This will go nowhere without HUGE government subsidies and cronyism. He’s more likely going to tap Washington and our wallets than any asteroids.
Later
Solar powered smelters, forges, and foundries?
For some odd reason I have this gut feeling Muslims won’t be applying for the job of being space miners.
This is great!
I’ve written about this here on FR in the past.
As for a government subsidization, I don’t think so.
There are items that can be manufactured by robots in the zero gravity vacuum of space that cannot be created on Earth. These items, some of which will create another boom in hi-tech electronics, will fuel our economy just like mining shale has done for petroleum and natural gas production.
We’re getting to the point in miniaturization and communications where missions like this can be conducted on a shoestring budget.
This has some serious prospects. As an example, the near Earth asteroid “433 Eros” just 34km x 11km x 11km, passes fairly near to Earth, and importantly, is believed to have more platinum group metals than the entire crust of Earth, along with other precious metals.
It is interesting enough so that NASA has already landed a probe on it.
The concept of mining it envisions landing a nuclear powered spacecraft on it, almost certainly manned at first, but later robotic, whose purpose would be to partially concentrate metals into a large ball of ores, with the most precious of them in its interior, and surrounded by a thick layer of less valuable ones.
Because 433 Eros is rotating, the best way to return such balls to Earth would be to attach a signalling device to them, then reel them away from Eros on a long cable, using the centrifugal force to accelerate it to a good speed, then releasing it from the cable in the direction of Earth, where it would be recovered when it intersected the orbital path and returned to the surface.
How do we know it’s not just some cover for surrounding the earth with space-based weapons?
These guys are the real deal. They have a Facebook page and everything. They have veterans of asteroid missions and leading edge leaders.
“Deep Space is a renaissance company, whose team combines veterans in space commerce, policy, asteroid missions, and risk management with young leading edge leaders from the maker and nanosat communities.”
LIVE FEED COMING UP AT 1PM EST
http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html