Recent content by HopDavid

In an ideal 3 body system an object would not be able to drift in from the outside and end up at L4 and L5. These regions are actually called the Forbidden Realm. See this online text on 3 body systems. The forbidden realm is discussed on page 37 among other places. However a...

If you're arguing against soft landing kilometer sized asteroids, this argument's valid. But that's not what Space Resources is suggesting. Again, nobody seems to have done much research. The KISS paper proposes returning ~7 meter rocks and parking in high lunar orbit. For two reasons...

Using 3 body mechanics, there are some bodies that can be captured at EML1 or 2 with relatively small delta V. From EML1 a .7 km/s acceleration suffices to drop the perigee into Earth's upper atmosphere. Once this is accomplished, each perigee pass through the upper atmosphere sheds a little...

The initial goal isn't landing platinum on Earth's surface. Rather, parking a propellant source high on the slopes of Earth's gravity well. The forum's not letting me post a link. Google: kiss caltech asteroid_final_report

Here is a 17 Mb online textbook: Dynamical Systems, The Three-Body Problem, and Space Mission Design