Cash flow cascading from the heavens is a provisionary but promising harvest from asteroid mining. Billions, trillions, even quadrillions of dollars are looming in deep space, ripe for the picking and up for grabs.
Several space mining groups are interested in digging into asteroids. Business plans are left behind.
The past is only a small part of the picture. Step-by-step strategies are being used. The prospect of reaping gobs of moolah from off- Earth mining has become a bit less exciting.
Asteroid-mining startup AstroForge raises $13 million.
Angel Abbud-Madrid is the director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.
Abbud-Madrid told Space.com that they didn't succeed and their plans were too far out. He said that the number of nations that ballyhooed space mining brought attention to a vital fact.
Abbud-Madrid said that water has become the main goal of everything we do.
There are dozens of startup companies addressing aspects of the space resources value chain.
Who is going to get the data to locate valuable resources in space is a question that is in play. Who will find the concentrations of material available, drill, excavate, extract and purify it? The transportation, power and communications will be provided by someone. Who will use the resources to make structures for space exploration?
Abbud-Madrid said that asteroids were abandoned because of a deficit in the economy. Abbud-Madrid said that "as some companies are going to fail, some business cases are not going to close, and then it comes down to a more reasonable level" The interest is present.
Identifying what resources are out there is the first thing. The question is who is the customer. There is a problem with chickens and eggs. Abbud- Madrid said that it goes in circles.
The space resources value chain is now connected to the moon. It's all about the moon in the field. He said, "Maybe it will be the asteroids, but that may be a much longer view."
There will be a legal-beagle look at asteroid resources.
There is consensus that the UN Outer Space Treaty isn't blocking resources from being taken. The planetary body is not allowed to be owned by you. How do you do law in a sustainable way? Abbud-Madrid said it would take diplomacy.
Getting to know asteroids up- close and personal has gained steam over the last few years.
There was an effort by NASA to get to an asteroid in 2001. Sample returns of space rock have been scored by Japan. The OSIRIS-REx is currently en route back to Earth. The Lucy probe is going to reconnoiter several asteroids. NASA's Psyche is going to an asteroid.
The world's first planetary defense technology demonstration of hitting and moving a space rock was performed by NASA.
Abbud-Madrid said that all of these missions help gather information about asteroids. How do you get it? The next challenge will be that. It's important to understand the asteroids. We're in the early stages of knowing them.
NASA's DART asteroid smashing mission is the ultimate guide.
The founder and CEO of TransAstra is trying to harvest resources from the moon and asteroids in a sustainable way.
There are several things that need to be done to make asteroid mining possible. Sercel told Space.com that they felt they had put all those to rest. TransAstra has a plan to process the asteroid in a meaningful way.
The gold rush in California was spurred by the discovery of the Sutter's Mill telescope. It is a completely new way to think about asteroid surveys. The 'cost per discovery' is down by a lot.
TransAstra uses low-cost, commercial telescopes in Arizona and California to make use of souped-up software. Sercel said that the system is being worked on. It is easy to peg asteroids that are less than 50 feet in size.
Sercel said that they have a road map of missions that can get them to the point where they are discovering hundreds of times more asteroids a year.
He said that TransAstra's work has been supported by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program.
It's a hive of bees.
Under TransAstra's flight system architecture, Sercel and his team are pushing forward on an industrial scale asteroid mining system that features the omnivore solar thermal rocket, a mini-bee demonstration concept and worker bee space tug. "optical mining" is a trademarked technique used to extract propellant from asteroids, moons, and planetary surfaces.
Sercel believes optical mining can make possible TransAstra's vision of reaping thousands of tons of water and other materials. It can help free the Earth's biosphere from the ravages of resource exploitation by decreasing deep space human exploration.
Sercel said that they went into space to solve the problems on the Earth. Humans don't thrive in a future in which nobody wants to think about. We need to go into space.
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