Mine for Minerals and Gems Activities for Families Nh
Information technology has been said that the earth'south offset trillionaires volition be the ones who brand their fortune in mining... asteroid mining! Over the years, this eventuality has been predicted past people like famed futurist Peter Diamandis, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and financial firm Goldmann Sachs.
While the concept has been the stuff of scientific discipline fiction for decades, it's only in the by few years that it'south come up to be viewed as a serious possibility. This had led to the creation of asteroid mining firms and the passage of legislation that recognizes the right of companies to prospect, claim, and excerpt space-based resource.
With multiple companies now emerging for the limited purpose of asteroid prospecting, exploration, and mining, it is clear that the thought is moving from the realm of science fiction into the earth of science fact.
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But what are the odds that anyone will create a viable asteroid-mining business? When might this get a regular part of our economy? Most important of all, is this something that we can, or even should exist doing?
What are Asteroids?
In order to answer that question, a little refresher on the history of the Solar System seems in club. Roughly iv.vi billion years ago, our Sun formed from a nebula of gas and dust that experienced gravitational collapse at the center.
According to i common model, having consumed most of the textile from the solar nebula, the residue of the gas and dust formed into a big, flat disk around the Dominicus's equator - a circumsolar accretion disk. Over the side by side few eons, this disk gradually condensed in place to class the planets.
Asteroids, according to our current astronomical models, are the material leftover from the formation of the Solar System. In this respect, asteroids and planets like Globe formed from the aforementioned starting materials.
On Earth, gravity pulled most of the heavier elements (like iron and nickel) into the core during the Achean Eon - roughly three and a one-half billion years ago. This process left the crust depleted of much of its heavy metals and heavier elements.
One model hypothesizes that, during the Heavy Bombardment Menstruum, around4.one to 3.eight billion years ago, a disproportionately loftier amount of asteroids collided with the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Globe, and Mars).
These impacts would take and sore-infused the depleted crust with metals like iron, nickel, gold, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, and tungsten. Other researchers hypothesis that battery was constant over a longer period of time.
Why mine asteroids?
The statement in favor of asteroid mining is elementary: inside the Solar System, there are countless bodies that could contain a wealth of minerals, ores, and volatile elements that are essential to Earth'due south economic system.
Asteroids, as we saw above, are believed to be the material left over from the germination of the Solar System. As such, many asteroids are thought to accept compositions that are similar to that of Globe and the other rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars).
All told, there are thought to be more than 150 million asteroids in the inner Solar System alone, and that's just the ones that measure out 100 meters (330 ft) or more in diameter.
These can be divided into three main groups: C-type, South-blazon, and M-type, which correspond to asteroids composed, respectively, largely of clay and silicates, silicates and nickel-atomic number 26, and metals. Almost 75% fall into the category of C-blazon; S-types account for 17%; while Yard-type and other types make up the rest.
These latter two groups are thought to contain arable minerals, including gold, platinum, cobalt, zinc, tin, lead, indium, silver, copper, iron, and various rare-Earth metals. For millennia, these metals have been mined from the Earth'due south chaff and have been essential to economical and technological progress.
In addition, in that location are idea to be many asteroids and comets that contain water ice and other volatiles (ammonia, methane, etc.). Water water ice could be harvested to satisfy a growing demand for freshwater on Earth, for everything from drinking to irrigation and sanitation.
Volatile materials could also be used as a source of chemic propellant like hydrazine, thus facilitating further exploration and mining ventures. In fact, Planetary Resources indicates that at that place are roughly 2.ii trillion United states of america tons (ii trillion metric tons) of water ice in the Solar System.
Of course, this raises the obvious question: wouldn't information technology be really expensive to practise all this mining? Why not simply continue to rely on Earth for sources of precious metals and resources and but learn to use them better?
To put it merely, we are running out of resource. To be articulate, learning to utilise our resources ameliorate and more sustainably is e'er the virtually important idea. And while it is certainly true that Globe-based mining is far cheaper than going to space would exist, that may non be the case indefinitely.
Aside from the fact that off-world minerals and ices would be of considerable value to Earth'due south economy, there is also the style that growing consumption is leading our reserves to become slowly exhausted.
In fact, according to some estimates, it is possible that our planet will run out of fundamental elements that are needed for modern industry and food product within the next 50 to lx years. This lone is a pretty good incentive to try and tap the seemingly inexhaustible supply of elements located off-world.
