There's a lot of stuff in the news lately about asteroids, what with the Dawn mission orbiting Vesta, and the talk of a manned asteroid mission as a possible future step for NASA. Prompted by this, I'm going to dip into the territory usually occupied by Matt and Rhett, and ask a somewhat silly question:
What size asteroid would you be able to throw a baseball into orbit, a la Bugs Bunny?
(Sadly, probably for copyright reasons, I couldn't quickly find a YouTube video of the cartoon where Bugs throws a baseball all the way around the world. But you can probably picture it, even if you're too young to remember the actual cartoon.)
Now, I'm not interested in the feasibility of this on Earth, or any specific astronomical object. I'm asking what size an imaginary object would need to be in order for this to be possible. We can get an idea from introductory physics.
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