How to Colonize an Asteroid
There are several thousand asteroids or cometary cores which are classified as "Near Earth Objects", or NEO's. These objects are of varying composition, but are among the most simple places to reach from planet earth - even easier to get to than our own moon. {R.33.75-98} Because these objects are from varying sources, they show a wide diversity of content. Almost half of them are basically balls of dirty water ice, the remnants of comets trapped in the inner solar system. Many of these objects have highly eccentric orbits which carry them both near the earth at times, and out to the edge of the main asteroid belt, beyond the orbit of Mars. A colony built on one of these objects with an eccentric orbit could also be utilized to provide nearly free transportation from earth to Mars, or to the main asteroid belt.