Published recently on April 1, 2024, the vision of a new company, Open Asteroid Impact is a stunning vision of what Earth might really BE once more of us capture the vision of the value of asteroids in the Solar System!
Pulling inspiration from Hillary Rodham Clinton, one-time presidential candidate, who said in a typical summation of existential wisdom, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Indeed the rigid logic of this statement is entirely inescapable.
OAI’s intent is to offer Humanity another way to mine the asteroids. Their mission is “to have as high an impact as possible. We are an asteroid mining company. When most people think about asteroid mining, they think of getting all the mining equipment to space and carefully mining and refining ore in space, before bringing the ore back down in a controlled landing. But humanity has zero experience in Zero-G mining in the vacuum of space. This is obviously very inefficient. Instead, it’s much more efficient to bring the asteroids down to Earth first, and mine it on the ground. Furthermore, we are first and foremost an asteroid mining *safety* company.”
In other words, instead of us going to the asteroid, having to invest incredible amounts of money to be able to send Humans into space, we instead invent robot slaves (OOPS! surrogates) to go to the asteroid and bend their efforts to our will! do the mining for us. The ROBOTS will be blasted with radiation, exposed to zero-air environments as well as experiencing air, water, gravity, and food shortages of likely difficult size.
OAI’s mission is clear: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from human-directed asteroids should be a global priority alongside other civilizational risks such as nuclear war and artificial general intelligence.”
However, I don’t understand why they feel it’s necessary to get rid of miners: “But before the point where most jobs are obsolete, some specific jobs (e.g. miners) may no longer exist. Entire mining towns may no longer be viable. We believe firmly in the value of education and retraining for upwards mobility. We are thus setting aside a $250,000 pot for scholarships for former underground miners to retrain in astrophysics, astrogeology, or rocket science, so that the miners of yesterday can become the astrogeologists of tomorrow.”
The thing is that, once the asteroid impacts the surface of the Earth, it will likely be buried, and after the surface solidifies, the ore that we have chosen to diligently pursue, will once again be underground. I believe they should be marketing their company as a “resource replacement provider”. Absolutely mineral ares are depleting – for example, in my own home state of Minnesota, “…while the Mesabi Range had single-handedly supplied the iron for steel during World War II, it essentially dug its own grave. The Range totaled output of over 188 million tons of ore during the course of the war, and exhausted itself of natural hematite until the process of making taconite into iron was discovered into the 50’s and 60’s…”
How MUCH iron is there on Earth? As far as I have been able to find, about 1.6 septillion tonnes. Anyway, there’s still a lot of iron on Earth, as well as the other minerals (even though iron is THE most common metal after aluminum…
So, mining the asteroids – all it involves is crashing an asteroid into Earth – though we don’t have the METHODOLGY down yet, and I’m pretty sure that there’s no Class Asteroid on a Minnesota license yet, so who’s going to guide it in for a nice soft landing? For a discussion about this question, see the Physics Stack Exchange link below; but the simple answer is…
“Nope.”
It would be impossible to soft-land an asteroid on Earth according to any direction the people on the website twist it.
So, aside from the fact that it’s impossible, and the fact that Open Asteroid Impact was posted on April 1, 2024 (notoriously known as April Fools Day in North America), you can safely bet that this was a joke.
HOWEVER…it seems a bit obnoxious as well, making fun of the serious possibility of mining the asteroids for minerals we need. Again, I live in the state on Earth that STILL produces 75% of the total US output of iron ore; but I know from personal experience, that iron is a finite resource. Even China, now the number one producer of iron on Earth…will run out someday – perhaps SOONER rather than later.
This humorous post on the OAI is great. We all need to be able to laugh at our foolishness! I know one of the strengths of our marriage is that my wife and I LAUGH A LOT.
In the following article, “The clean energy transition away from fossil fuels…will require significant increases in mining of critical materials for clean energy technology…demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals will balloon significantly according a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency: The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions…There is insufficient mining capability in the world today to meet this [new] demand, and if capacity were ramped up to these levels, there would be serious environmental and economic consequences. If we ignore other promising alternatives such as ramping up licensing of new nuclear fission power plants and funding development of fusion energy or space solar power, what can be done?”
There IS hope on the horizon. “One of the companies on this frontier is UK based Asteroid Mining Corporation which has the goal of becoming the first profitable space resources business. The startup is working on an autonomous robotic platform call Space Capable Asteroid Robot Explorer with a roadmap that plans for revenue payout at each milestone with eventual return of asteroid resources in the mid-2030s.”
So far, however, all they have is a nice website, and one POSSIBLE actual photograph of the SCAR-E walking into a tunnel on Earth:
Whereas Astroforge (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2023/05/mining-asteroids-part-13-new-kid-in.html) ACTUALLY has a probe in space on a secret mission that DID hitchhike with the ship that brought the failed Psyche LANDER to the Moon (the one that tipped over after landing…)
I eagerly await the results of THAT mission. So…we shall see who actually makes it into space!
New Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tBy4RvCzhYyrrMFj3/introducing-open-asteroid-impact , https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/a-sci-fi-concept-that-should-become-reality, https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/a-sci-fi-concept-that-should-become-reality , https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/244606/could-an-asteroid-land-slowly-on-earths-surface ; https://spacesettlementprogress.com/2024/01/
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining) , A Sci-Fi Concept That Should Become Reality: Asteroid Mining Is Essential for the Future of U.S. National Security | Center for a New American Security (en-US) (cnas.org)
Noted Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
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