There are approximately 1200 Potentially Hazards Asteriods (PHA)that are in Near Earth Orbit. (per NASA's NEO data base).

Does anyone out there know how many of these objects orbit our star at or near 1 Astronomical Unit. (in other words in roughly the same orbit as us).

I am curious because some of these objects are large enough to support a 'colony' or 'research station'...

and they are a heck of a lot closer then mars. (and some of them have metalic and other mineral content).

The largest ones even exert microgravity. All of them have more or less dramatically elliptical orbits and if I remember all of them do not have orbits that are exactly conformant to ours. What makes them a threat is that they cross our orbit. Most of them orbit the sun. A couple have very odd orbits that seem to be Jupiter-centric to some extent. Since their orbits are not consistent and although they do travel around the sun they do not do so on the same path as they took before. It is like planetary gravitic effect works oddly on some of the asteroids considered threats and planet killers.

Here are all their orbits. Just click on each one.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/

I have counted 18 that are at least 1 km in size and orbit at the same mean distance as the earth... Most come to within 40 Lunar Distances of the Earth...

Much close than Mars.

Reachable and 'colonizable' by our current level of technology.

(then any mission to mars would have emergency backup points).

Or continuous communications with Earth?
Dare I say... even possibly the internet?

The ultimate in 'high speed rail'...

Electro Magnetic Linear Accelerator stations from here to Mars...

In short hops.

I can see a plethora of JOBS in the pursuit of THAT.

If the navy has taught me anything it's this: Anywhere humans go, there will always be a toilet in need of scrubbing.

Even with relays and signal boosting you still would have to wait minuets for replies.

Now there is an interesting theory about Quantum Linking solving that problem at least and possibly leading to teleportation!

Aye...

and plumbers, and electricians, and construction workers, and administrators, and garbage collectors, and drillers, and farmers, and water hunters, and....


and

and

Our current technology is more than capable of supporting such a network.