propellant mass

Cons: Your inertia will be tough to cancel out. It is safe to say that any spacecraft this heavy is going to need to go nuclear. To make most efficient use of it's propellant.

 

Mission: To the moon and mars. Shuttle craft docked to the big rock.

 

How feasible are asteroid spaceships? Would'nt they face possibly structural disassembly issues under 1g or close acceleration? Unless artificially strenghthened with braces? Or does it simply depend on how hard/solid he asteroid is to begin with? Iron good, porous airy holed dirt bad?

 

What are your thoughts on all this?

 

Edited October 3, 2019 by Spacescifi

[wumpus]

Forget about propellant.  It either isn't going anywhere or neither energy nor propellant are an issue (you'll want to replace the propellant with either hydrogen or argon if you want some anyway).  For a space station (with possible ability to move, possibly to Earth or Mars orbit, but expect to take the *long* way and require gravitational boosts for capture, or to access any other planet [and don't be surprised if you have to slingshot at Mars to get to Earth.  If you can slingshot off Jupiter you can really get going...]).

They may well be the primary form of "spaceship" in the next century or so, but not for long journeys.  Expect to live in one while approaching (*slowly*) the next asteroid to mine...

[YNM]

5 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Drill holes into it for the crew. Place refinining facilities on it and a nuclear feactor for processing. Use processed chemicals from the asteroid as propellant.

So equivalent to a whole spaceship made from APCP. Sounds brilliant.

[kerbiloid]

The last thing we need in LEO is a kilometer-sized asteroid.

[Spacescifi]

35 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The last thing we need in LEO is a kilometer-sized asteroid.

 

It would either be one giant leap or one giant mistake for mankind.

Either way, it would hold interest. Not boring as say... mars. Since it woukd be much easier to exploit in LEO.

[kerbiloid]

1. To use an asteroid as a ship you need technologies and efforts which make the asteroid useless.
2. There are differeent types of asteroids: ice, metal, rock. So, which one you have caught, that way you will refine it.

[DDE]

21 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Would'nt they face possibly structural disassembly issues under 1g or close acceleration?

This is putting it mildly. Most asteroids are believed to be rubble piles.

[kerbiloid]

As well as mountains are. They look like a solid rock, but actually they are... In short, play Minecraft to see.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

As well as mountains are. They look like a solid rock, but actually they are...

[kerbiloid]

A 300 m small lava core remnant of a former volcanic mountain? Yes, something like that.

Edited October 5, 2019 by kerbiloid

[farmerben]

For any ship that needs to maneuver or go fast we want to shed unnecessary mass.  If we do have a reason to attach tons of ice to a spaceship, it will usually be worth purifying first.

I can see using unrefined asteroids for stations.  And hauling some types of ore to a better refinery.  

Almost every element on the periodic table can be used to make mirrors.  In the absence of other chemicals to react with, essentially all metals are shiny.  

There may be some minerals that are too expensive to process relative to the value of the products.  For example, sulfur compounds will be costly to break and the sulfur has limited applications, chlorine likewise.  It is possible to use these as propellants, but less efficiently than other choices.  An asteroid station might build special thrusters and mass drivers for its own use, in order to sell the better propellants.  Or just keep them for bulk shielding/useless tailings.

If we want tunnels and caves for their own sake, digging into our moon (and others like Deimos, etc) is probably better.

[insert_name]

Might be worthwhile, but only if you can use the parts of asteroid as your reaction mass and go to great lengths to reinforce it, seeing as most rock contains a significant amount of oxygen and you can refine the rock to get spare parts and oxygen over a long period of time, while only having one tank for both, and rocks are less likely to leak