Make asteroids pricey

[tajampi]

The title says everything, making asteroids cost some money.

Will make returning them to the KSC a nice way to get cash.

Also, make sure the recovery percent is applied to them too, so landing an asteroid on the space center is worth it

(Sorry if they already cost money, i have never landed one )

Cheers!

[vexx32]

They don't currently cost money themselves, but there are contracts available to return asteroids to Kerbin, for which you can receive quite hefty rewards.

[GusTurbo]

Do they have a recovery cost if you manage to land them? I've never tried.

[vexx32]

Nope, the part.cfg defines them as having a cost of √0, so there's no recovery bonus.

[dryer_lint]

Well, they should have a big recovery cost!

Imagine if NASA landed a full-size asteroid at Earth. How much money would they receive from scientists all over the globe, just to get a sample?

[LABHOUSE]

10,000 $ per kilogram of sample, depending on demand.

[GreeningGalaxy]

I have a feeling you'd swamp the market for asteroid rock pretty fast - there's only going to be so many labs itching to get their hands on some. Of course, you could sell them for the iron and nickel and stuff, but importing asteroids is going to be such an expense that nobody's going to want to buy asteroid scrap at any price that would make hauling the things home worthwhile.

In-situ mining of certain resources from asteroids (uranium, perhaps) could certainly become a business, but I doubt flying rocks all the way home and landing them at KSC could realistically be expected to be a long-term lucrative business.

[RainDreamer]

I just think asteroid should be able to give a LOT more science, but you can only transmit/recover a little at a time. Then rebalance the science->fund stratergy, and we will have some income from science collection from asteroids.

[MKI]

I think the fact they cost nothing is because in the future I don't believe we should be able to land asteroids. Even the Largest Asteroids should be deemed "to small" to make it through re-entry.

Bringing them in to Orbit Kerbin via contracts seems like a good long term and short term solution.

Hell I don't think NASA has any ideas on how to bring a whole asteroid to Earths surface safely haha.

[vexx32]

Just needs a big enough heatshield affixed to it.

[Superfluous J]

The only way this would work is if they had a crash tolerance of about 4m/s.

Otherwise, all you need to do is get one with about a 30km periapsis (which is usually easier that pretty much anything else you can do with an asteroid) and it's free money.

[r4pt0r]

I kind of like it. landing an asteroid is an occasion where you can use kerbal as an adjective.

^though 5thHorsemans method is better look at that beautful sig of his

[SubzeroSpartan7]

Hmm. I was wondering if with the new resource system they will add resources to asteroids. Then you can either return the asteroid and get the money from the resources on the asteroid. Or you can use the resources for refueling.

[Sirrobert]

Just needs a big enough heatshield affixed to it.

Like another asteroid?

[Superfluous J]

Like another asteroid?

It's asteroids all the way down.