Asteroid mining, can we do it?
I have come to talk about asteroid mining, and if we can do it
What does asteroid mining mean for us? Asteroids have more natural materials than the whole of earth itself! There have even been talks about the first person to mine an asteroid would become the first-ever trillionaire!
Is asteroid mining possible? This is quite hard to do, due to finding the asteroid, and bringing it back home and then actually mine it! Now, is this all possible? Well, The top conclusions from the KISS study are that it appears feasible to identify, capture and return close to Earth an entire asteroid that is roughly 7 meters wide. This so-called near-Earth asteroid the NEA, would weigh in the neighborhood of 500 tons, according to the study.
How much would asteroid mining cost to do? According to NASA, the estimate is around $2.6 billion. Which is very expensive but possible.
How long will it take before we can start asteroid mining? This is a good question because I'm certain a lot of people will want to get started on in right away! Well, it could take around 10 to 20 years to start it which is actually quite soon!
How will we get the asteroid to take the asteroid back without making it cause mass destruction? We would have to send a robot with a capture bag to enclose the asteroid and bring it back safely before mining it.
What materials are in the asteroids? Asteroids are made mostly of rock with some composed of clay and silicate and different metals, mostly nickel and iron. But other materials have been found in asteroids as well as aluminium and gold.
I think that if we were to do a space exploration, than this is something that we should do.
Most of my information I got from this was at this website https://theconversation.com/amp/mining-asteroids-could-unlock-untold-wealth-heres-how-to-get-started-95675 and https://www.space.com/40728-asteroid-mining-comet-landing-new-book.html
Comments (118)
21 Nov 2019
A really interesting post! What do you think about the ethical questions surrounding mining in space. For example, how do we decide who owns the materials we find there?
I think to solve these problems, they would have to make an equal payment based on who mined it, who planned it all out, who made sure everything was ok, the people who created the spacecraft etc...
I agree, I agree!!!!!! oli
Good question, we think that the government of the country it lands in should claim it as it would be amazing to spend it on hospitals, schools, education and other necessities
Yes great thinking but, I’m not too sure about cures for cancer because, to find the cure, scientists need to find how cancer is made but maybe the cure is in asteroids
I Hear what you are saying how it maybe could not cure cancer. But if we explore even deeper into space we could maybe find a very strange unknown material. We could research into it and maybe find something to affect us in a different way.
I agree with both of you because we never know on the contrary we also might find it here on earth
21 Nov 2019
i think we should not do it as in your post it said that how we bring it down but how long do you think it would take to get the technology to bring an entire asteroid weighing 500 tons done without destroying the area around the asteroid when they pull it down if the world survives that long
It would take around 10 to 20 years to get the technology for mining asteroids.
21 Nov 2019
I think that we should do it but not to often we should do it about five times a year or four times a year we should not do it again once we've done it five or four times
21 Nov 2019
I do not think we should mine asteroids as we may start a war over it, because as you have said the materials are extremely valuable, and this may cause civil war or possibly a devastating global war. In addition to this, we might be unknowingly bringing single-celled alien organisms down to earth, which may cause panic across the globe and end human life as we know it. A VERY unlikely but plausible reason not to mine asteroids is that extraterrestrial intelligent life may have claimed the space rock, which could cause an even bigger multi-species war which would bring a swift end to humanity.
We could leave the asteroid in space and bring the stuff we mine back to earth plus we could anti bacterial the bits of asteroid we bring
21 Nov 2019
I disagree active drum because if you think about it make a temporary base on the asteroid with artificial G and force field your set to go it's like miny mercury and on the bottom of the base underneath the floor put trusters there now you can get to astroid a and b without making it touch earth and serious petal we could have lots of payloads so there's always crew in the asteroid belt 24-7
sorry genuine recipe but I don't really understand what you mean by 'I disagree active drum because if you think about it make a temporary base on the asteroid with artificial G and force field your set to go it's like miny mercury.'
