Asteroid Mining

[HopAlongBunny]

Just listened to a CBC bit about it. Apparently no one doubts it is possible to do; the economics will certainly suck for the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, the investors seem more interested in demonstrating what is possible rather than making money. As the interview pointed out, rare earths are rare here, and often associated with areas thought to be "impact sites". If you can go to the source instead of waiting for it to land, rare earths become much less rare.

One thing they didn't mention is that the whole process could probably be best handled by robots.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Besides, didn't China buy up all the rare earth metals or something?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Besides, didn't China buy up all the rare earth metals or something?

See my previous post.

[rvg]

Asteroid mining should really pick up if we construct some processing facilities on the ISS. That way the entire process will be confined to outer space negating the huge costs of leaving and re-entering Earth.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Asteroid mining should really pick up if we construct some processing facilities on the ISS. That way the entire process will be confined to outer space negating the huge costs of leaving and re-entering Earth.

You still need to transport the final product to earth after processing, which means constant leaving and re-entering for the ship. So why bother putting the processing facility way up there for billions of dollars when it could be done for millions on earth?

[rvg]

You still need to transport the final product to earth after processing, which means constant leaving and re-entering for the ship. So why bother putting the processing facility way up there for billions of dollars when it could be done for millions on earth?

To use it to expand the ISS itself.

[Major Robert Dump]

Well since we are gutting our space program in America because we can't manage our infinite money, someone has to carry the torch.

[HopAlongBunny]

To use it to expand the ISS itself.

Possible. A very starry-eyed view would be for processing/manufacturing in space for space related "infrastructure".

[CBR]

Besides, didn't China buy up all the rare earth metals or something?

Dump the asteroids on China and make the metals less rare?

[a completely inoffensive name]

As the interview pointed out, rare earths are rare here, and often associated with areas thought to be "impact sites". If you can go to the source instead of waiting for it to land, rare earths become much less rare.

Actually rare earth's are not that rare. That's a misconception people have. The reason rare earth's seem rare is because the only country currently mining rare earth elements is china who is exercising their monopoly on the stuff to their benefit. According to the sources on the wikipedia page I am looking at, cerium has roughly the same abundance as copper.