Am I understanding this correctly? Mission to capture an asteroid?

[Rocket Farmer]

You guys enjoy getting that asteroid back to kerbal. I'm planning on giving some atmosphereless body it's own super close orbit moon.

Just contemplating sitting on a highpoint on the mun watching it orbit past 20m overhead brings a giant smile to my face.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

On Earth, we care about the lives of our pilots and crew members, so we have to use lasers or nukes to move an asteroid.

But for kerbals... if the mission is to move the asteroid so it's path doesn't hit Kerbin, could we in theory, just Kamikaze a ship into the asteroid and save everyone at the expense of a Kerbal or two?

Thats my plan!

But I want to see what wackjob is plotting...

[Deathsoul097]

Giggle, I think your math may be a bit off. One hundred, or hell, even One Hundred Thousand I might agree with, but one million tonnes? I find that a bit hard to believe. Would you mind sharing your source, or showing your calculations used to reach this answer? I am quite intrigued as to how this was calculated. (I am not saying you are wrong, or trying to insult you. I am trying to understand how you came to 1 Million tonnes. This is simply a question of scientific inquiry.) I am at school, so I cant confirm anyhting right now, but when I get home I will try to calculate this as well. (If I remember.)

[Epthelyn]

On Earth, we care about the lives of our pilots and crew members, so we have to use lasers or nukes to move an asteroid.

But for kerbals... if the mission is to move the asteroid so it's path doesn't hit Kerbin, could we in theory, just Kamikaze a ship into the asteroid and save everyone at the expense of a Kerbal or two?

Thats my plan!

But I want to see what wackjob is plotting...

In reality, we can kamikaze a ship at an asterioid with no crew onboard, the difference being that compared to nukes it would have very little effect.

[SuperBigD60]

In reality, we can kamikaze a ship at an asterioid with no crew onboard, the difference being that compared to nukes it would have very little effect.

Nukes dont work terribly well in a vacuum, IIRC. Or at least not how they do in our atmosphere.

Anyways, what I want to have happen is, in conjunction with Kethane or something, you mine the kethane off the asteroid and it gets lighter. Maybe use extraplanetary launchpads to mine materials for your ships and further reduce the mass. You could get rid of the asteroid with materials that used to be the asteroid.

Or you Whack-os could just build a few million-ton behemoths and get rid of the asteroid altogether.

[quasarquantum]

Giggle, I think your math may be a bit off. One hundred, or hell, even One Hundred Thousand I might agree with, but one million tonnes? I find that a bit hard to believe. Would you mind sharing your source, or showing your calculations used to reach this answer? I am quite intrigued as to how this was calculated. (I am not saying you are wrong, or trying to insult you. I am trying to understand how you came to 1 Million tonnes. This is simply a question of scientific inquiry.) I am at school, so I cant confirm anyhting right now, but when I get home I will try to calculate this as well. (If I remember.)

Wikipedia says, asteroid 2002 MN with an estimated diameter of 73 meters has a mass of 5.4 * 10^8 kg, which is 540k tons. So at 100 meters diameter its a million tons easy. But then again i think to change its orbit when its far away from Kerbin would be possible without ridiculously big ships. if you deflect it further out than Eeloo, a few m/s of dv will be enough. I have no idea how we can get that mass into low Kerbin orbit though...

[quasarquantum]

Nukes dont work terribly well in a vacuum, IIRC. Or at least not how they do in our atmosphere.

Nuclear fusion doesnt need an atmosphere, they go boom just as much in vacuum. Problem with nukes is, you turn one big problem into thousands of slightly smaller problems that are now radioactive and still fly in mainly the same path as before, and you scatter them like shotgun pellets all over the world.

[TheDataMiner]

What if the asteroid is the magic boulder!?

[Aragosnat]

What if the asteroid is the magic boulder!?

Could be. Could be.

[FITorion]

Mount a field array of engines on it. Probably nervas.

Run fuel missions to it, one launch every twenty minutes, for months. A whole train of fuel tugs stretching from LKO to the asteroid.

It's pretty easy to mount enough engines on a 100t ship to shove it at 10m/s.

That much thrust should get you 0.0001 m/s against the mass of the asteroid. Sure, it's not much. But over a long enough period you should be able to change its orbit significantly. The real problem would be delivering the fuel.

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Or cover half the surface with ion engines, make giant solar panel "wings", and push the rock for years at a tiny acceleration.

