Space mining startup set for launch in US

[Humanist_Activist]

151. Oddly enough, even the worse case scenario would be correctable...

In the scenarios you thought, the worst case would be mission control(or whatever you call those on the ground) would recall the astronauts(or remotely shut down the what ever machinery is out there). They would redo their calculations, then when the next launch window opens they would send up more equipment to correct the orbit of the asteroid in question.

The scale of these things means that any risk to Earth is minimal, even in the worst scenario, a disaster would be at a minimum a year or so, to several years or even decades away. These objects are massive, in order to significantly alter their orbits would take a lot of small events, not one single one, and as a result of this, the predictability of orbital mechanics, and the fact that they have to travel so far to even be under the influence of Earth's gravitational well, much less hit its surface.

To give an example, let's take an object in the asteroid belt, if we are going to go for broke, might as well start with the expensive real estate. If you want it to be more accessible to Earth, you would have to move it close. First we need to attach several thrusters to it, most would be to change and control its rotational characteristics(not orbital), to keep it on an even keel, so to speak. Next, a few thrusters dedicated to changing its orbital characteristics, the lion share of this energy would have to be dedicated to retro thrust, thrust directed in the same direction it is traveling in orbit, to slow it down, and drop it to a lower orbit.

Such a thruster would have to burn for months at a time, then stop, and thrust again, to both round its orbit to prevent it from being too elliptical, and to continue to drop its orbit. It will take years for it to even get close to Earth, and we may park it in an orbit that is still a safe distance away, at one of the Langrange points, most likely. The point is this, even if a catastrophic failure occurred, we would have more than enough time to correct it and prepare for it if necessary. Indeed, the worst possible scenario here isn't hitting Earth, but actually preventing it from being easily accessible from Earth.