Asteroids: They Could Become Cabins in the Sky

Asteroids are familiar ground for many fictional characters, including Antoine de Saint-Exupery's charming "Little Prince," who lives on asteroid B-612 and cleans out its two active volcanoes with a plumber's helper. But real-life spacemen have largely ignored the small, airless planets in their race to reach the moon and Mars.

This is a big mistake, reported General Electric Engineer George M. Kohler to a recent international meeting of astronomers in Bulgaria. Asteroids are not only interesting in themselves, but may prove useful to man--and space explorers should go after them.

Most asteroids stay on the far side of Mars, but at least twelve are known whose eccentric orbits carry them near the earth. Since all of these were found by sheer accident (such as streaks showing on telescope photographs), there must be plenty more like them that are still unknown.

Very large near-approach asteroids are surely scarce, but Kohler estimates that between 10 million and 10 billion objects 30 ft. to 300 ft. in diameter pass each year within 20 million miles of the earth. A good number of them probably come much closer, perhaps within several hundred thousand miles. Kohler urges that a careful search be made for these visitors with special electronic telescopes. If an asteroid promises to make a close approach to the earth in the near future, he urges, it should become a prospective target for space explorers.

As intimacy with asteroids increases, thinks Kohler, space voyagers may hitchhike on them, finding shelter from radiation, and perhaps fuel or structural material. Even a small asteroid will provide a steady base for telescopes. If an asteroid is traveling roughly parallel to the earth, it might be steered into an earth orbit. Then it could be hollowed out and used by spacemen as a roomy, steady, well-shielded satellite base.

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