Posted on 11/21/2014 7:54:43 PM PST by BenLurkin
At first glance it sounds ridiculous. Why would anyone consider mining in space when even the largest Earth-based mining operations seem to have trouble managing costs? After all, mid-grade and marginal deposits seem to have trouble finding any money and the process of moving a project from prospect to mine can take decades and cost hundreds of million of dollars. I’ll be the first to admit that the whole idea of asteroid mining was initially right up there with Star Trek-style transporters and desktop cold fusion, but a few recent events have piqued my curiosity on the subject.
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Asteroid miners are seeking out near-earth asteroids. There are over 11,000 known near-earth asteroids which are considered to be left-overs from the formation of the solar system. These bodies can be composed of ice, silicate minerals, carbonaceous minerals and metals.
Water is present in some times of asteroids and a key potential commodity for asteroid mining. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, M.A. Garlick (space-art.co.uk), University of Warwick, and University of Cambridge.)
Ice or water on these bodies is one of the most significant potential resources. Solar panels on spacecraft can provide the power to simply convert water to hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Considering that it costs from $5,000-25,000+ per kg to ferry items into space, the idea of harvesting resources needed in space doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. In fact, the groups involved are primarily focused on gathering the resources needed for space exploration and development. Gathering resources to send back to earth is a much longer term goal and arguably may never be economic.
(Excerpt) Read more at geologyforinvestors.com ...
How can it be “geology” when that term is specific to planet Earth?
A major part of the cost of mining on earth is due to the amount of material that needs to be mined for comparatively small amounts of metal. Then there are environmental issues that need to be dealt with.
The crust of the earth contains something like 15% iron while some asteroids are believed to be as much as 70% iron or more. Plus they don’t have the environmental issues to worry about.
Mining and refining metals in space would likely lead to some major leaps in space travel because we’re pretty limited in what we can lift from the surface of the earth. Combine it with ever expanding printing technology we could see aircraft carrier sized ships with large crews within 100 years.
Okay, I’ll concede Dictionary.com uses “earth” in almost every definition.
But what is the term for the ‘geology’ of Mars, if not geology?
Webster’s is not as specific:
a : a science that deals with the history of the earth and its life especially as recorded in rocks
b : a study of the solid matter of a celestial body (as the moon)
The prefix “ge” is specific to Earth; it’s a wonder that they didn’t come up with “selenology” for the moon.
Science Fiction writers did that a long time ago, . . and areology for Mars.
We will have to get an elevator going. Re-entry of all that metal will destroy half it and no telling what would happen if they lost control of it.
Think of the things we might do with 3D printing in zero gravity .
A teleporter would be faster.
if we can land on a comet...
We need to figure out how to ‘mine’ the space debris in orbit around the Earth.
ANSWER : Cometectomy for any material comming from comets !
ANSWER : 'Mars Bar' for anything comming from Mars !
And anything with chunks we will call it " Snickers" !
You can thank me later ...!!
Just go to Sudbury, Canada. There is a huge meteor that landed there that not only provides iron ore but all kinds of other metals that resulted from the flow of magma from the meteor hit.
I suggest using rockets to maneuver an asteroid to land on Earth, somewhere around Iran. What the heck the whole mid east....
Planetology.
The gas giants could probably give us an unlimited supply of water, methane and hydrogen. They probably gather more in their travels through space than we could ever use.
It sounds pretty ridiculous on second glance too.
That’s a new one to me. Wouldn’t it be Terrology if it was earth specific?
It’s not ridiculous. They estimate that large asteroids are just chock full of billions of dollars of rare metals that, if broken down and carried back to earth, it would pay for the trip itself. The machines to process the asteroids could be self-sufficient because the asteroids have enough water on them to fuel the machines and bring some back to earth.
It’s why Branson and Musk and others have taken a strong interest in space. There is potentially enough money to be made from this that somebody could become a trillionsire.
It is true that water exists in many asteroids, but it is chemically bound in clay minerals. Only cometary cores contain free water ice -- they are abundant in the outer solar system (hard to get to) and those in the inner solar system travel at very high speeds (difficult to intercept). Breaking the chemical bounds to get at asteroid water is very energy intensive. You cannot simply heat the material using solar thermal -- you would just get hot asteroid. Thermal breakdown of the clay will occur at very high temperatures, but the released water will react with other components in the asteroid giving you new hydrous compounds, not free water.
As for metals, the problem is that they are alloyed with iron-nickel, so you would have to smelt the material, again extremely energy intensive. But suppose that you did smelt it -- you need some process to extract and separate the metals. No gravity, so no convection and no density settling. You could spin your processing module to create artificial gravity, but again, it requires bigger, heavier and more complex spacecraft.
Energy is the real show-stopper. You need tens to hundreds of megawatts to process at industrial scales. Difficult to do with simple solar arrays (the arrays on the space station only generate about 100 kw total). You are almost driven to a nuclear reactor for power. Trouble is, a space nuke of that size does not exist - and you would need billions to develop one.
The idea that asteroids are full of valuable products is the same concept as saying that seawater contains tons of gold. True -- but so what?
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