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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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Madness takes its toll.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 20 2017, @02:24AM
Those goddamn morons should be figuring out how to deflect asteroids away from Earth rather than harvest them for sheckels.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday January 20 2017, @02:26AM
It's literally the same discipline. Celestial mechanics. Ideally, you would do both by once by corralling potential asteroid threats into orbit around the Moon or Ceres or some place, and then exploit them decades later when it becomes feasible to do so.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday January 20 2017, @05:13AM
Because Ceres is so easy to reach?
Exploit them to do what? Build Toyotas?
You can't land that much weight on Earth without severe consequences.
So we will have to use it all in space somewhere. How about out by Ceres, since its so easy to get to...
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 20 2017, @09:13AM
Did you know that it would take less energy to land on and return from Phobos than the Moon?
Gravity matters more than distance, especially if the asteroid redirection is unmanned and you have plenty of years to do little orbital adjustments with ion engines to get it just right. Putting something around Mars, Ceres, or Phobos could be training for doing it right at the Moon or Earth, where a mistake could be bad.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:20AM
It's literally the same discipline.
More than that, it's literally the first half of the same mission. Capturing an asteroid requires landing on it, applying thrust on the correct direction until it's trajectory is within Earth's gravitational sphere of influence, slowing it down bellow escape velocity once it's actually there and finally positioning it in the correct orbit or in an aerobreaking suborbital trajectory depending on whether you want to utilize it in orbit or on the surface. Deflection only requires landing on it and applying thrust in any direction perpendicular to the prograde vector (that is, the current direction of movement) and would normally take considerably less fuel than aiming it for a capture.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @05:12PM
If you put an asteroid into an orbit that can be reached, and it has a lot of valuable treasure on it, then there suddenly becomes an incentive to MAKE it feasible to harvest.
Even if all that metal cannot be landed on Earth, it could be used for space stations and spacecraft. Again, the value of the materials, already in space, and somewhat accessible, will accelerate the development of technologies to exploit it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @11:19PM
SHINY SHINY SHINY
Can haz metlz cheep?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @03:55AM
So, there's an asteroid on an impact trajectory, and we have to do something about it. WHy not capture it, park it somewhere convenient, and then mine it? You're going to expend a lot of energy deflecting it anyway - might as well expend a little more, and get some good out of the damned thing. As Takyon already said, it's the very same orbital mechanics discipline involved in deflecting or capturing an asteroid, meteor, or alien artifact. Unless, of course, the artifact is shooting back.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 20 2017, @05:23AM
Someone burns a few tons of coal, and everybody comes undone and runs screaming about destroying the earth.
But put something the size of Massachusetts in orbit and that's ok? Wouldn't disrupt a single thing would it? Then land it piecemeal. No possible effect there either?
We can't predict next weeks weather. We still can't reliably launch a payload much bigger than a School bus.. We got no business dicking around with orbiting large bodies of solid metal that we can't control.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 20 2017, @09:49AM
We got no business dicking around with orbiting large bodies of solid metal that we can't control.
If those bodies are bumbling about in some safe orbit past Mars then yes, I'd say you have a good point. However in the event that such a body was hurtling towards us and threatening global extinction then we have every business.
Personally I think trying to move something that size in one go would be way beyond our current capabilities and potentially catastrophic. If we want to mine this thing we need to fly out there, set up a mining (and possibly also manufacturing) base on it and ship the resulting materials to where they are needed. When we have a few decades of experience and tech development from that, maybe we can think about playing planetary billiards.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 20 2017, @09:06PM
Maybe you are implying that an accident will happen and a city will be flattened. Yeah, I doubt that. But that's why you have the Moon and other places to put your first redirected asteroids.
Landing an asteroid in the desert is probably going to have less environmental impact than strip mining. But it looks like we will only be using these resources in space for the next century or so, because of the physics and economics.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:18PM
Landing an asteroid in the desert is probably going to have less environmental impact than strip mining.
Math fail.
Find a strip mine as big as Massachusetts and then we can talk.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:41PM
1. You don't have to land an asteroid the size of Massachusetts. Even a building sized asteroid could have a lot of useful material.
2. There are deserted places that you can land it. It doesn't matter if you squash a few scorpions in the Sahara or crush a bit of ice in Antarctica.
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(Score: 2) by Sulla on Friday January 20 2017, @04:26AM
What better way to get Trump and the neocons (both Dems and Reps) to invest in space tech than show them the sheckels that can be made. People only care so much about a 'maybe' when it comes to risk of something bad happen, but people care a lot about risk of something good happening.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 20 2017, @04:50AM
Sorry, bro. I've know you've taken a cue from the NPR playbook, but you're going to have to be more on-topic if you want to successfully derail discussions.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Friday January 20 2017, @07:24AM
My definition of a great Isreal is just like a great Saudi Arabia. I would prefer a world with both of them as glass. Trumperoid would solve both issues.
Unsure why you feel astroid exploitation is a problem though. Free market/greed tend to decide a lot of things, wealth in the stars makes it easier for us to get to the stars. Asteroid exploitation will work much better when it comes to colonizing Mars or some of Jupiter's moons. Tacking down how to capure an asteroid of any size will do well toward figuring out how to deflect them, with a bonus of being much better funded. Unsure how trying to trick people into funding asteroid detection and reflection is derailing a thread where you bitched about exploitation stealing resources for detect/reflect. The two go hand in hand.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @06:27AM
Those goddamn morons should be figuring out how to deflect asteroids away from Earth rather than harvest them for sheckels.
Indeed..
I'll just leave this link [archive.org]here, and refer you to the story "A Better Mousetrap" by John Brunner contained therein...
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday January 20 2017, @09:05AM
We need more capitalism. Corporations need to band together and figure out how to get it into Earth orbit so they can mine it and make a kajillion dollars. And the free market will easily handle the case where they screw up and it winds up crashing into Earth.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Gaaark on Friday January 20 2017, @12:45PM
You're slipping again: it should be "goddamn Jews", no? ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday January 20 2017, @02:59PM
Great.
So in Mission Shove Asteroid out of the way, how much does said asteroid weigh?
If only there were a way we could land on the thing, find out what it's made of, and determine its shape, size, density, mass, structure, etc. so we could know how much we needed to shove it out of the way and/or blow it up.
Er... hold on a mo...
P.S. It's really hard to gauge mass without seeing or measuring a quantifiable gravitational effect.