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Or instead of bothering to land all those engines and a huge train of fuel, just throw probe rockets at it. No neat landings, no concern about fuel consumption or insanely long burns. Just launch a thousand tugs, and have each one burn itself empty, aiming for impact. Literally slam it out of the way with a series of kinetic "adjustments".

meh. 7 Mainsails, 14 orange tanks, battery, probe core, solar array, pusher plate to go up against the asteroid. Most of the parts would be in the pusher plate. Bet it could be done with less than 100 parts. Depending on how far you need to move it determines if you'd need to refuel.

[Rowsdower]

Hey guys. Just a reminder that we're going to have some more info on this very, very soon. I'm digging the speculation, though.

[Dedjal]

I'll most likely use KAS and tow it, or mount rockets on it.

[r4pt0r]

ideally this asteroid addition means they will add a part called a landing spike, that roots you to the ground of whatever you're on.

[Soda Popinski]

I want to see some of you KSP masters soft land the thing at KSC.

[Whackjob]

I want to see some of you KSP masters soft land the thing at KSC.

*five hives* That's what I'm talkin' about!

[leax256]

*five hives* That's what I'm talkin' about!

And the only one crazy enough to think of this idea in the first place is of course you.

[Whackjob]

I'm already running a series of permutations of various methods of embracing the asteroid so it won't shift on the way down. That's absolutely going to be the most difficult part. No question about it. Something that big, that dense? You can realistically forget about any sort of lateral translation. Rotation is your only hope. Which means an array of X,Y,Z axis engines, with Z being the actual lander axis, and the root of all your slow-down-and-don't-exterminate-us thrust.

I've got a couple of other ideas, also. Such as creating a kilometer across canopy made from wing sections in an effort to see if I can create opposing lift on the way in. Would definitely cut the fuel requirements. It would also cut the fps, which would be a given anyway, so I might as well try it.

#EDIT: Imagine RCS like thrusters, 1 on each side, none on the bottom, and one on top. And instead of the RCS thrusters, they're mainsail engines. Clusters of them. That's what it would take. I think.

Edited January 31, 2014 by Whackjob

[leax256]

I'm hoping to see some mainsailing

[Mitchz95]

I would expect even a hardcore computer to fry with a 4000+ part ship on screen. How will you perform a powered landing when the game is lagging so much?

[Dunbaratu]

Nuclear fusion doesnt need an atmosphere, they go boom just as much in vacuum. Problem with nukes is, you turn one big problem into thousands of slightly smaller problems that are now radioactive and still fly in mainly the same path as before, and you scatter them like shotgun pellets all over the world.

The point is that with no air there's no pressure shockwave. The first damage that spreads out from the explosion and breaks walls and windows is a wave of pressure passing through the medium of air. As the explosion expands and takes up volume, it violently pushes the air away that had previously occupied that volume, and that effect propagates through the air as a sound wave. The biggest, most violent sound wave ever. In a vacuum there's no material to make that wave propagate through so that effect doesn't happen. Instead the explosion expands into the empty volume around it and doesn't have anything it needs to push out of the way to do so. That's why it's a bit less violent in a vacuum. It's still pretty powerful, but not AS powerful as in atmosphere.

[doggie015]

Just stick an ion engine on it a long way out. A little push can go a long way

[Whackjob]

A thought occurs. What should the asteroid be named? The obvious solution is some random Apophis analogue, but that's too easy. I spent maybe a half hour racking my brain. In general, and by all means correct me if I'm wrong here, but important asteroids tend to be named after the folks who have contributed to the scientific body of knowledge. Is there someone out there, in our world, who is deserving of that recognition, that they couldn't realistically get because of politics, or otherwise?

If not a person, how about an event? The answer was immediate and complete. I wish to name the asteroid, the "Buzz Aldrin punching Bart Sibrel in the face".

[SkyHook]

Wikipedia says, asteroid 2002 MN with an estimated diameter of 73 meters has a mass of 5.4 * 10^8 kg, which is 540k tons. So at 100 meters diameter its a million tons easy. But then again i think to change its orbit when its far away from Kerbin would be possible without ridiculously big ships. if you deflect it further out than Eeloo, a few m/s of dv will be enough. I have no idea how we can get that mass into low Kerbin orbit though...

Maybe I'm terrible at math, but 5.4 * 10^8 kg is ~260k Metric tons, and only 135k "normal" tons. Still immensely heavy, but workable. Also, it stands to reason that the composition of the asteroid would also affect the weight of the object.

[Richy teh space man]

Anyone else curious to see what Danny plans to do with this asteroid? I know I am..

[leax256]

Anyone else curious to see what Danny plans to do with this asteroid? I know I am..

Jool should be scared.