A vision or just an illusion?
The key to human success as a civilization and in history as various populations has been the capacity to work metals more refined and more resistant, starting with copper, then bronze and iron to steel until the industrial revolutions with the addition of coal and subsequently oil.
For centuries they have been the way to success in war against less technologically advanced populations, the objective for territorial expansion colonialism and wars. For instance, let us think respectively about the Ancient Roman conquer of Iberia, Britain and Gaul, the Spanish gold mines in South America, the expansion of the Nazi-Germany in Poland and France and the Japanese in the South-East Asia and the more recent conflicts in the Middle East.
Metals are at the base of the heavy industry and consequently to each activity of the secondary sector, extending to more rare metals like platinum (26,000$/Kg) and cobalt, essential for high-tech manufacturing processes, from semiconductors to batteries.
Said so we can surely ascertain that these materials are important, but what is it about space mining? Are not our Earth resources enough?
Well, technically yes, but just at the moment. But we ought to consider that the mining resources are not equally distributed on the globe and our global reserves of oil and natural gas will run out in the next decades, thus we must consider a transitioning to new powerplants and an electric-based machinery and products, which is already a though problem. Indeed, we do not have a technology sufficiently advanced to guarantee us adequate batteries to exploit the most out of solar panels and other green energy sources, which we cannot achieve without the use of refined metals and other years of research and development.
So once again it is all down to money, what are the prospects of concrete space mining missions? Right now, we can say that we are stuck between two options, these being investing in perfectioning our current technologies to extract more materials more efficiently on Earth or shift that amount on space start-ups. Yes, that is right. There is no actual established industry, but just startups and projects. That is because there are not adequate technologies available right now, they are all project, some independent some related to bigger companies. SGold, Bradford (owning Deep Space Industries) and Planetary Resources, which received large private founding from personalities such as Larry Page, are some examples.
Now, you might think that it would be a waste of money since there is not anything concrete. If so, you must consider another factor, Earth resources are limited, and private space agency are pushing for developments and have establish new goals for the next decades that are getting more and more reachable day after day.
It is all a question of prospective, it would be a long-term investment with a gigantic possible return. With current pricing per kilo the cost to send 5000 tons of mining equipment to the asteroid belt is estimated around 2 to 4 trillion USD, yet the total net worth of the materials extractable is around the 30 quintillion USD. So, making a simple proportion and assuming an average cost of 3 trillion USD it would have a profit of 10,000,000:1 dollar invested, so even hypothesizing additional costs of about 27 trillion it would remain a profit of 1,000,000:1 invested.
We can already think about two different ways of extraction. As we saw before one is the actual mining on celestial bodies and then send back to Earth the ores, more similarly to the conventional techniques but with some advancement in order to operate in low gravity conditions. The second option would be “fetching” smaller asteroids or debris in a closer orbit to our planet, or even Mars who knows, and sent those back to land. There is also the possibility to create an orbital station for smelting and refining those materials to optimize the usage of fuel.
Now, summing up, we can say that space mining could be one more valuable and the consequence of an inevitable progress in space technologies led by private industries, so it is just a mere matter of time, but how much?
It is difficult to say. Yet, some of the most successful and wealthiest entrepreneurs are aiming to land on Mars within 2025 so it might not be such a remote future.
It all depends on us and on our actions and our will. For the time being I would not personally suggest to spent money or even considering investing in such companies. We essentially already have a lot of problems related to the environment and climate on our own and only planet that we must take care of, or we might even not be able to see the first mining-mission take off. Take in account that one of the most valuable mining resources in space is not even metal but water.
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