Large Asteroid Habitat


The habitat geometry is a large cylinder, illuminated by diffusing mirrors on the axis from an external focusing mirror. The habitat is surrounded by a thick shield of dustball asteroid material.

Dustball asteroid rotation rates are quite limited by centrifugal disassembly. For 1200 kg/m³ and a 1.25x safety factor, the rotation period must be longer than 3.37 hours or equatorial material will spin away. The dustball asteroid 101955 Bennu has a rotation period of 4.3 hours, close to the limit, and most asteroids rotate more slowly. Asteroids do not spin too fast; if you hope to spin up a habitat with the angular momentum in the shielding mass, they spin too slowly.

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Bad example, not enough asteroid angular momentum

We need a factor of 30 more ... hence the shielding must be at least 8 times heavier and thicker (1.8e10 kg), and the source asteroid larger than 245 meters radius and spinning fast.

Libreoffice Calc ods spreadsheet . . . . (download free, open source libreoffice here )

Near Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu has a mass of 7.3e10 kg, a mean density of 1200 kg/m³, a mean radius of 245 m, and a rotation period of 15500 seconds. L = 0.4 M R² ω = 7e11 kg m²/s, not quite enough!

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