Why Asteroid Mining Could Be Of Inestimable Value To Humanity

It is no surprise that when the prospect of asteroid mining is first mentioned it tends to draw blank stares, say at cocktail parties. "What? Asteroid mining? How would you do that?"  Most people aren't even aware there were (at last count) some 792, 347 asteroids, most of which are in the Asteroid Belt.   This is a vast, doughnut -shaped ring between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter.

Most of the asteroids with mining potential are the "Near Earth Objects" (NEOs) - which have orbits that allow them to approach within 121 million miles of Earth - or about 28 million miles further than the Sun (the recent target for the Parker solar probe) is from Earth.   Indeed, ten NEOs have come closer to the Earth than the Moon since 2004.  (The closest such pass occurred on January 8, 2008, when such an object passed within 5, 441 miles of  the surface.)

Naturally then, humans would wish to know how to extract raw materials from such invaders, and not merely see them as threats. See also:

Three Classes Of Asteroids - And The Resources The...

 Remarkably, few earthlings are aware we've already been interacting with asteroids in different ways.  For example, last March, the Japanese probe Hayabusa2 dropped an explosive on Ryugu - an NEO - and later scooped up a sample from the scattered debris.  Meanwhile, NASA's Osirirs-Rex craft is preparing to land and collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu.  (See graphic).  This NEO is roughly 443 m in diameter and has been found to be ejecting rocks into space.   One might say almost begging for resource extraction.

What sort of resources are we talking about and how might they be used?  There are basically three distinct groups: Volatiles, Industrial metals, and Platinum group metals.

The volatiles include: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.  Such raw elements could easily be used to provide fuel, water and materials for space travel.  As an example, a single asteroid like Bennu could produce $5 trillion worth of water to be used in space.  (Such production in situ for spacecraft compares with the cost of  $20,000 to send just one liter of water from Earth to deep space.).

The industrial metals include: iron, cobalt and nickel - which can be used in space for construction of space vehicles and platforms. Cobalt  - which specific asteroids have up to 27 times more than on Earth -  is also crucial for many digital electronic uses on our planet.  For example, it is used widely for batteries and electroplating.  Currently, child miners  in Congo are used to extract the metal from deep pits. See e.g.

Children as young as seven mining cobalt used in ...

https://www.theguardian.com › global-development › jan › children-as-yo...

The platinum group of metals includes: Ruthenium (810 times more found in an asteroid than on Earth), Rhodium (180 times more), Palladium (44 times more),  Iridium (540 times more) and Platinum ((196 times more).  All of which can be transported back to Earth to support the production of a host of manufactured  goods such as: LCD screens, catalytic converters, fuel cells, medicines and virtually all electronics.   What scale are we talking about in terms of the actual materials that can be used?

Well, one single 500m platiunum rich asteroid could translate into $1.45 trillion worth of pure platinum. Or, for reference, 297 times more than the global production of this metal in 2017.  (At current market prices one ounce of platinum is valued at about $800.)

If one thinks about it, the extraction of each type of  resource (volatile, industrial metal, platinum metal) would require a different mode of mining.   For example,  to extract needed volatiles the design shown below could be used - say for a smallish ( ~ 2-3 m wide) NEO.



The harvesting of the volatiles can proceed when a specially- designed space vehicle is able to "bag" and heat the contained asteroid.  This would be done using solar reflectors to boil off and then collect the raw elements (e.g. hydrogen, oxygen) in situ to sustain life in space and produce fuel.

In the case of industrial metals, it is envisaged (by the asteroid mining experts at Colorado School of Mines)  that robot miners would be able to efficiently extract ample amounts of manganese, cobalt, molybdenum,  nickel and titanium for construction of space structures.

For the platinum type metals, it is envisaged that appropriately designed space craft cold capture and transport the specific metal-rich asteroid  into an orbit around the Moon. Once there, Moon -based miners could extract the needed contents, e.g. gold, palladium, rhodium, platinum etc.

