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Tag: space mining

  • Asteroid Worth $195B to Swing By Earth on February 15

    On February 15 an asteroid named 2012 DA14 will pass very close to the Earth. It will swing within just 17,200 miles of the planet’s surface, which is well within the orbit of the man-made geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth. By coming within just one-thirteenth the distance from the Earth to the moon, the asteroid will set a record for close approach by an object of its size.

    This week Deep Space Industries (DSI), a company that wants to develop the technology to mine asteroids, made the somewhat melancholic estimate that DA14 could contain metals and propellant worth as much as $195 billion. Since the asteroid will fly by the Earth traveling at 17,400 miles per hour, however, it isn’t practical to mine.

    “While this week’s visitor isn’t going the right way for us to harvest it, there will be others that are, and we want to be ready when they arrive,” said Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of DSI. “Even with conservative estimates of the potential value of any given asteroid, if we begin to utilize them in space they are all the equivalent of a space oasis for refueling and resupply.”

    NASA has estimated that DA14 is only about 150 feet across, but DSI believes that is still big enough to be worth billions. DSI “experts” estimate that if 10% of the asteroid were made of minable metals, they could be worth $130 billion. If another 5% of the asteroid could be mined for water, it could be used as $65 billion worth of rocket fuel in space.

    DSI is hoping to begin space mining around the year 2020. In the meantime, the company will be sending “FireFly” probes to examine asteroids, and later “DragonFly” probes that will take samples of the asteroid.

    NASA will also be sending probes to investigate asteroids before 2020. In 2016, the agency will launch the OSIRIS-REx probe, which will visit the Earth-threatening asteroid 1999 RQ36.

  • Space Exploration Is The Next Frontier Of The Economy

    We all want more money. Unless you have figured out the secrets of Buddhism or Taoism, money helps us achieve what we need and want. The only problem is that money isn’t easy to come by for the large majority of people. How do we get more money? Space exploration and mining.

    A new infographic from the fine folks at Doctoral Programs points our economic ambitions to the stars. Google CEO Larry Page and others recently began funding a trip to mine an asteroid of the precious metals contained therein. Amazingly enough, one asteroid is worth $50 million in platinum alone. When you combine that with the other elements present, you get a giant rock that’s worth billions of dollars.

    On top of space mining, the space tourism business is set to explode within the next few years. Once it becomes cheaper, you’ll see even the middle class buying their way into a trip to space. It’s a place that very few people have been and everybody has wanted to go since they were a kid.

    So, we can totally keep on trying to make money off of what’s left of our planet, but we’ll eventually have to expand beyond Earth. Hopefully we’ll have proper travel by then to accomodate the many years it takes to put people on any planet beyond our own.

    Make Money in Outer Space.

    Graphic by www.doctoralprograms.org

  • James Cameron Teaming With Google Execs For Space Mining

    Film director James Cameron is well on his way to being known just as much for his explorer credentials as his movies.

    The 58-year old–whose films Titanic and Avatar are the highest-grossing movies of all time–can now add space exploration to his resume, which already includes being the first man to reach the bottom of the waters of the Mariana Trench and going on expeditions to the wreckage of the Titanic.

    Cameron has now partnered with Google execs Eric Schmidt and Larry Page to fund a trip to space in order to seek out natural resources there, a venture which has been talked about as a goal for years but hasn’t had the right backers to fulfill. The idea is to mine asteroids for resources that can be used here on Earth, such as nickel and iron, and is estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars, which is why no one has been able to do it yet. And while it may sound like something out of one of Cameron’s movies–Avatar, perhaps–more and more scientists are getting behind the movement of space mining. In fact, a study was recently published which says that the technology to bring a 500-ton asteroid into the moon’s orbit in order to be mined is either already being used by NASA or will be in the next few years.

    The men behind the ambition form a company called Planetary Resources, which was co-founded by former NASA employee Eric Anderson. The company will unveil more details about their plans next week in a press conference.