Wednesday, June 30, 2021

The gravity tractor

Project Rho relayed a 2015 article on the Gravity Tractor. This is a means to pull a general Earthbound (or other) asteroid to another trajectory, hopefully one less Earthbound. It's best for those lower-mass pre-bolides maybe a dozen years before it becomes a bolide. So: "Plan A", Plan B being when you start playing Aerosmith records.

To me this method looks like a high-impulse, low-thrust engine. In fact, I do believe that might be the point: use a heavy mass in orbit, as a lever, against that heavier mass. Put the engine on the orbiter.

Seems like the method would be great for scaling up station-keeping on a metastable Libration station. That SVL2 station I've been going on about would, then, appreciate these massive levers which would also, of course, take on an energy transmitter. Once the central core gets big enough.

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