Mining In Space
I have said this before but I have to say it again. When we establish mining in space, every ore we consider valuable on earth which contains anything valuable will become worthless unless much of the ore is held back. Think of this, much of the pension funds might be invested in gold and silver not to mention other precious things. Maybe it is time for the very young who are just starting out in business to consider the fact when deciding what to invest in with a retirement fund.
There are relatively nearby asteroids which not only contain precious metals but also are rich in metals like nickel, iron, cobalt, nitrogen, hydrogen and ammonia. One which is said to contain all this and more is Davida, which is 202 miles wide. The trick will be how to mine it and get the contents back to earth cheaply. There is no doubt we will figure out a way. Launching from the moon to the asteroid and back to the moon would save a lot of fuel. Factories on the moon could do the processing, but the companies would still have to figure out how to cheaply send the processed products to earth. We have to remember we will be building a lot of things off planet.
It is thought an asteroid only 1,000 meters across or 3,380 feet could yield 100,000 tons of platinum. Maybe we are looking at this the wrong way. Most times the idea is to send ships to the asteroid and start a mining operation. It could be robotic or somehow use humans, but that is a little more improbable. It seems the way to save the most money would be to move the asteroid in just one trip. Perhaps you could land it on the moon or somehow take it to earth. This would save on all those future trips back and forth with cargo ships. Surely, we could start out trying this on small asteroids and if it was practical move up to bigger ones.
There is a big difference between the former gold rush on earth and one it space. When prospectors were searching for gold, it was a limited quantity so there was never any worry too much of it would be found and it would become worthless. This was not so true with diamonds however and many of them are being held back from the market to keep the price high.
NASA has put a price tag on the asteroid Psyche. They estimate it contains ten thousand quadrillion dollars’ worth of riches. Psyche is a unique asteroid since it seems to be the metal core of a planet. NASA has a mission planned for a trip to this asteroid. No, it is not a mining mission, but one of exploration. It is estimated it will take 3.5 years to reach Psyche. Again, I say we need much faster propulsion. The asteroid has an average diameter of 140 miles. It is probably far too large to be moved today, but in the future when technology has improved it could be a candidate.
We could go to the asteroid belt to mine asteroids but there are closer ones called near earth objects. One is 2016 ED85. Today as of the writing of this article this asteroid is said to be about 98 million miles away from earth. The asteroid belt is 1.7 billion miles from earth. The asteroid orbits the sun every 5.17 years and comes as close to earth as a little over 32,000 miles. It has a diameter somewhere between 0.788 to 1.762 kilometers in diameter. This means it is about the size of the Golden Gate Bridge. The asteroid is considered to contain many tons of valuable ore.
One of the factors in mining asteroids will be the development of new AI procedures. The robots, if they are used for mining, have to be able to repair each other and carry out duties formerly performed by humans, when the humans thought these duties were necessary. The robots have to recognize when there is a problem and be able to solve it. Perhaps they will even have to be able to fly the ships back, but probably not. If they are drones, they will be able to fly themselves. The robots will have to be very sturdy and be able to operate in light gravity without floating off the asteroid. They will also have to be able to endure in some of the harshest environments.
It won’t only be mining on asteroids, I am sure. It might even start by mining on earth’s moon. Not many people are currently looking at the moon as a mining site, but this could all change. Some people believe there could be untapped wealth on that heavenly body. As it gets harder to get some of the rare minerals only available from China, we may be pushed to mine on the moon. As a matter of fact, we should have begun looking for rare minerals there already. The United States is very vulnerable from other countries which supply rare earth elements to us which are sorely needed in many areas and especially in the defense industry. One scientist said that we all know there is a large supply of rare earth elements on the moon. He went on to say we saw this in the moon samples returned to earth. Even the M3, a NASA moon mapper which orbited the moon found concentrations of minerals on the moon.
We can’t afford to fall behind in space mining. I am not talking about gold and silver, but more about strategic materials we desperately need. If we don’t start the mining process soon, other countries will and there is no doubt China can’t wait to begin digging as soon as their technology allows. Everything we need is just floating around out there. One of the most important things however is to make sure there are no microbes in this stuff which will infect all of us. That is why I feel these ores should be processed off world until we know they are safe. After all the minerals will be mixed with soil and maybe in some cases plants and such if they exist in these places.
I have to wonder where the current administration stands on this, I have a hunch they never even thought about it. We just can’t afford to fall behind and currently it seems we are ahead in commercial space flight and perhaps some of the private companies are thinking about this. |
