Aug 152010
Short form: astronomers find evidence that there are more 100-km asteroids in Neptunes “Trojan” positions (L4 and L5) than in the regular asteroid belt, with 150 such asteroids in the trailing Trojan group. Given the relatively easy access to Neptunes system of moons and it’s faint rings, these asteroids could well wind up with one *hell* of a population someday
8 Responses to “The Home Of The Future”
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Sounds like an ideal location for Worldhouses (http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/484746e824a3a). Could be quite an interesting little “inter-planetary” civilization there someday.
Closer in you have the trojans in the Jupiter/Sun L4/5’s as well. there many be more asteroids in those spots then anywhere else.
Well, you can kiss solar power to drive everything goodbye at that distance from the Sun.
Untrue. You’d simply need a large parabolic reflector. Do it right, and solar pressure on the reflector would be balanced by the gravitation of the asteroid being shined upon. In this case, the “sun,” as far as the inhabitants were concerned would be on the opposite side of the sky from where Sol actually is… which would be just a bright star in the night sky.
Now all we need is a way to get there.
But maybe this is the start of the way get there:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19292-nasa-mulls-sending-part-of-space-station-to-an-asteroid.html
I don’t think they are going to get the funding to do that…and frankly, I wouldn’t trust any ISS component that was that old to begin with for a journey as far as one of the nearer asteroids and back.
As far as the Neptune Trojans go, that’s going to take a lot of delta-v and time to get anything there and if you try to do it via a gravitational slingshot around Jupiter or Saturn with anything manned to speed things up, there will be those planet’s radiation fields to contend with.
Time to haul this out again:
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=4534
Would fit rather well, yes? 😉