What is a cycler asteroid?
I have no idea; that was your term. My comment on "ease" was in relation to what I am proposing. On that I can shed more light. I have also noted your
He makes it seem that asteroid motion is manageable - is it? Perhaps he means an artificial asteroid? - which is a rocket.
What I have in mind is something like this:
There are asteroids whose orbits sometimes bring them close to Earth, but they don't also go close to Mars; so they wouldn't be of much use in Earth-Mars transportation. And the same goes for asteroids near Mars. But we could pick one of these asteroids and force it into an elliptical orbit that at one time gets it very close to Earth and another time very close to Mars. People or their goods could then be uploaded or downloaded as appropriate. With enough such asteroids, one would have the equivalent of No. 12 buses or women of easy virtue: "
if one goes by you, don't get worked up; just wait for a few minutes, and another one will be available shortly".
Getting an asteroid into such a position is obviously not especially easy, but only in principle: It is basically a matter of taking into account the very large number of bodies and gravitational forces between Earth and Mars and then appropriately positioning the asteroid. The former is, essentially, just a matter of really massive number crunching, for which a quantum computer will be very handy; and the latter is, essentially, just a matter of firing a whole bunch of rockets. One could even adjust for speed; indeed, my response to Terminator's "mining" suggestion reflects my belief that the speeds required for efficient transportation would exclude the "leisurely" activity of mining.
So, the real, fundamental question is this: how does one get some object---be it a small rock or a whole planet---into an orbit of one's choosing? Plenty of good people have been working on that sort of thing, and the preliminary results look promising ... just a lot of maths and a large bunch of rockets. For example, as a matter of intuition, there are two obvious solutions to "global warming", if the species Homo Sapiens will not accept responsibility and do the right thing: (a) cool the sun, or (b) move Earth into a farther-out orbit. The former is really, really difficult. The latter is being tackled, but I think any "sun-side" solution, such as just moving the planet is a fundamentally bad idea: one will still be stuck with the very people who f**ked up things in the first place and who could well just keep going with their bad behavior. Anyways, ... the basic idea does have some merits that are very relevant for the bigger-and-better things that we propose. Here is a short, "layman's" report:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/jun/10/globalwarming.climatechangeand here is an academic paper (as "seen from the sun's side", but to the same effect):
In this paper, we have investigated the feasibility of gradually moving the Earth to a larger orbital radius in order to escape from the increasing radiative ?ux from the Sun. Our initial analysis shows that the general problem of long-term planetary engineering is almost alarmingly feasible using technologies that are currently under serious discussion. The eventual implementation of such a program, which is moderately beyond current technical capabilities, would profoundly extend the time over which our biosphere remains viable.
https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102126(Note that the key is in forcing an asteroid into a specific orbit.)
NASA has some asteroid-tinkering projects in relation to Mars, but their scope appears to be rather modest ... perhaps the constraints of the Civil Service? You can read about them on NASA's websites. E.g.
NASA is developing a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon ... This Asteroid Redirect Mission
https://www.nasa.gov/content/what-is-nasa-s-asteroid-redirect-mission