Let's plan the Asteroid Redirect Mission!

[Sandworm]

There is no debate that GETTING to the asteroid is much easier further away. My point is whether, once you are there, will you have more fuel/time available to actually move the rock as opposed to doing it around Kerbin. I assume that where the rock is tiny and your craft large, it may be more efficient to wait.

I'm thinking that the trick may be to wait until it is in kerbin SOI then launch to match its inclination/plane, rather than fling out into sun SOI to match plane there. (KSP doesn't have the tools yet imho to match heliocentric planes on launch from kerbin).

[merendel]

We'll have to match speed with the asteroid regardless, so whether you intercept in Kerbin's SOI or the sun's, you'll be spending the dV to reach interplanetary velocities, so where would you actually save by doing the intercept around Kerbin?

It would depend on how much you wanted to change the orbit and how good you are at intercepting an object on a hyperbolic course. If your only trying to catch a rock thats 10 tons with a craft thats 70tons or so its probably easiest to just plan an intercept near its Pe and push it into orbit from there and not significantly more expensive either way. If you want to push something really big into a specific orbit you prety much have no choice but to send a large craft out early enough to align its Pe as close as possible to where you want it to end up. Even more so if you try to be fancy with gravity assists.

On the other hand all you really need to do is to force the rock into an orbit of whatever shape. As long as it does not impact on kerbin or intercect mun/minmus orbit in a way that will kick its orbit off somewhere else you've got all the time in the world to send refueling missions to put it exactly where you want it.

[Brotoro]

I think you'd want to send out multiple asteroid mover ships into orbits around Kerbol (in areas where asteroids on nice trajectories typically spawn) by an energy efficient trajectory, THEN sit there and wait for an appropriate target to appear near your ship. Then go nudge it at as great a distance from Kerbin as possible.

In real life, I assume an asteroid redirect mission would not be launched until we had a target asteroid in mind and have tracked its orbit for a long time, and then then a ship would be sent out to intercept and nudge it, all using lowest energy trajectories. But that's not as feasible in KSP where we don't have the tools for projecting orbits way ahead into the future.

[Wayfare]

I think you'd want to send out multiple asteroid mover ships into orbits around Kerbol (in areas where asteroids on nice trajectories typically spawn) by an energy efficient trajectory, THEN sit there and wait for an appropriate target to appear near your ship.

The problem is that these orbits will "degrade" quickly in terms of being close to spawning asteroids. As they are in higher or lower orbits than Kerbin, they will soon fall behind or ahead of Kerbin's angle to the Sun while asteroids will seemingly only spawn pretty close to Kerbin - within one Solar orbit of encounter as far as I've seen.

[Comrade Jenkens]

I want to land one on the ice lakes of Minmus and play fuel tank skittles!

[CalculusWarrior]

I want to land one on the ice lakes of Minmus and play fuel tank skittles!

Or raise the stakes of Kerbowling!

[Brotoro]

The problem is that these orbits will "degrade" quickly in terms of being close to spawning asteroids. As they are in higher or lower orbits than Kerbin, they will soon fall behind or ahead of Kerbin's angle to the Sun while asteroids will seemingly only spawn pretty close to Kerbin - within one Solar orbit of encounter as far as I've seen.

You just need an orbit with an apoapsis greater than Kerbin's and a periapsis less than Kerbin's in such a way that the asteroid mover ship will swing back and forth, in and out, waiting for a nice rock. Or bring along some ion engines to do some 'station keeping' corrections.

[Aragosnat]

I want to get several hundrad new moons for Kerbin. All within 73-85 km orbit. As My Kerbals need somethign to dodge on the way up and down.

[Parallax]

grab one of the smaller ones and try to land it at ksc?

[FanaticalFighter]

Here's a tentative plan to rendezvous with an asteroid coming in at a near equatorial hyperbolic trajectory with a Kerbin Pe in the range of 70 km - 300 km.

Overall Design Principles:

It may well be impossible to set up a ship that can both capture an asteroid around Kerbin and the put it into

Munar Orbit, as the delta-v requirements may well be too high for a single launch to accomodate. Assuming the hyperbolic trajectory to be a few hundred meters per second excess from a Kerbin Escape Velocity at Pe, the DV requirement to capture said asteroid would be around 1000-1500 m/s, and this is when an asteroid is attatched to the front of the craft, increasing the mass significantly. Therefore, I advocate a multiple launch mission profile, with the first lauch capturing the asteroid and a later launch refueling the spacecraft to provide the Delta V for departing for the Mun. Of course, this could be significantly reduced using aerobraking, but that would be too dangerous to do.

Capture Mission Profile:

Heliocentric Orbit Rendezvous represents an interesting choice, but as something like this has never been tried, at least by me, I don't think this is the way to go.

High Kerbin Orbit Rendezvous is an interesting idea. As the asteroid comes in at an hyperbolic trajectory, the intercepts would be quite hard to get far away from Kerbin, and even when done correctly, the relative velocities may well be quite high as we're going in a circular orbit and the asteroid is coming in at a different angle at an hyperbolic trajectory. This method would be necessary for when the asteroid's Pe is inside Kerbin atmosphere and it is necessary to rendezvous with the asteroid as quickly as possible to divert it away from Kerbin.

Low Kerbin Orbit Rendezvous, I think, is the way to go. It allows us to achieve rendezvous in a way that has been done a lot of times, by creating an intercept at Pe and changing the orbital time period to meet the asteroid after a number of orbits. This may well reduce the rendezvous burn delta v to a very low number, and if the launch was timed well, to almost zero. Therefore, this is the way to go. An unmanned spacecraft meeting with the asteroid would be the way to go. Manned missions can follow later.

Asteroid to the Mun Mission Profile

After rendezvous and and capture has been achieved, a refueling ship refuels the spacecraft propelling the asteroid. This option is preferable to an entirely new spacecraft with its heavy engines rendezvousing with the asteroid, while also wasting the spacecraft already there.

After refueling, it would be a simple matter to burn towards the Moon and to get into orbit around the Moon.

Manned Missions

Missions to study the asteroid would come next. A simple mission get a 3 man pod to an asteroid mission would be followed by more extensive missions, maybe even a construction of a mini space-station around the asteroid. After studies have been concluded, the asteroid may be impacted into the Mun, or left in orbit.

[O-Doc]

I'll just have my astrobase in orbiting slightly ahead of Mun. Within a few days of spotting an asteroid I'll kick out the side of Kerbin SOI, making a switchback if I'm on the inside the Kerbin system. Then, just hang back as far as I can get and intercept without wasting fuel and get the earliest possible nudge. I don't see why the earliest possible intercept uses much dV if you have all the time in Kerbin to build yourself an astrobase. Kicking out and pushing high then low on Kerbol SOI, doesn't cost much dV. 1.5km/s at the absolute max.

The only reason you would view an early encounter as fuel inefficient is if there is an assumption of a scramble to get that asteroid without solid foresight and preparation. That could be a fun!

[Rickenbacker]

After watching Kofeyh trying to save an asteroid from impact (well, bounce, currently), I really want to try an "Armageddon" style mission where I push an approaching rock into aerobraking and then put it in LKO.

[iStickyDuck]

Giant Conkers in space smashing rocks together at ridiculous speeds to destroy them

[iStickyDuck]

My plan for this:

1) Build a Space Station

This is to provide an orbital refueling stop for ARM craft

2) Send up a small armada of ARM craft

Probably about 5, with lots of fuel each

3) Recover the asteroids

Grab the asteroids and put them in orbit around the Mun, Minmus and Kerbin

4) Attach them to Space Stations

Because it would be awesome

5) Profit!