Plus, there are a lot of benefits to expanding humanity's resource base beyond World. Hither on Earth, mining takes a considerable toll on the natural environment. In fact, depending on the methods used, it can upshot in erosion, sinkholes, habitat destruction, and the destruction of native brute and constitute life.
There'southward as well the dangers of toxic runoff and the contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water, which is a danger to humans, as well as to wildlife and the natural environment. As for smelting, machining, and manufacturing, the environmental damage that results is well-documented.
Combined with ability generation, these industrial processes are some of the leading contributors to air and water pollution. Past shifting these burdens off-world, humanity could dramatically reduce the impact such mining has on the natural environment.
Methods
Earlier asteroid mining tin can begin, there is the necessity of "asteroid prospecting." In curt, asteroids will first need to be identified, cataloged, and assessed for the value of their minerals and resources.
In 2012, NASA commissioned a project called Robotic Asteroid Prospector (RAP), intended to appraise the feasibility of asteroid mining. They identified four different classes of asteroid mission that would be possible using conventional engineering (or what is already in the process of being developed).
These included prospecting, mining/retrieval, processing, and transportation. Prospecting, the logical first step, involves studying and identifying asteroids that could provide practiced economic returns.
For a summary of how prospecting would piece of work, at that place's Roadmap to Space Settlement (3rd ed. 2018) produced by the National Infinite Society (NSS). As it states in Function 5: Asteroid Mining and Orbital Space Settlements:
"Scope observations volition initially identify asteroids every bit Near Earth Objects (NEO'due south), Earth threatening NEOs, primary belt asteroids, and other orbital groupings. Initial robotic missions to NEO asteroids of commercial interest will confirm the size and limerick of different types of asteroids as beingness rocky, metal or carbonaceous, and identify the actual abundances of minerals on each one."
"The probes will also estimate the structure of the asteroids, every bit being apparent "rubble piles" of loose fragments, or made of solid, non-fractured stone and metal. Some missions may bring back actual samples of asteroid textile for analysis. All this information will assist governments in planning planetary defense confronting threatening NEOs and volition assist mining companies to decide which asteroids to focus on."
The next step, actually mining the asteroids, would crave that a considerable corporeality of infrastructure be built in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and across to support operations.
For starters, a fleet of mining robots and haulers would demand to be congenital, capable of extracting ore and resource from Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and hauling them back to Earth.
The most cost-effective way to exercise this would probable be to build them in space, which could occur on assembly platforms where automated robots could construct and repair mining and transportation vessels.
A serial of orbital platforms where vessels can dock, offload ores and other resources, and refuel, would also exist needed. Once mining operations extend across NEOs, these platforms would need to be built further out too.
Somewhen, such platforms would probably need to exist gear up upwards in orbits around the Moon, Mars, and in the Asteroid Belt, or wherever mining operations are taking identify. It would also be wise to build foundries wherever the mining is taking place then that minerals tin can be candy in space.
The construction and maintenance of this infrastructure will involve a process known equally in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). This involves using locally-harvested materials for manufacturing necessities similar a propellant, components for orbiting platforms, oxygen, and even construction of spacecraft.
This would not merely simplify mining operations, but it would also lead to dramatically lower costs.
In one case the prospecting is finished and the infrastructure created, the procedure of mining tin can begin. There are several possible techniques that tin exist used, ranging from the more than basic to the highly futuristic.
These include surface mining, where minerals could be removed by a spacecraft using scoops, nets, and augurs. Shaft mining is another possibility, where spacecraft equipped with drills bore into asteroids to extract the materials within.
Some other thought is to capture asteroids in nets then tow them closer to Earth. Once in Lunar or low-Earth orbit (LEO), they could be mined by smaller, extractor spacecraft, which would so send the resource to orbiting platforms.
Steam-propulsion is another method that has been proposed for asteroid mining. In this case, robotic spacecraft would harvest the oxygen in h2o ice to manufacture propellant, giving them a degree of cocky-sufficiency and the theoretical ability to mine indefinitely.
Applying rut to asteroids and so collecting the ores or ices as they cook away is some other possible method, as is chemical disassociation. At the higher finish of the technology tree, there'south the process of using self-replicating robots to harvest resources.
