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One expert... in the field of asteroid mining, has predicted that asteroid mining could begin in 10-20 years:
"Asteroid mining on a regular basis, such as terrestrial mining takes place today, with an established industry and an ecosystem of supporting services businesses for the mining companies, could start anywhere from 20 to 50 years is my personal opinion. But any industry must start somewhere, and I think we will see the first asteroid being mined 10 to 20 years from now, at which point the surrounding ecosystem will begin to grow," [J.L.] Galache said.
However, in order to successfully start asteroid mining, a few obstacles must first be overcome. One of these is insufficient knowledge about certain types of asteroids. Although our understanding of asteroids as a whole is advanced enough, gaining a better understanding of the nature of various types of near-Earth objects could be a critical factor in terms of success. Galache underlined that mining techniques will have to be tailored to specific types of asteroids. "For example, you will not send the same equipment to mine an iron-nickel asteroid as you would a carbonaceous asteroid, and you will not send the same equipment to mine a fine regolith-covered asteroid as a rubble pile. I do believe we have figured out what all the unknowns are and it is just a matter of finding answers and solutions to those unknowns," he noted.
NASA's Psyche mission will visit 16 Psyche, the most massive metallic M-type asteroid in the asteroid belt.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:18PM (6 children)
Well, no. Relocate the environmental impact from our home planet to the asteroid mining site. It seems the total environmental impact would be greater for a space mining job vs. a local one, but the benefit comes from moving much of that environmental impact to a place where the environment literally doesn't matter to any intelligent life.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:41PM (3 children)
When we use the word "environment" in this context, we're not using it as a synonym for "vicinity", we're really talking about the ecological impact of something.
There is no ecology of any kind on an asteroid, so there is no "environmental impact" to asteroid mining (unless you have a big accident when trying to get the refined ores back to Earth...).
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Friday November 10 2017, @12:59AM
Now what was it that the NOSTROMO accidentally tried to bring back to earth ...
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 10 2017, @06:00PM (1 child)
Actually, once building mines in the asteroids starts, pollution out there *is* going to be undesirable. Too much small stuff really limits the speed you can use.
That said, it might be possible to solve the matter by giving a hunk that you aren't using a strong electrostatic charge. Not sure whether it should be positive or negative, I tend to think negative, because I think ionizing radiation (i.e., UV) will tend to knock off electrons, so you need a really low power ion emitter that only emits protons (or positrons, but be reasonable). Wouldn't need much power, you could probably run it on solar cells beyond Jupiter's orbit. Then various electrostatic processes would attract all the negatively charged matter and even, I believe, neutral matter (Van der Waals?). You wouldn't want it to be fast, so you don't want something powerful, just enduring. And, of course, it would repel positively charged matter from the area, but that would be less effective.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 10 2017, @08:26PM
There's different kinds of pollution. In earth-based mining, one big problem is "tailings": all the leftovers from the earth dug up after the valuable ores are removed. They tend to be full of a lot of other not-so-desirable materials like arsenic and mercury, plus you have to put them somewhere, and so they cause problems with the ecology on the surface. In space, there's no ecosystem to worry about polluting; you just have to dump the tailings somewhere. What you talk of might be a concern for smaller asteroids, but if you're mining on a larger body that has at least a little bit of gravity, it should be OK: the tailings will just stay with the body. Many asteroids are what's called "rubble piles", where they're nothing more than a bunch of small rocks being held together by their mutual gravitation; it doesn't take something the size of the Moon to have enough gravity for stuff to not just fly off into space and create a dust cloud. But I guess it would be a really bad idea to indiscriminately use high explosives to blast smaller asteroids.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday November 10 2017, @01:55AM (1 child)
Not the way that works.
The impact on the earth of making and lifting all that equipment will exceed by orders of magnitude the value of the exacted materials.
And after you mine it, you have to build a factory in space to process it and make it useful for SOMETHING. And of course you have to mine more stuff on earth and lift that into space to build the factory.
Just about ALL the impact will happen here on earth. Just about none of the benefit will accrue here.
(Other than separating some Tycoons from their money and spreading that among those working in the mines and factories and rocket industry here on earth - which some would value, right gewg_?).
We do not now have the ability to get a single person to the moon. The idea that we can land a mining machine on an asteroid is ridiculous. The idea this happens in 10 years is absurd.
Bad enough you have hopelessly depressed people, who after a life time of someone else wiping their ass, suggesting we need to get off the earth within 600 years because we are all going to burn up when the sun novas. Now we have "experts in an imaginary field" telling us just how to do it.
FFS people! We are no where near starvation, we use less farmland now world wide than we did 100 or 200 years ago, we have cleaner air and water, we've got millions of tons of metals laying around in our garbage dumps free for re-use, we are getting off of fossil fuels. And some clown pretends to be an expert in something nobody has done, and half of you take it seriously!?? Unbe-fucking-lievable!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 10 2017, @06:06PM
You are accurately describing the early phase of the project. Once manufacturing in space takes off it would reduce the need to build stuff on Earth. And lowering something from space to earth isn't nearly as polluting as lifting it off...by several orders of magnitude. But the main effect would probably be on stuff built for use in space, or on other bodies than Earth.
Once it got going this would have a large effect on aero-space, but probably a lot less on anything else until a *much* later phase. But I wouldn't want to speculate about the time frame, as even the first stage is going to depend on a lot of technical advances.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.