On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 04:35:03AM -0500, Caleuche wrote:
> In fact, around asteroids and planetoids, the space station operator
> would have to be careful as an object in a powered orbit like that
> is effectively a gravitational tractor, and will change the orbit of
> the planetoid around its primary star over a long enough period of
> time.

Even a very slow rotation would mean that the average long-term
gravitational force of a synchronous object would go to zero.  If
contragrav is employed, the gravitational attraction would be
essentially zero anyway.

Barring both, the worst case would probably be something like a
million-tonne station maintaining a solar synchronous position at some
very close range like 10 km, causing an acceleration on the order of a
few millimetres per second per year.  It might become a problem if the
station is still in the same orbit-relative direction throughout a
million years.

Gravity is an extremely weak force on human scales.

- Tim