This concept was first explored in a 1980 NASA study titled "Avant-garde Automation for Infinite Missions,"which suggested the cosmos of an automated factory on the Moon. This manufacturing plant would utilise local resources to build a copy of itself while the more complex components would exist imported from Earth.
Over the form of many years, the factories would exist able to grow exponentially and would be able to extract and procedure mineral ores, helium-3, and other resources. This same concept could too exist applied to asteroid mining.
Much similar steam-powered asteroid mining, self-replicating spacecraft would use ISRU to manufacture more copies of themselves. These copies would get together more copies, and so on.
As indicated by subsequent studies, developments in the fields of robotics, miniaturization, and nanotechnology could anytime permit for a completely self-sufficient mining process. According to studies produced in 2012 and 2016, a closed supply chain using self-replicating robots could be created in just a few decades.
Solar Arrangement Bodies
As noted, there are peradventure more than 150 one thousand thousand good-sized asteroids in the Inner Solar System alone. However, astronomers have identified several in near-Earth space and the Principal Asteroid Chugalug that could provide abundant resources.
For starters, there's the asteroid 16 Psyche, a metallic body that exists within the Master Asteroid Belt. Given its size and composition - around 140 mi (225 km) in diameter - this trunk is thought by some to be the remnant core of a proto-planet that lost its outer layers.
According to radar observations, the asteroid is likely to mostly be made up of metals such equally iron and nickel. More contempo observations performed with the Hubble Infinite Telescope revealed surface spectra that was consistent with pure iron.
However, it's estimated that this body might also contain vast quantities of precious metals (similar golden and platinum). In fact, financial analysts estimated the asteroid's net worth at $700 quintillion (that's 700 followed by 18 zeroes!). In comparison, the entire global economy was estimated at $142 trillion in 2019.
NASA is currently planning a mission (as well named Psyche) to explore this asteroid using an orbiter, which is scheduled to launch in 2022. This orbiter would arrive around Psyche by 2026 and would examine it with an imager, magnetometer, and a gamma-ray spectrometer to larn more than virtually its composition and history.
There are also over 20,000 Virtually-World Asteroids and 100 brusk-period comets that could be harvested in the not-besides-distant future. For example, in that location'southward Ryugu, a near-Earth Asteroid that is currently existence surveyed by Nippon's Hayabusa2 spacecraft.
This torso orbits Earth at an boilerplate distance of 1.1896 AU (a petty more than than the distance between the Earth and the Sun). This body is estimated to contain $83 billion USD in nickel, iron, cobalt, water, nitrogen, hydrogen, and ammonia.
There'southward also Bennu, an NEA that is currently being studied by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (this mission includes a sample-return to Earth). Bennu orbits Earth at an average distance of 1.1264 AU and may contain an estimated $700 one thousand thousand USD worth of fe, hydrogen, ammonia, and nitrogen.
SEE ALSO: NASA TOUCHED Downwardly ON BENNU AND COLLECTED SAMPLES
Then there's Didymos, a sub-kilometer synchronous binary asteroid that is considered a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) - i.e., it could potentially collide with Globe at some signal. It orbits Earth at an average distance of 1.6446 AU and may incorporate an estimated $62 billion USD in nickel, iron, and cobalt.
Topping the charts is the NEA Anteros, which could contain an estimated $5.57 trillion USD in magnesium silicate, aluminum, and iron silicate. This asteroid measures betwixt1.25 to 1.four mi ( twoto2.4 km) in bore and orbits Globe at an average distance of 1.4305 AU.
In that location'south also 21 Lutetia, an anomalous asteroid that measures 120 × 100 km (75 × 62 miles) and orbits Earth at an average distance of 2.435 AU (more two times the distance between the Earth and the Lord's day). It was the first 1000-type asteroid to be imaged by a spacecraft.
This imaging was done by the Rosetta probe, which visited the asteroid on July 10th, 2010. Based on the readings Rosetta obtained, this asteroid is believed to be composed of metal-rich rock.
Another M-type asteroid, 216 Kleopatra, was imaged by radar via the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This hambone-shaped asteroid has two "moonlets" and measures 135 × 58 × fifty miles (217 × 94 × 81 km) and orbits Earth at an average altitude of two.794 AU.
