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NASA wants to uncover the mystery behind the asteroid “16 Psyche.” that may contain a priceless treasure trove of minerals. “We’ve been to all the different planets, we’ve been to other asteroids. But we’ve never visited a body that has been made of entirely metal,” said Carol Polanskey, project scientist for the Psyche mission. Now NASA, led by researchers at Arizona State University, plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to orbit 16 Psyche – an asteroid roughly the size of Massachusetts, made of iron and other precious metals. The mission’s leader estimates that the iron alone on today’s market would be worth $10,000 quadrillion.
Previously: NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids
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NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars
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sillema sillema nika su
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:09AM
The iron in the Earth's core is closer and far more plentiful. There should be news articles about harvesting that.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Dunbal on Friday January 20 2017, @03:23AM
Next solve hunger by eating your own leg.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @04:46AM
We need to outlaw space mining immediately, because it could mean jobs for poor people, and the poor people deserve to be poor.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @03:41AM
The iron in earth's core has little if any value. It's difficult to get at, not to mention that getting to it would involve processes that are probably going to damage the ecosystem. Not to mention - we don't really need a lot more iron on earth.
Far more profitable to mine that iron in space, outside of the gravity well - then USE IT in space.
Build the foundries and factories right there, on the asteroid. Construct a habitat with the materials mined from the asteroid. All that is required are some people, some water, some oxygen - just build the colony on or beside the asteroid, and go into business selling hi-tech stuff to people who want to explore the rest of the solar system.
No need to drop all that stuff on the earth.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @04:08AM
just build the colony on or beside the asteroid
Or, even better, inside the asteroid. Kilometers of free radiation shielding, and the more you mine, the more living/manufacturing space you have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @04:59AM
But zero access to Facebook not even Facebook Zero. Life without social media is not living.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:29PM
Hmm, currently 20.6 light minutes away. We'll have to route over DTN [nasa.gov], but I bet it could be done. Maybe hook up a proxy Earth-side vacuum up the AJAXy crap, transmit one blob, and have a server at 16 Psyche decompress and present the relevant URLs over TCP+HTTP locally.
Though perhaps a simple RSS feed would work better. Perhaps bridge Freenet over DTN so it can lazy-fetch content you might want over the 41 minute round trip then freely browse from the 16 Psyche node.
All is not lost!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @03:06PM
I really don't think Facebook is all that time sensitive. It's hardly any more time sensitive than discussions right here, on Soylent. You comment while the Aussies are asleep, few hours later, they post their comments on your comment, that Asians comment whenever they feel like it, etc, ad nauseum. The time lag would in no way affect our ability to carry on a conversation, here, or on Facefook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @05:07AM
I'm pretty sure the post was being sarcastic, Admiral Aspergers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 20 2017, @04:25AM
And all we have to do to harvest it is dig a hole hundreds of times deeper than anyone has ever managed, using mining equipment able to operate at 10,000F, and avoid destroying the Earth's magnetosphere and leaving the planet an airless wasteland in the process! (Okay, we'd probably have to get really greedy for that last bit)
Not to mention the fact that the energy requirements to lift something from the core to the surface would be almost as much as to send it from the surface into orbit - a bit over 3*10⁷J/kg either way - so energetically speaking it's not actually much closer.
I think it's safe to say that iron was used because it's pretty much the cheapest metal around, and probably among the least valuable of the asteroid's resources, financially speaking. Besides, it's *way* more convenient to mine in space than in the core - most of the technology is already in the prototype stage, and if you're not in a hurry you can move stuff anywhere in the solar system practically for free using the so-called Interplanetary Transport Network of gravitational slingshots. The expensive part is getting into orbit from Earth, and the price is falling fast. Sending stuff back is cheap and easy - the only hard part is not blowing up anything important when it lands.
To say nothing of the fact that huge quantities of near-pure iron will be immensely valuable for constructing infrastructure in space. You don't even need much technology, even a cast-iron or welding-deposited space station would be quite serviceable until local infrastructure is capable of more sophisticated construction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:47PM
Yeah, you can get it there and enjoy watching it fly past because you don't have a way to stop it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:41PM
So pick a different path that has it ending it's journey with a velocity-shedding slingshot around the moon and ending up in Earth's orbit instead. There's a near-infinite number of ITN paths to get from A to B, all with different approach vectors.
(Score: 1) by kanweg on Friday January 20 2017, @10:11AM
And the best thing is perhaps that it is already molten!
Bert