RE: Plans to convert asteroids into autonomously acting spaceships are steadily increasing --- Pläne um Asteroiden zu autonom agierende Raumschiffe umzubauen nehmen immer mehr zu - - - ( En / De )
This has all kinds of advantages!
If the asteroid was large enough and had enough of the right elements/materials natively there, we could bore into it and create living space within the meteor itself. Rockets or some kind of controllable propullsion engines could be placed on the outside that could gently steer the asteroid through space, without having to provide full propulsion power (and the fuel consumption necessary to provide full propulsion). The main momentum would come from the already moving asteroid itself.
Minerals and elements already there (after already proving that the right ones existed on the asteroid), could be used to provide water, oxygen and hydrogen for fuel. Green houses could be installed to grow food. And, again assuming the rock is big enough, since the entire station would be underground, radiation from GCR's would be less of a problem.
Now, if somebody can figure out how to get around the ill effects of low gravity over long periods of time on the human body, this plan could work!
The scenario that you describe there is in the series The Expanse.
There, humans have already advanced into space, terraforming Mars and setting up outposts in space, and one of those outposts is in the Astroide Belt, where a huge Astroid has been transformed into a station, just as you describe it. Only that they have not solved the problem of radiation and there are mutations ...
I hope we will solve this problems one day.
Really? I'll have to check it out...I've never heard of it. Too bad I hadn't thought of this post earlier. I could have sued somebody for stealing my idea! ;^)
lol :)))