Across the Main Chugalug, there are also the two families of asteroids that orbit Jupiter - the Greeks and the Trojans. In 2006, the Keck Observatory announced that 617 Patroclus and other Trojan asteroids are likely extinct comets that consist largely of h2o ice.
In addition, Jupiter-family comets, and maybe even well-nigh-World asteroids that are extinct comets could also provide water.
Advocacy
There are no shortages of people who want to run across asteroid mining become a reality. Not the least of these are futurists and space exploration advocates, likewise as industrialists and venture capitalists.
One of the earliest recorded examples of asteroid mining-advancement was made by Peter Diamandis – the founder of the X Prize competition that offers incentives to encourage tech developments.
In 2008, he predicted that asteroid mining was the fashion of the future, a claim he expanded in his 2015 volume Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World.
Some other advocate is Scott Moore, the CEO of the Toronto-based company, Euro Dominicus Mining. Recently, he said the post-obit about the hereafter of the mining industry:
"The 'Titans of Gold' now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world, simply the iv-5 million ounces of golden they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in infinite."
Dr. Phil Metzger, who is currently a planetary scientist at the Academy of Central Florida, spent 30 years working for NASA. During that time, he co-founded a lab to develop the technology for infinite mining and interplanetary living - known as Swamp Works. As he put it:
"The solar system tin can support a billion times greater industry than we have on Earth. When yous get to vastly larger scales of civilization, beyond the scale that a planet tin support, then the types of things that civilization can practise are incomprehensible to us … We would be able to promote healthy societies all over the world at the same fourth dimension that we would be reducing the environmental brunt on the Earth."
Jeff Bezos - the founder of Amazon and the space launch provider Bluish Origin - has besides indicated that in social club to survive, homo beings should relocate all of the World's heavy manufacture to space:
"Energy is limited here. Within just a few hundred years, you lot will take to comprehend all of the landmass of Earth in solar cells. So what are you going to do? Well, what I think you lot're going to exercise is you're going to motility out in space … all of our heavy industry will exist moved off-planet and Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial".
You also have organizations like the B612 Foundation, a California-based non-turn a profit made up of scientists, onetime astronauts, and engineers from the Establish for Avant-garde Report (IAS), the Southwest Enquiry Institute (SwRI), Stanford University, NASA, and the aerospace manufacture.
The foundation was founded in 2002 for the purpose of advancing planetary science and planetary defense against asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs). Their proposed pocket-sized telescopes would rely on synthetic tracking to study potentially-hazardous asteroids, which will then be added to the catalog in their Asteroid Decision Assay and Mapping (ADAM) project.
In addition to advancing the science of planetary protection, this method could also assistance advance asteroid prospecting in the near hereafter.
Supporting Legislation
In 2015, The states President Barack Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA, or H.R. 2262) into law. The stated purpose of this Act was:
"To facilitate a pro-growth environment for the developing commercial space manufacture by encouraging private sector investment and creating more stable and predictable regulatory condition."
In essence, the Human activity established a precedent whereby US companies and private citizens were henceforth allowed to own and sell resources that they extracted from asteroids and other astronomical bodies (like the Moon, Mars, and across).
On May 24th, 2018, the Trump administration signed Space Directive-ii, and executive order that sought to simplify the regulatory framework to "promote economic growth; minimize uncertainty for taxpayers, investors, and private industry... and encourage American leadership in space commerce."
This was followed by another executive order titled "Executive Society on Encouraging International Back up for the Recovery and Use of Space Resource," which was passed on April 6th, 2020. Amongst its more salient articles was the declarationn that:
"Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and utilize of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it equally a global commons. Appropriately, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international back up for the public and private recovery and utilize of resources in outer space, consequent with applicable constabulary."
This order concluded decades of legal ambiguities arising from international treaties by formally recognizing the correct of individual American interests to lay claim to resources mined or harvested in outer space.
Who's Upwardly for the Challenge?
There'south also no shortage of companies and ventures working towards making asteroid mining a office of Earth's economy. Most were founded inside the past few years by a combination of advocates and industrialists, many of whom are already invested in commercial aerospace.
One of the beginning to emerge was Planetary Resources, formerly known as Arkyd Astronautics. This company was founded in January 2009 past futurist Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Eric Anderson, and former NASA engineer Chris Lewicki.
