capture 2004 MN4

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dtheweatherman99

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as this asteroid is going to be at about geo orbit when it passes the earth, would it be possible to capture this asteroid and put it into Geo orbit? this would be perfect, as it could be used for communications mounts, mineral mining, and above all, could be used for the couter-weight for a space elevator. how much V5 could it take to safely slow down the object enough to put it into orbit? <br /><br />http://www.space.com/spacewatch/050204_2004_mn4.html
 
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bobvanx

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We don't know its mass very well, but we can guess. Which, if it were a solid body, we could apply and figure out that OMG it would take the entire energy output of the Earth for five years to brake this thing into orbit when it passes by.<br /><br />Heh.<br /><br />Seriously, being able to do something useful with it later is the best reason I can think of for not destroying it. Say, do you know about that one very odd co-orbital rock in Earth's orbit? It's in a "horseshoe" orbit. I bet <i>that</i> could get nudged into L1 without too much fuss.<br /><br />L1 would be a very handy place to have a piece of real estate.
 
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vogon13

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Lunar and solar perturbations always jostling GEO hardware and they need fuel for station keeping. If 2004MN4 did manage to get slotted into GEO, hellish job keeping it there. Would you like to have 250000000 dollars invested in tv satellite in adjacent slot? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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meteo

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Your exagerating just a bit Bob. For all practical purposes it does seem that it is still an insane amount of energy. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />12.59 km/s<br />4.5e+10 kg<br /><br />Kinetic energy = 3.566x10^18 joules<br /><br />World energy = 335x10^18 joules<br /><br />About 3 days of the Earth's energy. I don't know very much about orbits; how much would you need to reduce the velocity enough to put the asteroid in a Earth orbit? <br /><br />I think if were going to put an asteroid into orbit we would want to try a much smaller asteroid and cherry pick a slow one.<br /><br />~10m<br />~10km/s<br />ke=1.1x10^14 joules ~ 15 killoton nuke (which we obviously won't use it's just for illustration) <br /><br />I also have a question for dtheweatherman99; are you a weather man or meteorologist because I'm currently getting my bachelor's in meteorology.
 
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vogon13

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Wish I could find reference for this (EGAD, half my posts start with that phrase) read somewhere 10 meagatons (more or less) required to take US aircraft carrier Nimitz to escape velocity+. Also same amount of energy released by Nimitz by falling from on high to earth's surface. Handy reference point using real life hardware to keep in mind when talking about moving celestial objects, of which the CVN Nimitz would make a pretty small one. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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yurkin

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Hey meteo and weatherman<br /><br />I don’t think those calculations are exactly right. <br />V(impact) is the velocity if it hits the earth. Coming to so deep in Earth’s gravity well there is going to be a considerable increase in velocity. Not nearly as much as if it slammed into us.<br />There other thing is that orbital velocity at 30,000 km is already 3.31 km/s. This can be factored into of the energy balance.<br />Not taking into accounts earth’s gravity the energy is…<br /><b>2.46 E17 kilojoules or<br />58,795 Megatons</b><br /><br />To put that in perspective a kilogram of kerosene has around 44,702 kJ/kg HHV.<br />So you would need around 5.495 E12 kg of kerosene. That is under ideal conditions and not including the oxidizer or getting it all into space. I think we can safely rule out chemical rockets to maneuver this.<br />The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was 50Mt, but they could probably build them larger. I think we can leave this challenge to future generations.<br />
 
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alokmohan

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Estate worth purchase.I like to own it.Any objection?
 
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meteo

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I think you're right, you used the v(infinity) listed on the site somehow, correct? What v did you plug into the kinetic energy equation?
 
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CalliArcale

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Seriously, being able to do something useful with it later is the best reason I can think of for not destroying it. Say, do you know about that one very odd co-orbital rock in Earth's orbit? It's in a "horseshoe" orbit. I bet that could get nudged into L1 without too much fuss<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />That's Cruithne (pronounced croo-een-ya; that's Celtic/Gaelic phonetics for you). I don't know what it would take to get it to L1, but that's not a stable location. It would need to have its orbit corrected about once a month, just like SOHO does.<br /><br />L1 is a sort of gateway between Earth orbit and Solar orbit. It could be exploited to capture this object. In fact, such a thing has happened before. The Apollo 12 S-IVB booster slipped out of Earth orbit by passing through L1. It orbited the Sun for years, then was recently recaptured by slipping through L1 again. I believe it was due to escape again through L1 by now, but I'm going by Monday-morning memory and may be mistaken. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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vogon13

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<br />Biggest US nuke tested was 'Mike' and it hit 15 megatons (unexpectedly, I might add, too, the scientists thought Li7 would dilute the fuel, not enrich it) and USSR set off one at around 57 megatons (Kruschev claimed more but he may have been misinformed by some one trying to look better). 57MT device was a 2/3 scale test of 100 MT design, so they came pretty close on their 'proof of concept'. Pure fission bombs tough to make large, but fusion bombs (with their staged fission, fusion, fission design courtesy of Ulam, et al) apparently can be made very large indeed. I have never seen an upper limit described, and the 'dry' design of Mike (and presumably the Soviet one, too) are surprisingly compact. If you wanted to build a nonmobile one, don't see any limit in size other than getting initial fission trigger hot enough to 'light the match', so to speak. Some world governments may find these attempts disturbing so confine your experiments to the thought variety and please don't assemble any hardware in your garage. Think Clarke described GT range bombs in some of his fiction, and I've always thought he was more sci than fi in his writing. <br /><br /><br /><br />Work can be very rewarding. You should try it.<br />Dilbert <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>
 
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