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A comment on NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from low-Earth orbit. Parent comment

Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by rm_-rf_slash on Monday December 07, 2015 @04:43PM (#10692946)
I know little of space physics, but wouldn't the additional gravity of an asteroid disrupt tidal patterns on earth?
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by Pinckney on Monday December 07, 2015 @04:58PM (#10693046)
No. Any asteroid we could reasonably capture is much too small to have any significant impact.
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by nerfhammer on Monday December 07, 2015 @07:33PM (#10693944)
What if we mess it up and it comes tumbling toward earth?
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by personjerry on Monday December 07, 2015 @07:57PM (#10694040)
This is the sort of thing we would verify the calculations of, many times, and consider problems ahead of time.
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by InclinedPlane on Tuesday December 08, 2015 @12:45AM (#10695022)
We lack the ability to move a large enough asteroid to do any serious damage.
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by Pinckney on Tuesday December 08, 2015 @03:54AM (#10695436)
Not yet, but perhaps in the near future. The National Space Society has a proposal up for capturing 99942 Apophis via gravitational slingshot, which would be fairly damaging if we managed to crash it.
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by 8note on Monday December 07, 2015 @08:39PM (#10694217)
it would likely burn up on entry
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Re:NASA official warns private sector: We’re moving on from ... by slyall on Monday December 07, 2015 @05:44PM (#10693367)
Lets put it this way. The largest asteroid in the inner Solar system, Ceres has a mass of 1.3% of the moon.

The size of asteroid we are talking about here is likely to be closer to a container ship or maybe a small hill. Perhaps 1 millionth of the size/mass of Ceres at the most.

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