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Mining asteroids could boost space exploration

droomph

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    From Newscientist (Short Sharp Science)

    Mining asteroids could boost space exploration

    Talk of mining asteroids was once the preserve of corduroy-flare-clad, optimists of the Apollo era. Now the idea is making a comeback thanks to enterprising tech billionaires and a nascent commercial space industry.

    The company Planetary Resources is due to outline today in Seattle, Washington, its aims to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals. "The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system," company founder Eric Anderson, also of Space Adventures, told Wired Science.

    Anderson's co-founder is Peter Diamandis of the X Prize foundation, which runs competitions to stimulate privately funded space technology. The pair are backed by billionaires from Google, Microsoft and Dell and are advised by film director James Cameron and ex-NASA employees.

    Planetary Resources says its first step is to launch a small fleet of space telescopes within the next few years to identify potentially valuable near-Earth asteroids. While asteroids are known to be rich in platinum, nickel and other precious metals that are steadily rising in value, it's still the start of a daunting task.

    First off, there's the question of how to get there. Just returning a few grains of dust from an asteroid almost defeated the Japanese space agency. Their Hayabusa probe was hit by a violent solar storm on the way to the asteroid Itokawa and lost contact during landing. On top of that, the sampling device did not work correctly. Nevertheless, the spacecraft limped home and delivered its precious cargo of asteroid dust in June, 2010.

    A better idea might be to go to an asteroid that has become temporarily trapped in Earth's orbit. A recent New Scientist feature story details investigations into how to reach such mini-Moons.

    Even so, drilling, mining, refining in zero gravity has never been tried. Without gravity to help keep rocks on conveyor belts, for example, ore will have to be transported in whole new ways.

    There's also the tricky question of who owns an asteroid. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty appears to make asteroid mining a difficult proposition.

    Planetary Resources is part of a burgeoning commercial space industry filling a void left by NASA, which is now struggling to fund space exploration. If the company can find ways to make money while it rises to the many challenges of mining asteroids, it may be on to something more valuable than precious metals - a sustainable way to fund space exploration.
    So what do you think of this? I think that personally this would be a great idea. However, it's probably going to affect the Earth in some unforeseen way, such as changing the mass which could do some things about our orbit.
     
    I don't know if you have watched Armageddon but...

    Naa, I am joking. On paper, this sounds like it could be useful. The planet we live on is running out of resources; not going to run out in like, a week, but it is dwindling. It wouldn't be as easy as just landing on the rock, getting the resources and lifting off again. Asteroids are very unpredictable flying pieces of rock that are very unstable and with the solar flares and just many unknown factors, they would need to be nailed down.

    As I said, on paper it sounds like a good idea.​
     
    I say. It's been ages since people had thought up that idea. Lot's of space probes had gone on sticking themselves to asteroids to observe popularly named asteroids. Although it's a very good idea, but the resource that needs to be "mined" is natural gas. We are running out of it. The only celestial body we know of that has a lot of it is Titan, one of Saturn's moon.
     
    I don't know, it sounds like a good idea, but one they really need to think through before even considering, it could be dangerous, like others have said we could negatively affect things in space, it sounds like a nice idea, but we have no idea how it will work and if it will be safe to do so.
     
    Do I smell the scent of a Minecraft update? *Shot*

    But I see what these guys are getting at. Sooner or later, we're gonna run out of materials to make Nintendo games with. If some crazy man in an intercom bought $7 million woth of moon rocks, then we can definately mine asteroids floating out in space. I mean, no other alien race is using them. Might as well just take them for our own.
     
    It may very well become a legitimately important way to mine precious metals and semi precious materials like gold, etc. There's only so much here on earth.
     
    I think this idea is something we will see in the future. If they do find a way to combat the factors which make this a daunting task, asteroids hold plenty of hope for abundance of precious minerals that we can use.

    I'm afraid that might do something on the solar plane level. I mean, if we start taking in excessive amounts of minerals over the years, imagine bringing an entire asteroid's worth of minerals back to Earth, doesn't that sound like it'd cause something to go out of whack? We'd be bringing back a lot of polarized metals which could potentially screw with Earth's magnetic poles.
     
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