Mercury has a lot of valuable resources
22 Nov 2019
I think we could do asteroid mining because at some point we will run out of materials. Most asteroids are rich in iron, titanium and platinum and in addition to this scientists think that water present on the surface of these asteroids could be used to make eco rocket fuel which would greatly benefit Earth. On the other side of the argument, the benefit only comes after you launch the rocket and launching rockets is polluting. So that brings in eco rockets. I think we should use bio-fuel rockets to get on to the asteroid and then once we have that water that scientists say we can make into fuel we should ( if it turns out to be more efficient than bio-fuel) use that instead. But that brings in a question: why can't scientists use water from Earth to make fuel for rockets? Another thing we should consider before we mine asteroids is the cost. 2.6 billion is a lot of money no matter how achievable it is. That money could be spent on something else like reducing poverty. I agree with you genius flute, there might be other life forms living on asteroids. That brings me on to ethics, we might be invading another creatures home which would be wrong, creatures on asteroids might present a potential threat.
What's the probability of life forms on asteroids - could you find out?
this will be good for humans as well as the earth
22 Nov 2019
I think we should not mine asteroids because if we bring them back to Earth and find that they have sentient or even non sentient life they could just spread diseased outer space chemicals and substances. Another reason we should not mine asteroids is the tremendously huge cost, we could feed the whole world a few times over with the budget of mining asteroid missions. Adding to this, Mining asteroids are not worth it, as there are so many things which could go wrong and are way too risky, here's some:
0 As we take the asteroid to Earth the probe holding it could fail, sending a asteroid the size of New Mexico hurtling towards Earth
0 The asteroid is too heavy, as we try to bring it from its cluster of rocky friends, It clashes against them and sends rocks hurtling through space...[you know what happens next!]
Finishing with a more ethical point, I do not think we have the right to mine asteroids as the entirety of space is not ours to destroy.
Concluding my argument, I think we should not mine asteroids as it would be very risky, selfish to the poor who need money and devastating to space- who wants the mark of mankind millions of lightyears away from home!
Bear in mind we would not be bringing a full asteroid back, but pieces from it! What about if the asteroid had really valuable minerals in it?
Even if the asteroid had really valuable minerals in it, I still would say that it is not worth mining it as it would cost too much.
if we can go to space and we can mine on earth there is a chance that we can do it
what kinds of materials
Mining asteroids would give us increasingly needed materials like iron, gold, titanium, diamond and even uranium. Although the actual mission would cost billions of pounds, and on top of that, the cost of maintaining
the rover and repairing it. Scientists will need to develop a new way of taking pieces of asteroids to Earth rather than the concept of digging, scooping and then collecting. This method would be very inefficient as you could use just one mechanism to collect a piece of rock from a asteroid. Looking from a wider prospective, I do understand why people hate the concept of asteroid mining as we could could spend that money on things which 'matter.' The universe is not ours to explore but ours to protect.
What want to mine asteroids so we can get very valuable material and get a lot of money, but we also have to think about the huge investment of around 2.6 billion- as said in the post above. If we could find substances to grow food on other planets and a way to cure cancer using the materials found on asteroids...but are we ready to take the leap in technology to take on asteroid mining. Are we ready to expand our mental capacity to see asteroid mining happen? There is a problem with asteroid mining though, and it's the huge risk. What if, the billion pound spacecraft just fails. How would Humanity feel then?...
At the start of my new comment it should say 'we want'
27 Nov 2019
2.6 billion is quite a lot to mine an asteroid and I don’t think someone should do that especially if NASA would pay for it since they could use that money for something else more important
27 Nov 2019
What it’s like in space I would be fun.
27 Nov 2019
I love space also.
