Manned Orion mission to an asteroid... Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

This could take place before the Moon-landings: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace...ecbccdrcrd.html

[rogelio]

(Crazy thought) Emplace a thruster on the asteroid’s surface to slow and eventually stop its rotation prior to building your observatory. Might not take that long if the asteroid was small enough, and you had a nuclear reactor chugging away for ten years.

[David]

(Crazy thought) Emplace a thruster on the asteroid’s surface to slow and eventually stop its rotation prior to building your observatory. Might not take that long if the asteroid was small enough, and you had a nuclear reactor chugging away for ten years.

I'd like to see a calculation of the forces involved.

But even if you could make an asteroid "stationary", how long would it last? Wouldn't it just become very susceptible to even low-speed impacts, and start tumbling chaotically -- too slow, maybe, to be noticeable on a large scale, but enough to complicate your observatory work?