Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 June 23 
Posted on 06/22/2002 9:19:15 PM PDT by petuniasevan
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 June 23
Explanation: Rocks from space hit Earth every day. The larger the rock, though, the less often Earth is struck. Many kilograms of space dust pitter to Earth daily. Larger bits appear initially as a bright meteor. Baseball-sized rocks and ice-balls streak through our atmosphere daily, most evaporating quickly to nothing. Significant threats do exist for rocks near 100 meters in diameter, which strike the Earth roughly every 1000 years. An object this size could cause significant tidal waves were it to strike an ocean, potentially devastating even distant shores. A collision with a massive asteroid, over 1 km across, is more rare, occurring typically millions of years apart, but could have truly global consequences. Many asteroids remain undiscovered. In fact, one was discovered in 1998 as the long blue streak in the above archival image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Last week, the small 100-meter asteroid 2002 MN was discovered only after it whizzed by the Earth, passing well within the orbit of the Moon. 2002 MN passed closer than any asteroid since 1994 XM1. A collision with a large asteroid would not affect Earth's orbit so much as raise dust that would affect Earth's climate. One likely result is a global extinction of many species of life, possibly dwarfing the ongoing extinction occurring now.
We need to capture them and if we can't mine them right away at least put them into convenient orbits. This can be done already, we have the tech. The economic question is still open, however, until actual mining begins. I have numbers for the economic question; mining can be done as far as business is concerned.
Earth's economy is unfortunately going to be the name of the game for a very long time to come. When amateurs pay their $20 million to ride the Soyuz, they have to sign a release as well. Asteroid mining will be the same; the problem will be if there is an accident involving property loss when the product is delivered. Hot coffee at McDonalds will be child's play. Imagine the imaginations at work to find a problem with objects [pick one, car motors] made of metal mined from asteroids. It will take a while for asteroid mining to be accepted and get all the usual legal sharks fed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.