27 Nov 2019
I think we should mine asteroids and other space objects because the metals found inside them are incredibly useful for jobs. For example, in a single asteroid, there is £100 trillion worth of materials. This could help us make lots of equipment which in turn would help us on Earth. It could also help more missions to space and more mining of asteroids as we could use the metals to make the space suits. However, asteroid mining could be dangerous as if we don't mine all of it then small pieces would rain down on Earth and people could get hit by these. It is also dangerous for the astronauts mining the asteroids as they are in space with no oxygen! They would feel the need to get all of it as if they don't, like I said earlier, pieces will rain down on Earth. They might be running low on oxygen and they might risk their lives to save other people's. It could also cause in more rocket failures as the small pieces could hit the rockets and cause a fault in the system which could make a manned mission to Mars impossible.
In conclusion, we should mine asteroids to help us but we should either do it perfectly or rationally, to save us dying.
succinct_leaves
28 Nov 2019
I dont think we can do it. It will cost milions of dollars and there are chances that the mission might fail. If we want to do space mining we need more avanced technology to create asteroid mining ships.
28 Nov 2019
I think if NASA can make a bigger rocket and a place to put the asteroid then bring it back to earth then get a lot of mining materials then it could be possible.
It might be possible, but would it be a good idea?
28 Nov 2019
I think that we should mine in asteroids because we could find evidence of aliens or a fuel to power cars,televisions or even future rockets. We could capture a asteroid by getting a massive and strong net to hold it in . We would have to have a massive cage made of the strongest materials to stop any explosions when it comes to earth. it may cost a lot but if we star mining them we could get
1. loads more jobs
2. Discoverers of the century
I personally think it would be good to mine them .
28 Nov 2019
There are good reasons to both sides of the argument.
On one hand if we mine asteroids we could get lots of resources like titanium, silicon and gold, this could be converted into money to do countless things like give money to the poor and help reduce climate change.
On the other hand, it would cost a lot of money. If an asteroid mission is not successful and we do not get any materials we would have lost 2.6 billion pounds which again could go towards reducing poverty and helping the planet, there is also the risk of loss of life, the entire thing could go wrong.
02 Dec 2019
Good job!
02 Dec 2019
I think It could be possible.we could build a robot which can attach to the asteroid and take the minerals.
02 Dec 2019
It is theoretically possible if we mined the astroids whilst they are in space. But if we do this all governments would race to mine them all much like the Gold Rush of the 1800s. The only way we could all happily mine away is if we had a United Earth Government but that is unrealistic so theoretically
02 Dec 2019
It seems very possible that we could do it, but the question is: should we?
One of the key difficulties when faced with the prospect of asteroid mining is who these asteroids belong to, as space doesn’t belong to anyone, does it? Therefore, all nations would have to come together to agree on a set of laws that would govern what belongs to whom. If there was a group like the UN, which represented all nations in the world, they would be able to sign an agreement that would detail, for example, what would happen if companies from two different nations wanted to mine the same asteroid. It would be unethical to start asteroid mining before such an agreement was put in place because companies would start fighting with each other about who had the right to mine in particular places.
There’s another ethical risk too: bringing mined materials into the Earth’s atmosphere. We would have to consider the dangers behind this, for example how would we know these materials were safe? Could the materials become space debris that might be large enough to wipe out an entire town or city? One way of combating this might be to have a law in place to limit the size or weight of the resources mined.
Another possible issue might be pollution caused by asteroid mining. We would have to build robots and machines here on Earth, which would add to pollution, and then fire them out into space, which would add more pollution. And then what’s the impact of the debris coming back down from space? Could it add to the damage in the Earth’s atmosphere?
These are all ethical considerations that would need to be carefully thought out before asteroid mining became a reality.
I can see you're very doubtful about this idea, brilliant_blackberry. Do you think the human race can overcome the three objections above, and so be able to proceed?
I think it’s possible but it would require a lot of hard work and co-operation between countries to put together a set of laws and guidance that would be agreed by everyone. It might, however, be worth it we could mine resources such as platinum that are scarce on Earth. I’ve also read that it could actually be more environmentally friendly that mining for these same materials here on Earth, but I’d have to do more research before I made a decision on whether or not I agree with that.
02 Dec 2019
NICE!!!
