Yes, I am not arguing that we should not have bases on asteroids, dwarf planets and moons in the solar system. I am just saying that I dont consider small objects the ideal living place and the ideal place for colonization as some seem to think.
Personally I want to see affordable LEO access in my lifetime, with RLVs, preferably not using chemical rockets. If I am very lucky, I hope to see frequent trips to Mars and out own moon happening.
Unfortunately we still need a technological breakthrough for all of this to happen (it could be polywell, or some other revolutionary reactor type, and/or Mach Thrusters and so on).
May be an interesting place to send a space probe some day
The asteroids offer many thousands of times more surface area and resources than the planets. In terms of delta V, many NEOs are also more accessible with their shallow gravity wells.Luzr wrote:Exactly! I still do not quite understand why everybody is so dedicated about colonizing planets...kurt9 wrote:The more NEA's there are, the more resources to build O'neill style space colonies, whenever they come into vogue.
That said, I believe the moon is the lowest hanging fruit. There are other metrics besides delta V. Trip time and frequency of launch windows are also important.
Low delta v trip times to an asteroid can easily be 6 months or more. Launch windows can be years apart.
In contrast the moon has launch windows every two weeks (from a given low earth orbit) and trip time of less than a week.
The moon also has ice. Propellant to break the exponent in Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation is a more valuable space resource than platinum. Lunar propellant at EML1 and LEO would make NEOs much more accessible.