Science fiction is often the seed for science
exploration.
Silicon Valley depends on rare earth minerals for
electronic products. The main provider
of rare earth minerals is China, and the supply is finite. A new source of rare earth minerals would be
valued at trillions of dollars, and the search is now on.
The newest quest for mineral wealth is in
asteroid mining. Heavy metals on earth
sink to the core and are difficult to obtain, but many asteroids are composed
of platinum and gold and other rare earth minerals; including diamond.
We are on the cusp of the technology necessary to
mine asteroids. The NASA mission
OSIRIS-REX is exploring the technologies and techniques necessary to develop
mining operations on asteroids and comets.
Commercial ventures are being financed around the
world to be on the frontier of this new gold rush; to exploit the vast wealth now
thought to be available in space. Here
in the United States investors Larry Page, James Cameron and Peter Diamandis of
Google have announced a venture company called Planetary Resources with the
goal of asteroid mining.
The idea is basically to plant a propulsion system on a near
earth asteroid and use it at an appropriate time to bring
the asteroid out of its normal orbit and place it in an orbit around the moon, or a large asteroid in a permanent orbit around earth. The
minerals could then be extracted by space crews or other methods and ferried
back to earth.
An asteroid one mile wide impacting the earth
could destroy any major metropolitan area.
And less we forget, it was an
asteroid six miles wide, traveling at fifty thousand miles per hour that
impacted the earth near Mexico releasing the energy of one hundred million nuclear
bombs, that brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs.
What could possibly go wrong?
