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The US Geological Survey Is Getting Serious About Space Resources and Mining
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is starting to earnestly evaluate space resources for future mining. Since its establishment in the 1870s, the USGS has focused pretty much solely on Earth. But now it's also investigating what benefits may or may not exist in tapping extraterrestrial water, minerals and metals.
[...] This past June, several USGS experts took part in a Space Resources Roundtable held at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. "The space-resources community will benefit greatly from working together with the USGS to assess the location and value of minerals, energy and water on the moon, Mars and asteroids," said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines. [...] It's also worth noting that the new director of the USGS, Jim Reilly, is a geoscientist and former NASA astronaut. During his 13-year NASA career, Reilly flew on three space shuttle missions, conducted five spacewalks and racked up a total of more than 856 hours in orbit.
[...] [Laszlo Kestay, a research geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona,] pointed to the USGS' participation in space-resource workshops. In addition, there's the 2017 "Feasibility Study for the Quantitative Assessment of Mineral Resources in Asteroids" led by Kestay, which found that the water and metal resources of near-Earth asteroids are sufficient to support humanity should it become a fully spacefaring species. "At this point, we have done enough work to feel confident that the methods the USGS uses to assess mineral, energy and water resources on Earth can be used to assess space resources with minimal modification," Kestay said. "We have also done enough preliminary work to identify some areas where humanity's lack of knowledge will result in exceedingly large uncertainties in assessments undertaken today."
Also at Forbes.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Thursday September 06 2018, @09:31PM (5 children)
You refine the metal in space, form it into large blocky gliders and coat them with a couple of feet of foamed slag from the refining. Fly them back on a shallow trajectory finishing
overinto a large desert. You should be able to land 100's to 1000's of tonnes each, with minimal waste.The space shuttle proved you can put wings on a brick and have it land mostly intact.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @10:00PM (1 child)
I haven't heard of this one. Not sure if it's a compelling strategy or a joke.
Then again, Chinese researchers think they can do it with a big heat shield.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Friday September 07 2018, @07:14AM
Serious.
You make long wings, with most of the mass evenly spread along them to minimize stress. Give it a long skinny tail. It looks like a skinny dragonfly with really thick wings.
Total of a tonne or so of high tech control surfaces and actuators on the end of the tail, to keep the angle of attack of the wing at optimum and give you some control over the landing site.
Foamed slag, if you can do it with sufficient structural strength, makes an excellent ablative heatshield.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Friday September 07 2018, @04:03AM
Or land it on your enemy. "But we gave you fifty tons of platinum, what are you complaining about?"
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 07 2018, @11:47AM (1 child)
How much energy is required to de-orbit? Need to slow down somehow in a predictable manner. How much can be done with atmospheric breaking (assuming e.g. infinite amount of heat shield to burn off).
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 07 2018, @07:03PM
You could just about do it all with aerobraking. Rocket scientists have got really really good at predicting trajectories. Most meteors that don't make it to ground are either very small, or they break up. A foot or so thick heatshield is probably plenty.
It assumes signficant space infrastructure. Building a glider like that isn't something you are going to do with what you can launch in a cubesat. It only makes sense as an ongoing mining operation where you basically replace a lot of earth mining.
I think you would have solar-powered ion drive tugs to put them into an intercepting orbit. Maybe place them in LEO with a small throwaway de-orbit rocket on them. That way you could land them when you want.
Should make an amazing show if you land a bunch of them at once one night. :)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.