“Previous companies have rocketed toward similar goals before but went bust about a half decade ago. In the years since that first cohort left the stage, though, “the field has exploded in interest,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.”
The number of players in the field of asteroid mining is rapidly expanding as is international interest, “Another company, called TransAstra, is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky; Chinese corporation Origin Space has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit around Earth, and is testing out its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test out excavation equipment.”
Other companies while their ULTIMATE goal is to mine asteroids, believe that they can practice here on Earth: “For now, though, SCAR-E will stay on Earth and inspect ship hulls. According to one market research platform, this is a nearly $13 billion dollar market globally — as compared to the asteroid-mining market, currently $0, as no one has yet mined an asteroid.”
Also, while it might seem like space is vast, the volume of our own Solar System is finite, and while we have plenty of experience stripping our planet (and are now dealing with the consequences of that), we have NO IDEA what kinds of problems we’ll actually run into.
Living in a state that provided most of the iron used in the steel for ships and tanks in World War II, it was a boom time of mining and spending money on frivolous things – follow the link for a high school built with Iron Range riches in northern Minnesota: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAI3sgEAk4k After that, follow the history of the Iron Range as the wealth vanished and the mining of high grade ore ceased…because it was gone. The subsequent collapse of the economy of the Range left (and I know of this personally as I worked on and lived on The Range for a while…) devastation in its wake.
So, we’re moving forward. Enough so that I’ve started to have ideas of the PERSONAL stories that might come out of the move to mine the asteroids. Others are noodling on the ramifications as well: “The legal situation surrounding space mining gets a bit murkier when you look outside the US, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. The nearly 40 nations who have signed on to the Artemis Accords agree with the US position, but other countries could take a different position.”
I can finally stop holding my breath and begin to explore the “who and what” of asteroid mining, because it appears that the “we need to explore space!” crowd is slowly being absorbed into the “how much money can we make in space mining” meme…
Today’s Source: https://undark.org/2024/05/08/asteroid-mining-space-metals/; https://payloadspace.com/solid-us-space-mining-regs-could-attract-investors-vc-predicts/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords ;
Noted Resources: Foundational Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
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
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg
The number of players in the field of asteroid mining is rapidly expanding as is international interest, “Another company, called TransAstra, is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky; Chinese corporation Origin Space has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit around Earth, and is testing out its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test out excavation equipment.”
Other companies while their ULTIMATE goal is to mine asteroids, believe that they can practice here on Earth: “For now, though, SCAR-E will stay on Earth and inspect ship hulls. According to one market research platform, this is a nearly $13 billion dollar market globally — as compared to the asteroid-mining market, currently $0, as no one has yet mined an asteroid.”
Also, while it might seem like space is vast, the volume of our own Solar System is finite, and while we have plenty of experience stripping our planet (and are now dealing with the consequences of that), we have NO IDEA what kinds of problems we’ll actually run into.
Living in a state that provided most of the iron used in the steel for ships and tanks in World War II, it was a boom time of mining and spending money on frivolous things – follow the link for a high school built with Iron Range riches in northern Minnesota: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAI3sgEAk4k After that, follow the history of the Iron Range as the wealth vanished and the mining of high grade ore ceased…because it was gone. The subsequent collapse of the economy of the Range left (and I know of this personally as I worked on and lived on The Range for a while…) devastation in its wake.
So, we’re moving forward. Enough so that I’ve started to have ideas of the PERSONAL stories that might come out of the move to mine the asteroids. Others are noodling on the ramifications as well: “The legal situation surrounding space mining gets a bit murkier when you look outside the US, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. The nearly 40 nations who have signed on to the Artemis Accords agree with the US position, but other countries could take a different position.”
I can finally stop holding my breath and begin to explore the “who and what” of asteroid mining, because it appears that the “we need to explore space!” crowd is slowly being absorbed into the “how much money can we make in space mining” meme…
Today’s Source: https://undark.org/2024/05/08/asteroid-mining-space-metals/; https://payloadspace.com/solid-us-space-mining-regs-could-attract-investors-vc-predicts/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords ;
Noted Resources: Foundational Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
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
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg
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