03 Dec 2019
it may be possible but it would take a very long time
03 Dec 2019
i think we can do it because if we put are heart to something we can do anything
03 Dec 2019
I dont think that it is possible because the Asteroid would be moving so unless we build a space station that could stop it,it isn`t possible
03 Dec 2019
YES!!!!!!
03 Dec 2019
i don`t think this is true because it would take ages and i think it is safe
03 Dec 2019
sorry bi dont think it is safe
04 Dec 2019
We may find new material😊
04 Dec 2019
we also may find new life forms and creachers
04 Dec 2019
if we mine on the moon then in are future the moon we be gone
04 Dec 2019
and we also may find some liquids 😲
04 Dec 2019
I think it's bad to mine on the moon because the moon is still very unexplored and we still may find objects e.g gold stone. Another reason is that if we are to "moon mine" we must be prepared for whats down there. It may be busting with loot or it's completely empty
this is true but the moon can be left as it is but we can do it on other asteroids
04 Dec 2019
i think might cost billows of dollors
True
04 Dec 2019
if we mine on the moon we would get rich, but on the bad side there would be no moon left
You have been agreed... for now but I do have doubt about whether we should pay money to go to the moon so if we won't find anything inside the moon it would waste an absolute barging of money and the TAX's would have got rid of money for nothing.
04 Dec 2019
i think it is a terrible idea because if people don't want to spend millions of dollars SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
04 Dec 2019
Having read this post and the articles used as sources, I think that this would be a bad idea, not because it would harm space or humans or be problematic scientifically, though it could be, but because of the financial consequences. An influx of rare minerals such as gold would massively reduce their worth, which may not only make the asteroid mining a waste of money, but also put businesses, such as jewellery and some mining ones, out of business. The value and rarity of gold and other minerals found in asteroids is a foundation for many incomes and communities based around mining, and the lost worth of this due to the larger amount of the minerals on earth coming for asteroids could destroy them, and the livelihoods of many people, as well as have a negative impact of countries' economies which mining for minerals and metal plays a huge part in, such as those of many African countries like Botswana, Ghana and Namibia.
A mature look at this, beloved_chocolate, that goes beyond looking at our own lives but also to the lives of others. Would there also be other consequences for the world's financial systems?
04 Dec 2019
After reading the post above it seems very possible that we will be able to do asteroid mining, but I personally believe we shouldn’t.
One of the key reasons I am against asteroid mining is the cost. There is currently an influx of people wanting to buy rare materials along with not-so rare materials such as gold and diamonds meaning there is a chance that it may become popular however the total costs of mining the materials and the financial economy for both jewellery and mining businesses will be affected, this may also cause pollution increasing the impact of global warming and climate change. The costs of specialized equipment, the mining itself and transportation of materials will cause a loss of money instead of a profit. If it was to become popular and shops such as jewelers found a decline in sales that would cause the to loose money and possibly be made to close, as these shops are often independent shops, meaning it could possibly help cause the death of the high street, for businesses such as mining companies that are popular in countries such as Botswana it may causes a negative impact on the economy as this is one of their main inputs of money.
Another reason I am against asteroid mining is how hard it would be to delegate the authority. As the processes would have a world wide impact many of the world leaders would have to be involved in the processes and discoveries made. This means they would have to work out laws to settle any disagreements and give appropriate authorities to those who need it as it would be unethical to even consider the idea without making others aware.
These are two of the main reasons I am against asteroid mining.
04 Dec 2019
There are reasons for both sides of the argument.
On one hand, we could get resources like titanium, and iron which would benefit the manufacturing industry, if the huge abundance of materials on asteroids benefits multiple industries then the economy could grow, this would benefit incomes, might reduce taxes and could improve infrastructure. An improvement in public services could really help people on their commute to work.
