I’m so intrigued by the prospect of mining asteroids! The amounts of metals and other resources, including rarer things like platinum family metals is incredible. There are some serious challenges that would need to be overcome, but the first country or company which pulls it off would open the doors to a future where we don’t need to rip up earth to obtain all the rare stuff we need for high tech industry. And with huge amounts of asteroids being in the belts in our solar system, a practically inexhaustible supply too.
It is exciting but what’s the market? It’s hard to see this being at all a reasonable cost having to bring it back to Earth, especially unrefined, and it’s hard to imagine it not being worse than current mining, given the flight back to Earth, especially if refining is still on Earth
On the other hand I’m more excited over mining regolith and water. Such simple things, but will be a huge difference in cost to maintain any off-world presence. Shelter, radiation control, rocket fuel, drinking and bathing, growing food : water and dirt are pretty basic, but just think of the sheer tonnage of supply missions launching from Earth it could replace
I think the real value is amount of rare metals that could be harvested, scientists have found an asteroid that is comprised mostly of metals. Scientists think it may be the exposed core of a proto planet:
So that kind of haul could potentially be worth it, but smelting, refinement and processing would probably be more cost effective in space. Who knows what the future will bring, mining the asteroid belt may only make sense once we have a much strong presence in space, I.E., colonies on Mars, the Moon, etc etc.
I’m so intrigued by the prospect of mining asteroids! The amounts of metals and other resources, including rarer things like platinum family metals is incredible. There are some serious challenges that would need to be overcome, but the first country or company which pulls it off would open the doors to a future where we don’t need to rip up earth to obtain all the rare stuff we need for high tech industry. And with huge amounts of asteroids being in the belts in our solar system, a practically inexhaustible supply too.
It is exciting but what’s the market? It’s hard to see this being at all a reasonable cost having to bring it back to Earth, especially unrefined, and it’s hard to imagine it not being worse than current mining, given the flight back to Earth, especially if refining is still on Earth
On the other hand I’m more excited over mining regolith and water. Such simple things, but will be a huge difference in cost to maintain any off-world presence. Shelter, radiation control, rocket fuel, drinking and bathing, growing food : water and dirt are pretty basic, but just think of the sheer tonnage of supply missions launching from Earth it could replace
I think the real value is amount of rare metals that could be harvested, scientists have found an asteroid that is comprised mostly of metals. Scientists think it may be the exposed core of a proto planet:
Metal asteroid Psyche has a ridiculously high ‘value.’ But what does that even mean?
So that kind of haul could potentially be worth it, but smelting, refinement and processing would probably be more cost effective in space. Who knows what the future will bring, mining the asteroid belt may only make sense once we have a much strong presence in space, I.E., colonies on Mars, the Moon, etc etc.