The earliest mention of asteroid mining could be found in a story from 1898. In that story, the Martians destroy New York City. An armada is sent to Mars. The armada came across an asteroid that was being mined by the Martians. There is a pile of gold.
The crew is talking.
That's right, phew! A voice said, " Won't we be rich?"
One person asked how we were going to get it back to the ground.
One told them to carry it in their pockets.
One commented that there was no need to stake claims here. It's enough for everyone.
The conversation was a sign of things to come.
When the realities of the space-faring age brought the idea of mining asteroids into focus, the idea was in the background.
asteroid mining gained steam starting in the 2000s. Private companies were beginning to send satellites into Earth. People were wondering about asteroid mining. They were owned by someone. How could it be accomplished?
The asteroid Itokawa was brought back to Earth by Hayabusa. People formed companies to mine asteroids. The Space Act gave US companies the right to mine asteroids and other bodies in space, but it stopped short of claiming sovereignty over any bodies in space.
There were companies talking about mining asteroids. They began to develop robotic explorers to operate on asteroids. The Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorers (SCAR-E) were developed by the Asteroid Mining Corporation.
The idea is still there despite the fact that the initial fervour has died down. The idea of asteroid mining will never go away as our knowledge of asteroids grows.
There are many reasons why asteroid mining is a good idea. The materials in asteroids are very valuable and attract capitalist activities. There is a shortage of some materials on Earth, but they are available on asteroids. Mining on dead asteroids does not carry an environmental burden.
One day asteroid mining may be necessary. Even though there are a lot of obstacles to overcome, scientists are still thinking about how it could work. We are used to missions into the solar system. Space travel is risky and costly. It's difficult to sample asteroids.
asteroid mining can be brought out of the realm of fiction.
Some of the obstacles could be solved by using Mars as a base of operations according to a new paper.
There is a paper about Phobos and Mars being a base for asteroid exploration. Anthony Taylor is from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. There is a paper in the journal.
The asteroids are not going to be hit. They have a limited number and value. The asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter will be developed at some point. There is a large amount of wealth and resources there. 27 quintillion US dollars is the value of the asteroid Davida. There is $100 billion in mineral wealth for every person on Earth, according to one calculation.
The paper states that the main obstacle is the amount of energy required to reach the main belt. Delta V is the amount of energy quantified in spaceflights. Changes in delta-v need energy to launch and maneuver. Most MBAs are too difficult to reach with current technology. It is possible to conduct research, prospecting, and mining on Mars.
The Delta-v makes it difficult to reach the MBA fromLEO. The Near- Earth Asteroids are more accessible. It requires a minimum of 7 km s -1 to rendezvous from low Earth orbit with the easiest to reach, compared with 4 km s -1 needed for the easiest to reach near- Earth asteroids.
It's easier to reach MBAs if you start from the red planet. The delta-v won't be as high. The fuel requirements for 7 km s -1 and 4 km s -1 are vastly different.
The team wrote some code that will allow them to rendezvous with an asteroid from either Earth or Mars. For Mars and Earth, they use Phobos, which is around 9000 km above the planet. We used the PARC to find out if Phobos-like circles around Mars are more useful for sending missions to MBAs.
The answer is, yes they are.
The MAB and the MC asteroid populations have more mass than the other asteroids. The Phobos Mars Orbit idea won again because of the large scale needed to reach more resources. The largest NEO is 50 km in diameter. The accessible mass of MCs increases more quickly than the equivalent number of NEOs.
There are NEOs from the two organizations. The image is from Taylor and his colleagues.
The large asteroids are skewing the results a bit. They need a large Delta-v to reach, which is lower than from PMO. The lowdelta-v tails are of particular interest to the authors.
The authors point out that for a particular delta-v, more MAB material is accessible from PMO. In fact, it’s not even close. “We find that PMO provides access to ~7 x 1015 tonnes of material within ?v < 4 km s-1,” they write. Over 99.9% of that material is in MABs and MCs, while the insignificant remainder is in LEOs. On the other hand, “From LEO, only ~3 x 106 tonnes of material are accessible within ?v < 4 km s-1 and are entirely found in NEOs.”
There is more to mining than just getting there. Fuel and resources are required to get equipment to MPO. The study is focused on reaching asteroid resources from an established base. Depending on the mass of equipment sent to asteroids, where and how it will be processed, what will be done with the waste, and where the resources will go, there are a lot of variables.
A group of researchers can't answer all the questions. It takes less resources to reach the bulk of the Solar System's asteroidal material from MPO than it does from LEO. There are a lot of factors that affect whether or not asteroid mining is worth it.
The Phobos Delta-v penalty can be found there. The price is the cost of maneuvering in and out of Mars. The planet has its own price.
The authors say that the Phobos Delta-v penalty depends on the amount of people moving and the equipment used. The Phobos to asteroid journey may be simpler if the equipment is large.
The MAB wouldn't be mined in a vacuum. Facilities on Mars could be part of the endeavor. The structural materials in the asteroids could be used to make other facilities. The raw fact is that more MAB material is within reach of more than one source. The paper concludes that there is a much larger population of known asteroids accessible to current technology from Phobos.
According to the authors, phobos could be an advantage.
It's convenient to emplace huge equipment atPhobos. Phobos has a number of properties that help in mining asteroid material. The exploration and mining of the Main Belt could be done from Phobos.
It is likely that Mars will be a part of this idea. There is the presence.
They wrote that large-scale operations in Mars could lead to routine access to the surface.
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