Bring Home the Steel An Orion’s Arm future History image. Pictured: A Heavy Payload Orion OTV (Orbital Transfer Vehicle), mounted to an ore-baring asteroid preparatory to orbital transfer. The heavy payload OTV is an unmanned craft (outfitted with an autonomous flight system) designed for the purpose of moving extremely massive payloads. Hemispherical pusher-plate diameter is eight hundred feet, total vehicle length and diameter is one thousand feet. In the foreground a Deep Space Mining/Engineering Vehicle prepares for departure – its crew has spent the past several months preparing the mile long asteroid for transit. Pre-flight preparations would require removing lose materials (least these become missiles once the asteroid is under thrust), selecting a suitable center-of-mass mounting point for the impulse driver, preparing mounting surfaces for each of the Orion OTV’s eight-touch-down pads, mounting an instrumentation package, telemetry communications antenna, and positioning and mounting an attitude-control system to the asteroid’s surface. Note: The Deep Space Mining/Engineering Vehicle is 855 feet in length -- in the image it is approximately two thousand feet closer to the camera’s position than the Heavy Orion OTV -- vehicles are shown in true relative scale. Reference Links The Heavy Payload Orion OTV first deployed during the industrialization of the outer solar system, around the +355 year mark on my Orion’s Arm timeline: Here. Deep Space Mining/Engineering Vehicle: Here and Here. An asteroid mounted attitude-control system is visible in the lower right corner of my Stanford Torus image post: Here. All models are my own creations constructed in Bryce 6.3 and rendered in Bryce 7 Pro. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.