Off World Mining It seems hard to believe, but it has been said dozens of new companies are preparing to be able to mine in space. Since there is not a practical way yet to get to asteroids and other bodies and bring back heavy loads of ore, this could take some time to work out the problems. Every time I think about this, I come to the same conclusion. It is only a matter of time when all valuable minerals on earth lose all or much of their value. I feel this way because as more precious minerals are brought back to earth, it could make minerals like gold and silver commonplace. This would not happen for quite a while so don’t worry about your gold hoard becoming worthless yet. There have been some companies formed for space mining which didn’t work out for them and they had famous executives backing them, but the goals seemed to be just too distant at the time the companies were formed and they are gone. This didn’t seem to stop new space mining companies from being founded. Will the new ones have better luck than the old ones? We are capable of reaching a target, but it would not only take a long time to get there, if it succeeded, but most likely have to be a robotic operation. It just seems to be far too expensive to do in the near future and the robots are still not up to the task. Then there are so many other problems. A gigantic ship would be necessary to not only carry all the ore back to make it worthwhile, but it would have to carry enough robots there, which won’t break down and have some source of continuous power. If they do break down, as do all machines eventually, they would have to be able to be repaired, probably by other robots. I say robots would be needed because even though we are talking about a complex situation, it would be far more complex to have to try and figure out all the needs of humans in a mining colony or working from a ship in orbit. Humans need so many things to survive. Not the least is enough food and water, air, protection from radiation, sanitary facilities and yes, some sort of leisure activities so they don’t go crazy on long stints. They would also need gravity. We can see the need for that even now on the space station. I think if we look at things logically, it might be a little easier to mine on a planet, even one without air, for humans than trying to mine on an asteroid. At least they would be able to build shelters and maybe send supplies there ahead of the flight. On a small asteroid this may not be possible. One thing I don’t hear much about is how space mining might be able to lead us to new materials we don’t have access to now. It is almost certain we will discover new minerals which in turn will make it possible to create new metals and such, which could in turn even improve our spacecraft and such and might even be able to make our rockets more powerful or even do away with rockets. I am talking about ores which might have properties such as antigravity. We truly have no idea what we might find in a mining operation. On earth once we start digging in some places, we find remnants of past civilizations. I can see it now; we start to dig on an asteroid and find a structure buried on it. We do some research and find out the asteroid was once part of a planet where intelligent life existed. Somehow the planet was destroyed. We could also find out the asteroid was once part of a base. Many people have suggested there might be ancient bases throughout our solar system either set up by extraterrestrials or advanced humans who once lived on earth. There is a story which states we were all much more advanced and set up bases throughout the solar system because we were at war with a race known as the Reptilians. It is said the Reptilians won the war and bombed the humans back to the Stone Age. If this is true, we might find many bases throughout the solar system when we launch enough exploration flights. Space mining could be a big boon for the human race. One way would be to make those rare earth minerals far more accessible thus driving down the price. The result might be things like batteries for electric cars and storage in homes would become cheaper and the electric car might finally be at a par with the gas cars in price. Two of the big problems with space travel of any kind is speed and expense, among other things. The old saw about time being money is still true and in the case of space travel maybe truer than ever. It is one of the things which requires many years before a profit can be seen. One thing NASA has proven to be true however is space travel spurs new technology and this technology can be used to make life better for all of us. When it comes to technology, we might also find advanced technology while digging. It is always possible a race could have existed which had far more advanced technology than us, but died out. We might come across this while digging. When we are looking at all the digging we do on our planet, it is amazing what we find. It has always amazed me how one civilization would built a structure; another might come along and build on top of that and then earth would cover the entire area and everything would be forgotten. There is no reason to think this couldn’t happen on other planets and even dwarf planets. One thing we have found out while digging on the earth is we can only drill down a few miles. The center of the earth is 3,960 miles. We have only been able to drill down to 5.6 miles. This took place when the Soviets decided to try and dig as deep as they could. Things could be different on another world. There may not be so much heat under another planet’s crust allowing for the finding of new, never seen before minerals. We are on the verge of a new frontier in mining and one which might change the life of every person on earth.
|
