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Last Exit: Space is a new documentary on Discovery+ that explores the possibility of humans colonizing planets beyond Earth. Since it is produced and narrated by Werner Herzog (director of Grizzly Man, guest star on The Mandalorian) and written and directed by his son Rudolph, however, it goes in a different direction than your average space documentary. It's weird, beautiful, skeptical, and even a bit funny.
In light of the film's recent streaming launch, father and son Herzog spoke with Ars Technica from their respective homes about the film's otherworldly hopes, pessimistic conclusions, and that one part about space colonists having to drink their own urine.
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Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization “Will Inevitably Fail”
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2022, @01:46AM
Depends - where is the source for the propellant for that rocket? If it's coming from Earth, it's not going to be competitive with Earth-side mining (you need a bunch of orders of magnitude of propellant to move one kg of material from any asteroid). For example, I could see three to four orders of magnitude more propellant required to move an asteroid from near Earth orbit to say L4/5 (Lagrange points leading and trailing the Moon in its orbit by 60 degrees). If the propellant is part of the asteroid itself and energy is provided by local solar power (for example, a rail gun or some sort of electric propulsion), then that's a very different proposition.
It also depends on how fast you want to move that asteroid. If you're willing to take your time, you can get a lot of delta-v from gravity assists with Venus, Mars, Earth, and the Moon to get it into the desired position. If you're trying to do it right now (well, within a couple of years), it takes a lot more delta-v and energy.