Introduction: What are asteroids?
It’s been said that a single asteroid might be worth trillions of dollars in precious rare metals. Asteroids are millions of trillions of tons of rocks, metals, and ice. Leftovers from the cloud that became the planet 4.5 billion years ago. They can be as small as a meter or the size of entire countries. Most of them are concentrated in the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt while hundreds of thousands more do their own thing between the planets.
View of solar system focused on the pavement of asteroids (not to scale)
Question 1: Why would we try to mine from space?
Here on Earth, precious metals like gold and silver are getting harder to find. Geologists are developing more elaborate ways to get at the veins of precious metals beneath the surface of the Earth.
Getting these rare materials from the ground into our daily lives is an ugly process. The mining industry is responsible for air and water pollution, and the destruction of mass ecosystems. Dangerous chemicals like cyanide, sulphuric acid or chlorine are used to extract the resources. These chemicals harm biodiversity, workers, and locals.
And for the truly rare metals, like platinum and iridium, forget about it. All the platinum ever mined in the history of the world would fit inside my basement, and the size of my basement is pretty pathetic.
Even relatively small metallic asteroids may contain the trillions worth of industrial and precious metals like platinum. And bigger asteroids like 16 Psyche could contain enough iron-nickel to cover the world’s metal needs for millions of years.
So I guess the real question is why wouldn’t we try to mine from asteroids?
An asteroid stopped by thrusters
Question 2: How does the process work?
The principles of asteroid mining are quite straightforward. The main concept is to choose an asteroid, transport it to a location where it can be processed easily, and then disassemble it to create valuable resources. All of this, however, collides with basic issues that humans have yet to resolve.
Space traveling is currently too expensive; although mining just one asteroid may bring billions of dollars worth of valuable resources, it would cost trillions to get them. While there might not be money to be made on the first mining operation, the second, third, and fourth would slowly be more and more manageable as the precious metals get cheaper to produce and get a hold of. Eventually, mining asteroids will become a booming industry with lots of cash.
Our first targets will probably be near-Earth asteroids. Asteroids that orbit, well, near Earth.
After a few months of travel, our spaceship would finally arrive at an asteroid. The first thing that needs to be done is secure the asteroid and stop it from spinning. There are multiple ways to do this, but I think the best way is by stopping the rotation with thrusters.
We must wait after we have a stable asteroid. Orbital mechanics are complex, but if you push anything in the proper direction at the right time, you can move extremely large objects with very little effort.
Our ship ignites its engines, nudging the asteroid onto a path that will bring it close to our Moon. We can utilize the Moon’s gravitational pull to place the asteroid in a stable orbit around Earth, which saves even more fuel. The journey takes months once more. However, the period since the launch of our ship has not been squandered. The first space mining and processing equipment has been sent into orbit, and it is currently slowly approaching the asteroid.
Stage 1 – Regular Rotation
Stage 2 – Push
Stage 3 – To The Moon!
The procedure would be considerably different from how it works on Earth. Giant mirrors concentrate sunlight and heat asteroid rock, causing the gases to boil away. To separate dense from light materials, grinders break up the dry rocks into gravel and dust.
(Fun fact: Even if we only extract 0.01 percent of the asteroid’s mass in valuable metals, that’s still a lot more than the same quantity of ore would yield on earth.)
Lastly, to get the bits of the asteroid back to earth, we could load them into reusable rockets that return to Earth from space and drops them in our oceans, where ships would tow them away to process and sell.
Asteroid mining system
Question 3 – Is it plausible for our future?
Everything listed above could be done with the technology we have today. We don’t need fancy materials or new physics to make asteroid mining happen. While it may be easier to wait a few more years for the technology to advance, we are also destroying the earth by continuing to exploit the limited resources.
This might be the start of humanity’s first serious efforts to colonize the solar system. Our missions have slowly started to become more complicated as our infrastructure and experience develop. So if we figure out how to mine in space, asteroid-produced parts and fuel wouldn’t even have to be launched back to earth, and would be used on our rocket-ships etc. We might even be able to build the space exploration needed resources on the asteroid itself.
Even if we don’t start now, I do not see a future without this new technology; whether it’s for the uses we have for it on earth or for further space exploration, there is no future if not for asteroid mining.
Work Cited:
Bonsor, Kevin. “How Asteroid Mining Will Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 22 June 2020, https://science.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-mining.htm.
Cain, Fraser. “Will We Mine Asteroids?” Phys.org, Phys.org, 9 Jan. 2015, https://phys.org/news/2015-01-asteroids.html.
Kurzgesagt, director. YouTube, YouTube, 16 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8XvQNt26KI&t=256s. Accessed 16 May 2022.
Images Cited:
All images are from –
Kurzgesagt, director. YouTube, YouTube, 16 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8XvQNt26KI&t=256s. Accessed 16 May 2022.