Preposterous science fiction?  Not really! Lockheed Martin has already signed on as the prime contractor for NASA's Orion  - designed for deep space explorations as well as possible asteroid mining ventures.  (The company has been working since the early 2000s on technologies to tap space resources.)

Meanwhile, in the fall of 2018 the Colorado School of Mines became the first university to offer masters and doctorate degrees in space resources.  There,  many student experiments are already underway designed to test mining capabilities such as described in this post.

Stay tuned!

PATHETIC! If Asteroid Threatens NYC in 3 Weeks, PRAY?

LEFT: Meteor crater in Arizona, nearly 4,000 feet across and 570 ft. deep, formed by the equivalent of a 10 megaton blast. Right: NASA Director Charles Boldin – suggests we “pray” if asteroid approaches!

NASA Director Charles F. Boldin admitted he’s a practicing Episcopalian to Capitol Hill Lawmakers yesterday, grilling him on what if anything could be done if it was learned an asteroid strike threatened New York City in 3 weeks. No surprise that lawmakers, all mostly religious folk, nodded heads in reluctant assent when his answer was “Pray.” Boldin subsequently admitted that while something MIGHT have been done (earlier!), the “funds never came”.  So here we are, putatively the smartest species in the history of the world,  but possibly facing an end as final as the ‘dumb’ dinos with brains the size of walnuts.

PRAY!?

After two million years of evolution and this is the best answer humans can come up with? Well, Boldin and the congressional cohort may pray all they want but that won’t halt or deflect a planet killer asteroid if one is somewhere out there taking aim at planet Earth. As for New York City, Boldin essentially admitted that even a Tunguska type event (such as struck Siberia in 1908) wouldn’t be stoppable.


The object felled some 80 million trees and decimated nearly 820 square miles, about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. And this was from an object perhaps ten times the size of the 11 -ton meteoroid that hit the Urals the morning of Feb. 15th . The nuclear equivalent was nearly 1 megaton. If such an object were to target New York City it would make the 9/11 attacks look like a minor blink. Essentially, the entire metropolis would be left a burning husk without a building left standing and 12 million or more dead.

And all the praying in the world, despite Boldin’s recommendations, will not stop it! It is what we call "magical thinking".


The irony of the situation is that while we squander trillions on an unwinnable “war against terror” we remain deaf, dumb and blind to a real terror that could strike at any time from the skies. But many of us could see this coming.


Project Space Watch, based at the University of Arizona, featured generous grant allocations in its early years when it discovered over 1,300 Earth -approaching asteroids by 2002. As the austerity -mindedness infected all science research areas, that capability has since wound down, leaving Spacewatch mostly in the hands of amateurs. Not that the latter aren't observationally capable, but we also need professionals to spot these things and then (using the well known equations of celestial mechanics, e.g. http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-special-function-legendre.html) to obtain the orbital parameters as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, Project Spaceguard sought to extend the detection to focus more on NEOs (near Earth objects) as opposed to singling out near Earth asteroids (NEAs). Again budget limitations loomed and imposed truncated observation time frames and selectivity. Although there have been many discoveries of near-Earth asteroids the Spaceguard Project has often been criticized for not having an in-depth master plan if our humble planet is directly in the crosshairs of a giant asteroid. It has also been criticized for setting off false alarms that could lead to dangerous implications. However, those downsides don’t equal the upsides of having an effective alert and response system!


NASA published  article in April of 2001  to clarify many questions that have come up with this project. The report distinguished the difference between NEOs and NEAs, why the organization selected NEAs with a diameter of at least one kilometer in diameter, why the number of 90 percent was chosen and many other questions that have perplexed the general public.


We have the brains, supposedly, and given we aren't planning to abandon 'Mother' Earth any time soon, we had better damned well come up with a credible plan (NOT Prayer!) to deal with an approaching asteroid, of whatever size.