“Mining and returning platinum or gold from asteroids could make a person a trillionaire overnight, with the potential to flip our entire economy, trade, and market.”
While this sounds ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC, how realistic is it? Well, according to this article, “…2024 PT5 is part of Arjuna, an asteroid belt consisting of space rocks that follow orbits around the Sun very similar to that of Earth. ‘And for that reason, sometimes they remain briefly trapped in our gravitational field,’ Dr. Cappelluti said.”
Never heard of this asteroid belt? Neither had I: “Arjunas are a group of asteroids that have a nearly circular orbit around the Sun. They also have orbital period of a year. Essentially, they are the Earth’s closest neighbors, sharing the same space around the sun.”
While it seems likely that the Arjunas are asteroids captured by the sun from the general space debris following both creation and collisions in the ancient Solar System, there’s a possibility that they are made of “stuff” that’s similar to Earth in more ways than one. Also, as they follow the same orbit we do, intercepting them would SEEM to be a matter of Earth first “dropping” a cluster of probes and satellites, then setting them in a “station-keeping” orbit to wait until the Arjunas asteroid “catches up to them”, then initiate an orbital insertion and landing on the surface.
Let’s say that the probe discovers deposits of primarily iron, with a few possible traces of the precious metals: gold, silver, palladium, and platinum. A crew of miners were prepared ahead of time and launch. They begin work, seeking the asteroid with robotic micro-miners, swarms of diggers who sniff out the metals. Several months later, they lift from the surface of the asteroid and set a station-keeping orbit with holds laden with iron and other valuable ore.
In THIS scenario, all they’re carrying is metal ore, unprocessed. This would carry two advantages: first of course is that holds full of “rocks” aren’t nearly as tempting to hijackers who would have a long, hard processing road ahead of them instead of flying away with ingots of gold and girders of iron.
Secondly, the crew of the asteroid mining team are descendants of old-Earth-based miners. Skills gained by corporations and individuals and trainers over centuries of Earthly mining, would perhaps be more easily adaptable to space.
The mining and processing equipment itself might not have to be invented from scratch, either, but maybe adapted, set upon by micro-made “builders” who begin with the original Earth-made smelter, then adapted by an AI and retooled from the original into a similar one that might process Arjuna asteroid ores.
While this isn’t exactly “exciting” in a story sense, it’s MORE exciting in a “Hey, this could possibly happen!” sense. There are still chances for story to take place here – for example, what if the “micro-made builders” get out of control? What if their sheer MASS give them sapience? Will environmentalists protest of the “ruining the pristine nature of space, knuckling under the conglomerate mentality of ‘USE EVERYTHING FOR HUMANITY!”?
What if some of the miners hack the AI run mining equipment (or more interestingly, join forces!) to build clandestine colonies on the asteroid and hijack it for themselves?
These and more thoughts, and even thoughts leading to events unimaginable today, await as Humanity and AI leap from Earth and into space…
Today’s Source: https://www.sci.news/space/space-mining-13350.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjuna_asteroid; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjuna; https://www.news9live.com/science/arjuna-asteroid-2023-fy3-may-collide-with-earth-within-next-100-years-2408435;
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
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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