On the other hand, getting renewable sources would cost a lot less than the 2.6 billion that scientists say it will cost to mine asteroids. In addition to this renewable sources are a lot more eco than sources that can run out and as everyone knows, we are in climate chaos, launching rockets to get to the asteroids would wound the environment as well, it costs 500,000,000 to launch a rocket! Another contributing factor is how are we going to bring back an asteroid to Earth. We would need to have a really powerful contraption to pull an asteroid out of its course, if an asteroid is big enough to have a gravitational influence on other objects surrounding it then taking an asteroid of that size would greatly disrupt the normal activity of the asteroids. In addition to this, there are no asteroid belts near us all.
My thought process: I thought about how an abundance in materials would benefit us but renewables are much cheaper, we could make a really strong object out of food waste! In addition to this, it sounds nearly impossible to bring an asteroid to earth, plus the cost and risk of loss of life so,
in conclusion, I think we should not do asteroid mining because of the costs that come with it.
Looking at the renewable alternatives is a new approach, but ”renewable” is often used to describe energy, so are you suggesting asteroid minerals would be used for energy?
05 Dec 2019
If we distroy the ores we would have no more to repair in the future we need to go to space
05 Dec 2019
I don't think we should do that ,because we are already killing the earth why break planets in space to, just to get excspensive things?
05 Dec 2019
we wold not be alive.
06 Dec 2019
We should mine asteroids because they have loads of resources that could have a mineral that cures cancer or something like that and also it could just generally help with levels of material. All that material can help us with more rocket launches encase the earth becomes to dangerous to live on
06 Dec 2019
I think to solve this problem we should share the payment equally like others said
I agree to this however what about the poor people
06 Dec 2019
Thank you if your listening
06 Dec 2019
We can and we should
06 Dec 2019
How would we not be alive
06 Dec 2019
Ye we could help people with cancer and diseases
06 Dec 2019
I don’t think we should mine asteroids because people might use asteroids for granted and when we really need we might run out
06 Dec 2019
It could be dangerous
06 Dec 2019
Let’s do this
06 Dec 2019
Bye
06 Dec 2019
well if we mine asteroids it will do the same as it did when we mined coal, kill and pollute!
06 Dec 2019
Is gravity strong enough to hold people on the asteroid ☄️ and what if it moved so quickly they got taken to far away from Earth to get back.
We would take the asteroid back to earth before mining it, so things like that can't happen.
Oh yeah but how would we get the asteroid ☄️ onto earth 🌍 in the first place .
We would get the asteroid back to the earth by sending a robot with an enclosure bag to enclose the asteroid and bring it back safely down to earth.
06 Dec 2019
This would be tough, for starters you would need a strong material to actually mine the asteroid and that would need money to pay to a mining team. then a rocket, you could do 2 things: 1. you could make a giant rocket to put the asteroid in the rocket so just a bigger rocket, more money 2. mine the asteroid and take bits back one by one,as well as getting more oxygen this could me a life threat as if they could forget as it would be boring more money / in fuel. in conclusion, i don't think we should do it as it is dangerous and a lot of money.
06 Dec 2019
at first, we should only mine in one asteroid to check what the effects are
06 Dec 2019
after this, we should have a vote
07 Dec 2019
Personally, I think astroid mining can be good and bad.
GOOD: As well as containing natural materials eg. water, iron, silicon, magnesium, organic molecules and dimonds ext, there are other reasons why astroid mining is a great idea. We as humans, get through so many gagets and our supplies of these elements could run out in 20-40 years time but on an astroid the minerals are abundant and it could last us a centuary, depending on how large the astroid is in the first place.
BAD: It could also be bad because according to CASEY HANDMER, 15%of astroids debris ends up in regions of satellites. A satellite in the wrong place at the wrong time could suffer from a damaging high-speed collision with the dust. But getting there and back is the biggest challenge of them all as it requires so much fossil fuels that, you never know, could someday kill us.
I mentioned cost nowhere in this comment as you pay to get up and get rewarded up there. Now I see why you could argue here as you get much more in space than it would have costed to get into space anyway.
