Asteroid Capture. Anchors Vs Thrusters for Lateral Movement?

[stephensmat]

I've never tried to capture one of the larger Asteroids. It just doesn't seem possible to steer one with any of the craft I've built.

I have craft big enough to push them into different orbits, even large digger/converters. But it's hard to visaulize this sort of thing.

I'm told that only one AGU at a time bothers to latch on to the asteroid. Does that mean that having *many* RCS thrusters will actually rotate the whole thing for manoeuvre alignments, or do I need to build a craft with rocket engines pointing out to the sides? 

[KerikBalm]

You don't have to turn them fast, any reaction wheel will work for eventually.

Or you could unclae, and re-claw facing the right direction 

[Grogs]

11 hours ago, stephensmat said:

I've never tried to capture one of the larger Asteroids. It just doesn't seem possible to steer one with any of the craft I've built.

I have craft big enough to push them into different orbits, even large digger/converters. But it's hard to visaulize this sort of thing.

I'm told that only one AGU at a time bothers to latch on to the asteroid. Does that mean that having *many* RCS thrusters will actually rotate the whole thing for manoeuvre alignments, or do I need to build a craft with rocket engines pointing out to the sides? 

There are two issues really. The first is being able to point the ship/asteroid in the right direction. Like the poster above me says, you'll turn eventually  if you have enough patience. You can put extra reaction wheels and RCS (or better, the more powerful vernor thrusters) on your ship to speed things up. When I captured a ~1400-ton class E roid, it took something like 15 minutes of game time to turn 180 degrees. That wasn't a problem as long as I pointed the ship in the right direction well before any upcoming maneuvers.

The second issue is keeping the ship/roid pointed in the right direction during maneuvers. You want to make sure that your ship is pointed directly towards the asteroid's center of mass -- you can unlock the claw and do this even after you grab the roid. Once I have the asteroid captured and the ship pointed towards center of mass, I EVA and engineer and have them install 4 struts between the ship and the asteroid. This will (hopefully) eliminate the ship bending at the claw joint when you fire up the engines. Then it's just a matter of engine gimbal, reaction wheels, and RCS/vernor thrusters to keep you on target while firing the engines. A pull design avoids a lot of these problems, but at the cost of being more difficult to design.

Good luck!