NASA Eyes Wild Plan to Drag Asteroid Near the Moon

Capturing a near-Earth asteroid and dragging it into orbit around the moon could help humanity put boots on Mars someday, proponents of the idea say.

NASA is considering a $2.6 billion asteroid-retrieval mission that could deliver a space rock to high lunar orbit by 2025 or so, New Scientist reported last week. The plan could help jump-start manned exploration of deep space, carving out a path to the Red Planet and perhaps even more far-flung destinations, its developers maintain.

Link

Im no scientist but this idea of "studying asteroids" sounds risky to me. what if something goes wrong or they lose their grip on the asteroid. I guess we will find out sooner or later. What are your thoughts?

NASA to turn asteroid into space station to orbit the Moon
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Its one of those stories that gets recycled every so often.

Originally came out in April.
More publicity last month,
New Scientist magazine last week,
Space.com this week.

Probably somewhere else next week.

reply to post by alfa1


i typed the words in my title and that thread did not show up, oh well. search is broken mods.

Sounds like a good way to get the shell of a space ship into orbit, but does depend on the composition of the asteroid. I imagine having 50 to 100 meters of rock as a shield would work better than a couple of inches of glass when contending with the forces in outer space. While not fully indestructible it will at least provide some shock absorption to all the stuff floating around out there.

Wither or not such a plan would be cost effective and practical will require a lot of research and planning, but an idea worth considering.

reply to post by SecludedGamer


They say it would be about 25ft across so not very big, not much risk if its in Moon orbit .

Where's Bruce Willis?!