In 2012, the visitor was renamed to Planetary Resources and appear that it had new backers, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, filmmaker James Cameron, former Microsoft Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr. (son of the old presidential candidate).
By 2016, the visitor had raised $l million in seed uppercase, $21 million of which came from big-proper name investors like Google'due south Eric Schmidt and James Cameron.
The company launched two examination satellites to orbit. The beginning was technology demonstrator Arkyd iii Reflight (A3R), which was sent to the ISS in April of 2015 and deployed from there by July 16th, 2015. Arkyd 6, their second demonstrator satellite, was successfully launched into orbit on Jan. 11th, 2018.
In October of 2018, owing to financial troubles, the company assets were purchased past the blockchain software technology visitor ConsenSys. By May/June of 2020, ConsenSys made all of Planetary's Resources intellectual belongings public domain and actioned off all of its remaining hardware assets.
Deep Space Industries:
Deep Space Industries (DSI) was founded in 2013 by a group of entrepreneurs and scientists that included entrepreneurs and investors Rick N. Tumlinson and David Gump. They were joined by John C. Mankins, a former NASA engineer, and Bryan Versteeg - a conceptual creative person and architect.
Between 2013 and 2018, the company raised $3.v 1000000, which was supplemented by a few authorities contracts. However, they still managed to research a series of toll-cut space technologies and developed a conceptual framework for a fleet of spacecraft.
On January. 1st 2019, the company was caused by Bradford Space, Inc., a multinational aerospace corporation dedicated to deep space exploration, water-based propulsion, infinite station facilities, and attitude command systems.
Trans Astronautica Corporation:
Likewise known equally TransAstra, this Houston-based visitor was founded in 2015 with the purpose of "building the "transcontinental railroad of space" to open the solar system to humanity."
In Apr of 2019, the visitor received Phase Iii development funding from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program for their Mini Bee concept. This pocket-size, robotic miner is substantially demonstration engineering for the eventual creation of a family of flight systems known every bit Asteroid Provided In-situ Supplies (Apis).
These range from the experimental Mini Bee (which weighs 550 lbs/250 kg) to the larger Honey Bee and Queen Bee – which would exist capable of capturing asteroids measuring 33 and 130 ft (x and twoscore m) in diameter.
The Mini Bee utilizes a series of innovative technologies similar optical mining and resources harvesting method (aka. laser mining), solar reflectors, and an asteroid containment system like to the one that was proposed for NASA's at present-canceled Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).
As with other Arpis concepts, the Mini Bee blueprint calls for a water-based Omnivore solar thermal thruster to provide propulsion. Like the WINE engine, this applied science relies on water water ice and other volatile compounds harvested from asteroids as a supply of propellant.
Respecting the 'Wilderness'
In a recent paper titled "How much of the Solar Arrangement should we get out as Wilderness?" Dr. Martin Elvis and Dr. Tony Milligan examined how overpopulation and climate changes are humanity'southward most pressing existential threats and the chief driver behind ideas similar asteroid mining.
Dr. Elvis is the senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Dr. Milligan is a education fellow in ethics and the philosophy of faith at King's Higher London.
Taking into business relationship the past few centuries of human history, the pair recommends that limits exist established now earlier exponential growth strips our solar arrangement of its resource.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in hostage in the 18th century, natural resource exploitation and population have grown in tandem. In fact, between the years 1800 and 2000, the global population multiplied six times over, going from 1 billion to vi billion.
This represented the largest population explosion in history, but the rate of increase connected to accelerate for some time. Where it took 120 years for Globe's population to go from 1 to ii billion (betwixt 1800 and 1920), it took simply 33 years to attain 3 billion (by 1960).
By 1975, Earth's population reached 4 billion; past 1987 and 1999, it had reached 5 and vi billion, respectively. By 2011, the world'south population reached seven billion, and by 2017, an boosted 500 million people were added. Notice the pattern? That's correct, and the rate is continuing to increment, although the latest estimates propose that world population growth will stop in around 2100, and then begin to decline.
The same holds true for consumption. Looking at energy usage lonely, humanity went from a global consumption of about 5650 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 1800 to over 150,000 TWh in 2017.
Essentially, while our population increased sevenfold, free energy consumption increased thirtyfold. Here we come across yet some other exponential trend, where resource consumption has grown in a way that vastly exceeds population growth.
