Asteroid mining - could it solve the world's fuel problem? photo: midwestnerd
Space, the final frontier. Especially if you think about frontiers as places with natural resources primed for exploitation.
This week, Planetary Resources, a group of investors – including Google’s Larry Paige and Eric Schmidt and director/explorer James Cameron – announced a multi-million dollar plan to mine asteroids for minerals and water. Crazy talk? Not at all, they say – and some people agree.
What do they want to do?
Planetary Resources wants to investigate mining asteroids for minerals, such as gold and platinum, and the chemical components of fuel, on the observation that such resources are thinning on the ground here on Earth and that asteroids, the bits of planets that didn’t make it, are bound to be full of them. In addition, water harvested from asteroids, the group suggests, could be offered to space stations – to “fuel the in-space economy”, the company claimed. Calling asteroids the “low-hanging fruit of the Solar System”, Planetary Resources aims to investigate those “fruit” in the next 18 to 24 months developing and selling robotic spacecraft armed with telescopes, before moving onto mining platforms in the next five to 10 years. “Asteroid mining may sound like fiction,” the company’s website proclaims, “but it’s just science.”
Is it possible?
Yes – for a price. As the BBC noted, some scientists questioned whether asteroid mining is a cost effective solution for dealing with Earth’s resources crunch and, rightly so: A recent study by NASA, in partnership with Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) at the California Institute of Technology, found that asteroid mining is feasible, but at a cost of around $2.6 billion. That would be to harness the asteroid and bring it into high lunar orbit to extract all the goodies out of it, Leonard David, Space Insider columnist for Space.com explained. But, among the other benefits the study pointed out would be defensive – offering information and perhaps direction on how Earth could deflect a large asteroid that might want to come too close (for reference, see Armageddon, below).
And it could make a mint
Planetary Resources definitely thinks the cost will be well offset by the profits, the Christian Science Monitor noted: The company’s founder told the paper that a 30-meter long asteroid could contain as much as $25 billion to $50 billion worth of platinum at today’s prices.
Humanity needs to get off this planet
Sure, it may sound like science fiction, but, Dan Gillmor, on his On Digital Being blog at The Guardian, applauded the Planetary Resources team for thinking big: “I want them, and others who will surely join the chase, to succeed for the sake of humanity itself.” Not just for the rewards of asteroid mining itself, but for what it promises, he said – “humanity’s escape, once and for all, from its risky reliance on planet Earth as our only home”. He continued, “It is becoming more and more obvious that the species needs to get off the planet, and soon, to colonize other parts of our solar system and beyond. When and if we do it, mining asteroids will be an integral part of the process.”
But is it ethical?
Mike LaBossiere, writing at Talking Philosophy blog, was excited by the possibility but worried about the ethical implications of asteroid mining – specifically, about sharing the resources once they become available. Space mining is a costly endeavor and, he wrote, “Naturally, the folks who lack the resources to compete will end up, as they always do, out of luck and poor.”
Remember the 1998 disaster flick, Armageddon? This is just like that. Except different.
