There are no asteroids with a composition sufficient to justify a cost/benefit for a mining mission.
The composition of the asteroids; the costs of mining them; and the prices one might obtain for materials mined from them, are all unknowns.
Here is an example of what I mean. If an icy asteroid could be recovered, perhaps with a solar powered ion "tug", at a cost of 100 million dollars; and the icy asteroid had only 100,000 gallons of water; how much would that be worth in orbit? Water currently costs about $2,700 per kg to be put into orbit. (that much water has a mass of a bit less than 400,000 kg
100,000 gallons of water in orbit, would then be worth at least $2000 per lb,or $8,000 per gallon.
$8000 x 100,000 gallons = 800 million dollars.
That sounds like a profit to me.
Rocket fuel can be made from water in orbit, as well.
Rough numbers, but you get the idea.
Its orbital resonance is approximately 2:1, meaning that it orbits almost twice for every orbit of the Earth.
Would the article have this basic fact “backwards”. Unless this asteroid orbit were “inside” that of the earth, it’s orbital period would be greater than that of the earth’s.
If you can’t correctly state elementary school science facts how seriously should we take the conclusions from this article?