What's more, it is estimated that Globe's population will attain 9.seven billion by 2050 and could elevation at nearly 11 billion past 2100. This will be happening at a time when climatic change will be causing the very systems we depend upon to feed, firm, clothe, and sustain ourselves to undergo drastic shifts.
And so, while looking off-world for new resource may be necessary to our survival, it could as well simply shift the burden of resource dependency onto a larger environment.
It might, therefore, be a skilful thought to have all claims of "inexhaustible resource" with a grain of salt, and start setting aside a big portion of the Solar System as 'off-limits' to commercial evolution.
Can/Should We Do Information technology?
In addition to laying out the necessary steps that would need to exist taken, NASA'southward RAP report besides offered some interesting conclusions regarding the viability of certain types of mining. When it comes to the economic feasibility of the unabridged enterprise, the authors concluded:
"At that place is no economically feasible scenario nosotros could identify that depends solely upon returning asteroid resource to LEO or the surface of the Earth. To be economically viable, asteroid mining will depend predominantly upon customers in-space who are part of the space industrial economy and infrastructure."
In short, until the day that LEO and deep-space are able to exist commercialized, information technology doesn't make sense to wait off-world for essential resource that tin be more cheaply harvested at habitation. Nevertheless, the written report also stipulates that in the long-run, harvesting minerals and ices from asteroids makes proficient economic sense.
For instance, not but would the creation of space infrastructure benefit from the mining of elements like platinum, aluminum, iron, nickel, and manganese, it would likewise be cheaper for habitats and facilities in space to get their water from local asteroids rather than Earth:
"A first order calculation of the cost of returning h2o from a Near Globe Asteroid to a staging base of operations at EML1 yields a cost of $five,205 per kilogram, which compares quite favorably to the $12,295 cost of delivering water there from the Globe using a Falcon Heavy. In one case all of the initial costs of establishing the asteroid mining enterprise accept been retired, and the price of the returned water can be based solely on the operations cost of asteroid mining and then that cost could fall to $1,733 per kilogram. Several techniques exist that could reduce these costs past a gene of ii or more."
These recommendations address another important effect, which is the touch that the influx of all these resources would accept on Earth's economic system. By tapping resource that are far more abundant than what exists at home, humanity will be able to transcend its current economic models.
For as long as human being beings have conducted trade and businesses, scarcity has been a crucial element. By having abundant sources of necessary resources, humanity could effectively get a mail service-scarcity species. At the same fourth dimension, if supply should all of a sudden exceed demand, then the value of these resources will drop considerably, and all the wealth that is measured using them will likewise suffer.
As such, information technology is much more likely that asteroid mining - rather than being a savior to Earth'due south economy - will be one of the means through which humanity expands into space. Saving planet World could very well happen every bit a result, only simply in the long run.
In the concurrently, we still need to come upwardly with solutions to the issues of overpopulation, hunger, resources depletion, and climate change - ones that emphasize sustainability and green technologies.
However, between growing demand, the danger posed by climate change, and the possible demand to look off-world for human survival, asteroid mining may be an inevitability. In other words, it'south not a question of "can we" or "should nosotros," but "when will we?"
In this respect, asteroid mining could parallel efforts in human space exploration and off-globe settlement. In a few centuries, it would non exist farfetched that human settlements and human industry volition achieve from the inner Solar Organization all the mode to the Kuiper Belt.
Intrinsic to that volition be a vast infrastructure dedicated to harvesting everything from metals and ices to hydrogen and helium-3 from rocks, moons, and planetary bodies.
Explore Further:
- Wikipedia - Asteroid
- NASA - Asteroid Fast Facts
- Wikipedia - Asteroid Mining
- NASA - Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS)
- NASA - Robotic Asteroid Prospector (RAP)
- Physics Earth - The Asteroid Trillionaires
- NASA - Advanced Automation for Infinite Missions
- National Geographic - Air Pollution, Facts and Data
- MIT Technology Review - How the asteroid-mining bubble burst
- The Engineer - "Your questions answered: asteroid mining" (2013)
- Big Recollect - The Kickoff Trillionaires Volition Brand Their Fortunes in Infinite
- The Disruptors - Designing the Mars I Colony and Mining Asteroids in Infinite
Source: https://interestingengineering.com/asteroid-mining-to-shape-the-future-of-our-wealth
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