Almost a million or more asteroids are drifting uncontrollably in the Solar System. A majority of them are between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But we don’t have to fly that far to get them, 16k of em’ are near the Earth laced with anything from Gold to Water, just waiting to be collected and harvested. But that is easier said than done, there are a lot of technical challenges in harvesting those goods. But think that even if we overcome all those difficulties will the harvested goods be brought to Earth?
Well, we could bring some of them back(For-Profit). Our planet is currently running out of many minerals like silver, gold, copper, zinc, tin and lead so if we harvest these resources from asteroids we might bring them to earth. But transporting these commodities in large quantities might decrease their value, right.
We could gain much more value from asteroid mining if we use those resources to further explore space. With all the mineral bodies floating around the solar system, we’d have no problem in colonizing the Moon & Mars. Scientists bring up the fact that in early years when Earth was lifeless just like other planets, asteroids were the ones that filled up the oceans with water. They were constantly hitting the Young earth surface not only bringing up water & ice but also bringing up complex organic molecules.
Imagine that you’re taking a road trip from Mylapore to Poonamallee. After you cross Porur you won't be identifying any petrol bunk all you can see is forest and you can’t find a petrol bunk just by standing in a forest so what should you do? You should either fill up your tank in Mylapore and start your trip or you can fill your tank anywhere near Porur this is just a 27km travel yet you planned this much then just think of a situation where you have to travel to space which is over 100km from the surface of Earth which makes it even worse.
We’re trapped in the earth’s gravity, it’s too strong that it takes needs more energy to escape the first 300km than the next 300 million km. Scientists say that it is not that efficient to waste that much amount of energy just for an asteroid.
On the other hand, travelling beyond the earth’s gravity is effortless. If we started mining asteroids we wouldn’t have to carry fuel along with us eventually we’d discover a new source for that. We’d mine asteroids for water which is an essential element to sustain human life anywhere in space.
Water would help us maintain good hygiene, grow food and thereby produce breathable air and more likely also give us fuel. We can use asteroid metals like iron to construct a low-cost structure. We’d also bring precious metals like gold, silver and platinum to manufacture high-end electronics, spacecraft or maybe “Death-Rays” but not for the production of other ornaments like a chain or a ring.
First of people need to know a lot about asteroid mining, before a year even I didn’t know that space offers this much resources and actually we can extract it. When we figure out a way to extract them one question remains Who will own the asteroids? Whether a nation or a private company? Well, we might expect an economic disruption because that company/nation will run the whole world.
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