The US Geological Survey Is Getting Serious About Space Resources and Mining

space.com ^ | September 4, 2018 07:00am ET | Leonard David

[BenLurkin]

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is starting to earnestly evaluate space resources for future mining. Since its establishment in the 1870s, the USGS has focused pretty much solely on Earth. But now it's also investigating what benefits may or may not exist in tapping extraterrestrial water, minerals and metals.

The agency seeks to portray accurately how humanity could exploit off-Earth assets — a no-nonsense approach that contrasts with the pie-in-the-sky estimates of trillions of dollars of profit proffered by some less scientifically minded space-mining advocates.

…

….Laszlo Kestay, a research geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.

"The USGS has been paying steadily increasing attention to the issue of space resources for the last several years," ... "The drivers for this are diverse, he said. For example, the U.S. human space program seems to be focusing on missions to deep space, where space resources are extremely valuable. Furthermore, commercial efforts to extract space resources are growing in maturity.

Kestay pointed to the USGS' increased responsibility for the Landsat satellites, a venerable series of Earth-observing spacecraft. The USGS is now considered one of the U.S. space agencies, he said.

...

"Lunar ice would be a good example of a resource that we do not understand well enough to provide estimates with much precision," Kestay said.

Attempting such an assessment could still be "useful," he said, because it can identify the most critical information that future missions need to collect.

"It is also perhaps counterintuitive that we have a much better understanding of ice on Mars than on our own moon, but NASA's 'follow the water' strategy [on the Red Planet] has provided a wealth of knowledge," Kestay said. "Finally, it is clear, even before we undertake a full-blown assessment, that there are significant resources in space to assess!"

[varyouga]

When a space rock is “Burned up”, it doesnt mean it disapeared.

All that mass still comes down to Earth as fine dust

[marktwain]

There’s dust that doesn’t burn upon hitting our atmosphere? Is that diamond dust or something? Dust motes from space don't fall to earth with near enough velocity to burn up in our atmosphere. They're almost weightless, individually.

Even parts of meteorites that burn up remain in the atmosphere. The mass does not disappear. Gas has mass just like a liquid or solid.

The earth's atmosphere has a lot of mass in it. Much of the vaporized mass would eventually condense or accrete into or on solid objects.