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KilgoreTroutPfc t1_jd5j830 wrote

You could in theory, but you wouldn’t want to. First you are entirely at the mercy of its random trajectory, sure you could nudge it around, but it’s generally going to be headed into deep space, away from any solar energy source. If you had fusion power you could be okay for energy. But if you wanted to turn it drastically, it would require more energy than it would take to just accelerate a space ship in that direction at the same speed.

The main problem is that even if it happens to be pointed exactly where you want to go, it’s not necessarily going to get you you there faster or more efficiently than just building your own starship.

If the asteroid is going really fast, you’d have to build a ship that catch catch up to it and match its speed. If you have that, you don’t really need the asteroid apart from resourcing mining.

If it’s going as fast as modern rockets currently allows, then riding on it wont get you there faster than just staying in the ship.

It wouldn’t solve any problem except providing a far greater reservoir of resources, and not a very good one. What you really want from fusion energy is hydrogen. It’s not efficient to extract hydrogen from rock.

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Majestic_Pitch_1803 t1_jd5q143 wrote

I wouldn’t worry so much about turning the asteroid so much as I would be worried about getting off when i’m where I want to be. But at least in my scenario you could get off how you got on and you don’t need to take enough fuel with you to get off, you get it when you’re on the asteroid

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PigSlam t1_jd5kwpx wrote

The only advantage I can think of would be maybe for some level of gravity afforded by the mass of the asteroid, but it would have to be a big asteroid to give anything useful, and that would mean steering it would be that much harder.

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Macktologist t1_jd5m112 wrote

So you’re saying we would need the protomolecule?

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OnlyAstronomyFans t1_jd5yqe2 wrote

My man should just hop on Eros, maybe he can talk the Ring entities into going interstellar instead of to Venus

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