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Majestic_Pitch_1803 t1_jd5n0gv wrote

Reply to comment by Diesalotwpg in Couldn’t we land on an asteroid that is passing through our solar system and use that as a vessel for interstellar travel? by [deleted]

I mean we had Oumuamua it feels like yesterday. And I know it isn’t the only one of it’s kind.

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Strange_Flatworm1144 t1_jd5thw8 wrote

And where is it going? What resources does it contain? Is it even stable enough for mining, "colonizing" or propulsion? Were we able to catch up with it and land on it like on Bennu, an asteroid in our ecliptic plane whose orbit is relatively easy to reach from Earth?

We can't even send people to Mars and have them survive there.

It would be way easier (but still very hard to impossible) to go find a fitting asteroid in our neighborhood and turn that into a spaceship and accelerate it out of the solar system when everything is in place, than trying to catch a ride on some unknown object on a pretty unknown trajectory.

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Diesalotwpg t1_jd5vvwk wrote

The last study I saw estimated 7 interstellar system objects of Oumuamua's type per year https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03289. Even if they were all suitable for conversion to a long term space craft, that's only 7 chances per year of an object on a trajectory that will intersect with something worth travelling to.

Oumuamua was fast relatively speaking. It was about 3 times as fast as the vehicle sent to the comet. Which means that Oumuamua was travelling at 0.0127% of the speed of light. So it will take 8000 years to travel 1 light year.

There are only 12 to 15 stars within a 10 light year radius of earth. So assuming we can build an 80,000 year craft out of our asteroid (when we can't build a dishwasher that lasts 5 (not a specific example, honest)), the chance of finding one on a suitable trajectory is effectively zero.

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Designer-Wolverine47 t1_jd6s08f wrote

It would really suck if, half way through your 80,000 year trip, the humans you left behind developed a way to go 10,000 times as fast...

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Majestic_Pitch_1803 t1_jd63c8x wrote

I mean there could be more, just invisible. Could use gravity assists to reach further ones.

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Diesalotwpg t1_jd6cdgc wrote

Even if we were to somehow detect a thousand more possible targets within that radius, I'm afraid we make no appreciable dent in the odds of finding an object on a viable trajectory. You are looking at a sphere with a surface area of 3142 square light years. So let's say the diameter of these targets is about 120 AU (a rough number for the radius of our heliosphere). That gives us an area of 0.000000215 square light years. That's a pretty tiny bullseye.

Although your comment about gravity assist implies that you are no longer interested in using the existing speed of the asteroid as you would need to manoeuvre it to slingshot around a gravity well, likely spending orders of magnitude more energy to do so than you have 'saved' by using an already moving object. At that point it would be be cheaper and easier to just build your space craft.

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bensimwiththeshot t1_jd6a5qy wrote

Dude you just don’t give up. I have already read at least 5 really well explained reasons why this little fairytale of yours simply will not work or serves no beneficial purpose. You just keep going man like a little kid that just keeps on saying “but, but, but, what if this what if what if that”. Here’s something to remember whenever you think you have come up with the ultimate idea. There are many, many people much more intelligent than those of us writing comments on reddit. So intelligent, that anything you may think you have all figured out I can almost guarantee you has been thought of and proved as a no no. Give it a rest my friend. Cool idea but it just doesn’t make any fucking sense for us earthlings to do.

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