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| Asteroids |
There are about 17,000 near-Earth asteroids; asteroids that at some point in their orbit come close to Earth periodically. These are the asteroids mining companies deem feasible to exploit because they come so close to Earth. It is much cheaper to get there and back. Of those 17,000 only 10 are considered appropriate to investigate due to delta velocities and likelihood of enough precious metals to make it worthwhile. Here is a list of those asteroids courtesy of Wikipedia.
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| click image for larger view |
Once small, exploratory drones locate the right asteroid, there are currently only so many options for bringing asteroid material back into the Earth economy.
1. Send robot drones that can extract metals and water and store them for a return journey.
2. Send robot drones that can haul the asteroid back to a Lagrange point near Earth and extract materials at leisure.
3. Send robot drones that will break off chunks to be hauled back to Earth or Moon orbit for processing.
All of these options require a higher degree of technology than what we currently possess, and they may very well be the wrong options. There is another way. Here is how it might work.
A group of autonomous drones rendezvous with the near Earth asteroid of choice, one selected by the explorer drone. For talking purpose, we will assume it is the asteroid Ryugu which swings through Earth and Mars orbits and has a period of 474 days. They secure themselves to the asteroid. One group of drones are the extractor drones, and the other are the prospector drones. They all get busy. The prospector drones quickly show the extractor drones where to dig, then they go dormant, hanging on for the ride.
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| Ryugu's orbit takes it to Earth and Mars and inner part of asteroid belt. |
The extractor drones are solar powered. While the asteroid is relatively close to the Sun (inside the orbit of Mars), these drones will dig and process metal and water, packing it away for towing back.
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When the shuttle asteroid reaches the orbit of Mars, the prospector drones awaken and have breakfast, the flow of current from their re-activated nuclear power packs. Unlike the extractor drones, these are not dependent on solar energy, and that is a good thing. A telescope and spectrometer starts analyzing data from nearby asteroids to determine which ones are worth visiting by the drones. The prospector drones now break away from Ryugu and begin checking out asteroids in the belt where the sunlight is dim. They have stocked up on rocket fuel in the form of water provided by the extractor drones. Their nuclear power packs will last for 14 years.
Ryugu is close to Earth again and a deep space tug is waiting there to tow back the loot extracted by the extractor drones and to drop off any spare parts or software updates needed for the drones.
Extractor drones keep working as Ryugu once again approaches Mars’ orbit. Any prospector drones that have found significant asteroids now come back to Ryugu with the coordinates. The prospector drone switches power supplies with the extractor drone, and it goes after the asteroid picked by the prospector drone to extract what it can. It will meet up with Ryugu in about 2 1/2 years to ride back with a sack of goodies. This will be the process until the drones start to break down or run out of power, at which time they will meet up with Ryugu for the final ride back to Earth.
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A variation would be that all the drones have multiple capabilities, both extraction and prospecting. They would also run off of either solar or nuclear. That way, mining could continue unabated on the shuttle asteroid if needed, and a drone could start extracting material on a choice asteroid in the belt as soon as it was located. One drone design is also cheaper. How many drones are involved? It could start out with as few as two, with the only limit to the upside being depth of pockets of the company. The only problem with this scheme is one it shares with the first three enumerated above. We don't have the technology to do this yet.
The asteroid mining industry is still waiting on three major technologies to propel it to the forefront of shaping our future civilization - artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, and human longevity. There is one minor, but important, technology which also needs to be solved. That is miniature ore extraction technologies that work over several metallurgies in vacuum with no gravity. You thermal and chemical process engineers out there need to get cracking. If there is no way to do this, we go back to hauling big chunks of asteroid back to Earth or Moon orbit for processing.
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| Autonomous drones will require artificial intelligence. |
Artificial intelligence will be required to run the autonomous drones. Although strategic management can be carried out over long distance, the day to day problems will need to be dealt with. I’m sure you’ve run across jobs at work where you are pretty sure your boss could not have dealt with it. That is the sort of things these drones will be dealing with. Its timeline is nebulous at this point but at least it is not touting civilization changing breakthroughs in the next 30 years every year like the companies working on nuclear fusion technology. AI seems to be growing incrementally but there is nothing yet that can carry out complex mechanical tasks on its own.
Nuclear fusion will be needed for when the drone gets so far into the asteroid belt the Sun looks like only a bright star. Solar panels don’t work so well there, but you still need that energy to turn ice into water and water into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. Even if nuclear fusion becomes a reality, small units may not be practical, but there is a work around for this.
We have the technology for small nuclear fission power generators that last for decades. They are radioisotope thermoelectric generators - RTGs. They’ve been around for 50 years and have powered 25 U.S. spacecraft so far, but a newer technology is available. A version of the Stirling radioisotope generator, SRG, will generate four times the power of RTGs. It is the advanced Stirling radioisotope generator, or ASRG. It will last for fourteen years. NASA has some work to do on it. It was scheduled to fly to Titan on NASA’s Titan Mare Explorer, but that mission was never funded. A serious asteroid mining company should consider leasing this technology from NASA for its own purposes.
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| Cutaway of ASRG - courtesy Wikipedia |
Longevity for the human species is currently at a plateau that maxes out at about 105. If you make it to there, chances stabilize at about 50/50 for making it another year. There are scientists that claim there is a limit to human longevity and some that say we don’t know yet. I’m going with that latter group because humans need to live longer. I’m talking about living to 120 with the same mental and physical stamina you have when you are 50. The current life expectancy for an American male is about 79. We need this longevity for better planning for the future of the human race. Rapacious, predatory capitalism is not so appealing when you’re going to live to see the results of a ruined environment and society. The mining industry needs this technology because some of these projects are so long term, only a long-lived person would be willing to take them on.
The gist is that autonomous drones can use the asteroid they are mining as a shuttle to the asteroid belt where they can find and mine other asteroids. Then they can hook back up with that shuttle asteroid when their mission is complete and hitch a ride back home. Now, go lease that reactor tech from NASA and badger Alphabet for that AI technology you know they’re holding back on. It’s a big place, the asteroid belt, with a 150 million asteroids. Someone’s going to find the motherlode. Might as well be you, especially if you are in grade school and you get started right now.
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