Great research, radical_koala. Where did you find the information from Casey Handmer?
i got the information from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630235-100-dust-from-asteroid-mining-spells-danger-for-satellites/
07 Dec 2019
I disagree with them because India doesn't have that much money for their space travels for astronauts they need that money for their poor people for hygenic toilets and accessible stuff that they need and you can't mine asteroids they come from the gravity of the planet they just float.
07 Dec 2019
There might be a problem if the world is damaged from outer space.
07 Dec 2019
This is the enviroment of our world and we are making global changes of outer space too.
07 Dec 2019
Asternauts won't have pollution in outer space.
07 Dec 2019
So we have to make a change of outer space by the government to make a political change.
07 Dec 2019
So will you do that piece of change in the future if not it will be a problem for all of us.
07 Dec 2019
Well let's see if our prediction is right or not.
07 Dec 2019
If astranaughts spend to much money in things that are special stop it 😒
07 Dec 2019
I think we should mine asteroids even though we think this big ball of metal is a challenge of stopping and even if the cleverest humans have no clue we may have a chance.
and we need money
07 Dec 2019
I think this reason because we need more about asteroids, think deeply about this and may change human history
09 Dec 2019
Mining asteroids could help our country a lot (finding minerals and developing our technology).We would give the materials that we find to the government who could use them as trades or use them to build houses for homeless. There are many materials that we could find including new ones.
09 Dec 2019
I think we should mine asteroids because we could find some important objects that we could use to sell and get loads of money to go farther into the solar system and we could lend it to the government or give it to scientists that could do experiments on them because it might help us. It could also help sick people and if we are lucky we could make medicine that could stop cancer or other diseases. The downside is that it cost around 2.6£ billion and it could be dangerous because if we could find an object that could harm the earth. Thank for your amazing explanation it was really helpful
Which of these consequences is most likely to happen, glad_skill?
09 Dec 2019
So I think it is perfectly ethical to do because we could get new equipment and new science that we could experiment on.I also think that we could focos on this because we could discover a hole new topic,we could go far on this and make our world a better place.I also think it is bad because we could risk life's getting there and we might not find anything breath taking.Thank you for reading this comment.
10 Dec 2019
If we have already done asteroid mining why can’t we do it again?
Nobody has mined asteroids before.
10 Dec 2019
In the 5th paragraph you say that we should bring the asteroid to earth but what if the robot crashes into a city or town then many people will die. I think we should just mine it in space with a ship with robots in it that can mine and then we send some rockets with humans controlling it to get the materials. Why I think this is because we don't want to mine with humans is we don't know how long it will take and what is inside there might be poisonous gas that could kill humans but we should have humans controlling them because there might be aliens on there. If there are aliens on there then we don't want the robots to kill them while mining.
If you read the text above the screen you will see that they said SOME people have done it.
11 Dec 2019
Nice work.
11 Dec 2019
thank you inspired football 🦾🦾👩❤️👩
11 Dec 2019
It can't happen because if the mining tools are lost in space then loads of £s/$s will be wasted
11 Dec 2019
I agree because it shows how much you know about asteriods
12 Dec 2019
Are tools would not do it. But we could collect Moon dust and see if we can make any further progress with it. Also another side to the argument is that we already have space suits so no oxygen in space isn't a problem. But the question is how long can we stay in space to mine the asteroid.
13 Dec 2019
I think we shouldn’t and we should be focusing on climate change instead as money could be wasted if we lose an equipment then that would be vital for our money. Also I think mining could be a waste of time because if we didn’t find anything then what would we do then?
13 Dec 2019
I think we should mine on astride because we could find out new facts and materials aswell as cures for medical debases.
13 Dec 2019
I thing that we should try it because we can see what stuff is inside the moon and if there is any bones or foselse that can lead to mistical creachers that we did not know exised and wer could fined something that could be rare or make us rich . But we would need some extra pretetion soustse for them so they do not get hert . Do you agreey with me?
15 Dec 2019
Your writing was excellent!
Thank you!
16 Dec 2019
If someone mined an asteroid, they could become the first ever trillionare!!! 💷💷💷
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