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posted by martyb on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-over-your-head dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Friday November 10 2017, @02:27AM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Friday November 10 2017, @02:27AM (#594996) Journal

    I remember a time, long, long ago when it was thought to be impossible to land a rocket booster and re-use it.

    You never thought that, stop pretending. You read the same sci-fi about landing rockets as I did as a kid. You saw it right there on the cover.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_on_Mars [wikipedia.org]
    Everybody knew this was possible. There was just little economic incentive to try it. Then government got out of the way.

    Private industry can't waste money forever like governments can.
    It still marginally worth while to do so today. It takes months of refurb to re-fly a stage 1 rocket. It takes months of work to prep a new one too.

    It takes minutes to prep an airliner for another flight. This shit Musk is doing now will be a joke in 50 years. By then, it will be refuel and go again.

    Realistically, rockets are already dead technology.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 10 2017, @02:47PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 10 2017, @02:47PM (#595133) Journal

    Realistically, rockets are already dead technology.

    What do you think is going to replace rockets?

    It takes months of refurb to re-fly a stage 1 rocket.

    Just because that is true today doesn't mean it will be true forever.

    When automobiles were introduced, they had all kinds of problems that would make people say they are never going to replace the horse and buggy.

    Automobiles are noisy. Smelly. Travel at dangerously unsafe break-neck speeds of 20 mph! They can break your arm if engine backfires while you are cranking it. And worst of all, automobiles frighten the horses. So I can confidently predict that automobiles are just a fad, and the horse and buggy will be the preferred mode of transportation forever.

    Even a couple decades ago, wind and solar power were not really very economical compared to coal fired generating plants. But technologies improve.

    So far, I like SpaceX's track record.

    You never thought that, stop pretending.

    I'm being funny. By "a long time ago", I mean this decade. And not that I, personally, thought it was impossible. But that there were people who thought it was impossible and probably should have known better. As you point out. It was just a matter of economics and developing the technology. There is no fundamental reason it is impossible to land a booster or to re-use it. Whether it is a good idea, remains to be seen. But I haven't heard of any better ideas yet.

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