Planetary Resources Aims to Mine All the Asteroids

A few years earlier, when one thought of a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), one thought of the threat of impact. An apocalypse. Earth’s destruction. With movies like Armageddon exploring such ideas and about 152 potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) hurtling around, such thoughts were quite common, and still are.

Recently though, a lot of people are thinking about asteroids and seeing green. And by green we mean the monies. This is largely due to the fact that space mining, or more specifically asteroid mining, seems to be almost within our reach. Within a decade, it is supposed. With the creation of the company Planetary Resources Inc., backed by the likes of director James Cameron (of Titanic and Avatar) and two Google execs, obtaining extra-terrestrial resources might well be in the future of humanity. Founder Peter Diamandis is already the CEO of X Prize, which played a role in starting the space tourism industry. He claims that he has always held the dream to be a space miner, and now he’s attempting to bring it to reality. The venture has been likened to Columbus discovering America, or the Europeans trading with East Asia.

The company plans on first deploying orbital telescopes to gather more knowledge about nearby asteroids to help in prioritizing the asteroids to be mined. The first phase could begin in less than two years, with satellites costing a few million dollars each. Teams of scientists and experts are attempting to come up with mining methods. Many of the near-Earth asteroids are even more accessible to us than the moon, due to their periodic proximity to the Earth. Among these are the PHAs, which already travel relatively near to Earth’s orbit for at least a part of their orbit around the Sun. These are the most promising for mine exploration. Scientists speculate the orbits of some of these asteroids may be slowed as they come near the Earth, an idea which has yet to be developed. Other asteroids travel in such a way that they may be mined for some years before being abandoned as they head into deep space. Terrestrial drilling technologies will be adapted to fit the conditions of space, and orbital fuel-supplies will need to be created to facilitate the machinery.

A number of different, beneficial resources may be accessed and brought back from asteroids, in hopes of improving the quality of human life on Earth. For example, it is a hope of many that they find water-rich asteroids, which will help in solving the water shortage problem on Earth. Precious metals such as gold and platinum are expected to be found, which would garner huge profits due to their relative rarity and value. Rare earth metals, which are rapidly depleting as they are crucial in modern electronics, can also be found in abundance on certain asteroids. In this way, the success of the venture would affect the economy significantly, potentially adding trillions of dollars to the global GDP. With access to the enormous amount of space wealth, Planetary Resources could easily become the world’s richest company. Even the smallest of asteroids could fetch more than $ 100 million in profit.

For now, it seems like the human race is well on its way towards the futuristic age that is depicted in science fiction everywhere.