The key differences between Asteroids and Comets. NASA -"Asteroids are rocky, comets are icy"
Based on this quote I have put together a table to discern between the two.
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Asteroids Comets
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Composition Rocky, metallic Rock, dust, water, diluted and frozen gases
Eccenticity Low to medium Medium to high
Period Low Medium to extremely longYou can create an approximation of a comet today already manually by just making an
A - Eccentric object, with
B - Volatile components, and
C - Keeping it at a distance from it's sun where it reasonably wouldn't have an active tail
Example comet by @Impaktor here: viewtopic.php?p=3640#p3640
Problems to solve to implement comets
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet#Phy ... cteristics
- Object should be named comet
- Mechanism to determine if the comet is active. Some distance from the star.
- Visual effects -
- Tails
- Coma/Bow shock
- Jets (Seen up close)
- If it's close to a binary star it should have tails generated from both.
Possible missions to such an object
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Map/Prospect
Sample return - Sample Rock/Dust/Ice/Gas
Redirect - Land on and use thrusters to nudge it's course, either for planetary protection or maybe as part of a terraforming project
Monitoring - Plant a beacon for monitoring
Or a combination of the above. Planting a beacon as a standard procedure to help tracking objects.
Comets have been mentioned earlier on the forum, especially here: issue 3608 and issue 5780