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Gravity Tractors

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Subject: Gravity Tractors
From: peterwez...@hotmail.com (peterwezeman@hotmail.com)
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by: peterwezeman@hotmail - Sat, 15 Oct 2022 04:28 UTC

As has been mentioned in discussion here about NASA's
recent experiment in asteroid deflection, some asteroids
are very loosely bound aggregations of rubble. This
presents obvious difficulties in attempting to push
or pull them.

In 2005 NASA astronauts Edward Lu and Stanley Love
proposed that one method of doing this is to maneuver
a spacecraft near to the asteroid in question and
deflect it using the gravitational force between the
asteroid and the spacecraft. Presuming that an
asteroid on an Earth-intersecting trajectory can be
identified several years in advance it seems that it
could be deflected by a spacecraft of practical size.
This technique has come to be known as a
"gravity tractor":

https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitigate/gravity-tractor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor

Current thinking seems to be that a gravity tractor spacecraft
would likely use ion drive, which is well suited to produce a
small thrust over months or years.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

Subject	Author
Gravity Tractors	peterwezeman@hotmail.com