imo, asteroid mining will be our best chance of developing the tech for a real defensive system to avoid a high impact earth/asteroid event in future. it's potentially so dang lucrative, it only needs to catch the right investors' imaginations.

go fund me

lust said:

seriously, can't NASA send an expedition there to get as much minerals as possible?? don't let this "train" pass you by!!!

JoeTyler said:

Aren't asteroids surrounded by 1000's of smaller ones while flying by, which would make an expedition uber dangerous?

lust said:

JoeTyler said:

seriously, can't NASA send an expedition there to get as much minerals as possible?? don't let this "train" pass you by!!!

Preparation time for such an enterprise is years in the planning (assuming we'd even have the technology to mine an asteroid and return the booty to earth) not to mention the cost would probably be more than the value of what you can bring back. Nice plot line for an unrealistic movie though.

depressing, and nihilistic

JoeTyler said:

lust said:

JoeTyler said: Preparation time for such an enterprise is years in the planning (assuming we'd even have the technology to mine an asteroid and return the booty to earth) not to mention the cost would probably be more than the value of what you can bring back. Nice plot line for an unrealistic movie though.

depressing, and nihilistic

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it turns out a company called Planetary Resources is going after the thing:

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from: https://ca.news.yahoo.com...48813.html

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excerpted:

An asteroid has sped pass Earth at a distance of just 1.5 million miles away, with some onlookers interested in more than just its scientific importance.

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Asteroid 2011 UW-158 passed 30 times closer than our nearest planet, according to Slooh Community Observatory .

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It is not due to pass as close to Earth again for another three years but experts have told Sky News that it may look a bit different by then.

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The asteroid, which measures around half a mile across, has a core made from platinum and worth an estimated £3.5 trillion and astronomer Bob Berman says private companies are making moves towards mining it.

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He said: "There's the little matter of the 1967 Space Treaty and almost all countries have signed that saying no nations can claim a celestial body but it doesn't say anything about companies, corporations, firms, private entities.

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"Nations cannot claim a celestial object but a private company can so if they can get there and they can mine it with all that platinum then good luck to them, it's all theirs."

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He said Planetary Resources, which recently launched a rocket from the International Space Station, was known to be keen on the idea and he added: "At first they were hoping for the platinum which this asteroid contains but nowadays they're thinking of water, which can be more valuable or even more valuable to the International Space Station or other astronauts."

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Space journalist Sarah Cruddas said the asteroid belt has enough minerals to "redefine wealth on Earth so it could technically make everyone on Earth a trillionaire".

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She added: "The first space race was driven by politics... but space can't be driven by politics. What it's going to be driven by is business and business investment in space.

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"You’re seeing a new industry emerging.

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"Where we are in terms of exploiting space resources now is the same as where we were with the internet 20 years ago and who would have thought that would explode and change the world in the way it did?"

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According to their website, Planetary Resources launched a spacecraft from the ISS (Copenhagen: ISS.CO - news) on Thursday last week beginning a 90-day mission to test the avionics, control systems and software needed to mine asteroids.

In 2013, Deep Space Industries voiced similar ambitions.

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Meanwhile, Mr Berman said the public had nothing to fear from this particular asteroid, which passed so far away that it could not be seen with the naked eye.

"This still puts it many times further away than the moon so this time we're safe and the next time it passes Earth we're safe too.

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"Before that time, maybe those guys will have succeeded in snagging (the asteroid) and mining it."

[cont. at link]

more on the budding industry of 'space mining' http://www.latimes.com/bu...story.html

^^easier said than done!

inspireof said:

Aren't asteroids surrounded by 1000's of smaller ones while flying by, which would make an expedition uber dangerous?

No. I think you're thinking of comets and that's mostly vapor from the heat of sun.

JoeTyler said:

^^easier said than done!

This particular article is in several ranking business magazines. The floor is opened for private industary to get involved in the space program. There are several launching sites all over the world. There's something about an American company moving (or has already moved) to NZ to setup launching. At this time this industry is supposedly booming or getting ready to boom over the next couple of decades.

inspireof said:

Aren't asteroids surrounded by 1000's of smaller ones while flying by, which would make an expedition uber dangerous?

no more than lyft

JoeTyler said:

seriously, can't NASA send an expedition there to get as much minerals as possible?? don't let this "train" pass you by!!!

In a sense, that's exactly what NASA is doing right now. They are working on a mission to an asteroid as a prelude to the first mission to Mars.

Tell your congressional representatives to continue funding NASA!

RodeoSchro said:

I've always wondered how accurate these spectrometers are at predicting the composition of an object based on the way it REFLECTS light off of its SURFACE.

PurpleJedi said:

I've always wondered how accurate these spectrometers are at predicting the composition of an object based on the way it REFLECTS light off of its SURFACE.

kind of a side story: when i was in school in an astronomy class I had to take this filter thing to look at some things (Like venus and the moon, and a street lights.) so I am out looking through this scoop thing and a cop pulls up and is a bit of a prick at first (but you all know me I turned up my prickness) but in the end he was looking at stuff too... we did his flashlight with argon or something bulb.

It ended up pretty cool. I told him to stop by in a few days and I would give him the scoop (once i was done with it) he never did. A year later he was there arresting my neighbor...