The Pros And Cons Of Mining Asteroids

Mining Asteroids Asteroids, key components to creating planets and providing them with resources, are scattered throughout our solar system. These rocks have the potential to be worth trillions of dollars. There are numerous newly founded companies working on the possibility of mining these asteroids. The science behind this bold idea is still being worked out by them. Asteroid mining is not too far into the future, however it poses many problems. There are roadblocks in the way of mining these beasts one of which being the law. There are many legal issues to deal with. Not to say that mining the asteroids is illegal, but some issues will need to be settled. Another hurdle in the way of mining space rocks is the actual acquisition of

How? With telescopes. The president of the company Planetary Resources Chris Lewicki is working on a new project for his company: “Chris Lewicki is assembling the components of the first privately owned telescope, the Arkyd 100 series” (Belfiore 4). The telescopes they use will be small, cheap, and roughly 44 lbs. They will only have a nine inch mirror versus the Hubble's 94 inch mirror. The Arkyds will cost less than 10 million USD per unit. They have a resolution of 6 feet per pixel and the first one was planned to launch at the end of 2013. (Belfiore 4) These telescopes will be used throughout space to hunt down minable asteroids. The most realistic asteroids to find are called NEOs or Near Earth Objects. Astronomers recently have found the 10,000th asteroid less than 28 million miles away. Finding the asteroids is only the first step in mining them and perhaps the easiest part. Getting them will be much harder for the scientists. So far the most realistic and probable idea scientists have come up with is to move the asteroids closer to earth before the mining process begins. They would like to pull them into the moon’s orbit. First however, they will have to retrieve the asteroids from the asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter. Multiple theories have been proposed to move the asteroids. Some suggest using solar sails, which essentially run without any unnatural energy. Another way scientists could

Depending on the type of asteroid, of which there are two, they will be worth different amounts of money. The two types of asteroids are C-type and M-type. In M-type asteroids (metallic) elements that could be found are platinum, palladium, gold, iron nickel etc. C-type (carbonaceous) hold water, which is highly valuable in space. Just to show how much is contained within these asteroids, “A 79-foot-wide M-type asteroid could hold 33,000 tons of extractable metals, including $50 million in platinum alone. A 23-foot-diameter C-type asteroid can hold 24,000 gallons of water, useful for generating fuel and oxygen” (Reynolds 2). M-type asteroids at 500 meters across can hold one and a half times more than what is left on the earth today. Some are valued at $6 to $7 trillion. C-types are especially important in space as they hold water which costs thousands of dollars to send to space. Both are worth very large sums of money and if it ever works out they would turn over very high