Asteroid Mining Our Ticket To Living Off Earth

You ever spend a little too much time on the
internet and decide you really want to see what living on another planet might be like? Well Ive got some bad news if you thought
the San Francisco housing market was out of control youre not going to believe what
a townhouse goes for on Mars. The components of your average one story house
weigh somewhere around 100 tons. Considering it costs minimum of $10,000 per
pound to shoot something to space, a Mars move would cost roughly 2 billion dollars. But maybe the answer to cheap space construction
is already out there? The most practical way to build stuff in space
is to do it with other stuff in space.

And until they open the first hardware store
outside of earths gravity well, our best bet is asteroids. [OPEN] What IS an asteroid? Billions of years ago, Earth and the other
planets began to condense. Dust became rocks, and rocks became building
blocks of planets. Most of these were knocked into deep space,
or aggregated to become our solar systems planets and moons, but a few hundred million
never got big enough.

Asteroids are essentially little chunks of
protoplanet that never made it. Millions of these, about 4% the mass of the
moon altogether, are trapped in a belt past Mars, where Jupiters gravity keeps them
from condensing. But thousands of asteroids cross Earths
orbit. So why not catch one and mine it? If that sounds like the plot of your 32nd
favorite Bruce Willis movie, youve got a point.

But mining asteroids could actually be in
our future. Why would we want to harvest tiny protoplanets? Because theyre full of interesting stuff. When large planets like Earth form and cool,
all their heavy elements like metals move towards the core. Its the destiny of their density.

But asteroids are so small and light, they
never quite formed layers, and those rare, heavy elements are more accessible. Harvesting the riches of asteroids might be
essential for establishing future space settlements, powering interplanetary travel, and building
things that are definitely not moons. Because why spend money to bring stuff from
Earth if your building materials are already up there?? Different types of asteroids hold different
useful ingredients for Off-Earth survival. Carbon-based asteroids contain complex organic
molecules that may hold clues to lifes origins, and water, which well need anywhere
we want to keep that life going.

Stony asteroids hold elements like silicon
and magnesium, while metal asteroids, in addition to shiny, expensive space bling like gold
and platinum, also have iron and nickel: which are great for building stuff and who knows,
might even make good space coins. Of course, mining an asteroid is a lot harder
than it sounds. Getting there is the biggest challenge, because
blasting out of Earths gravity pit requires so much energy and fuel. But once youre up there, asteroids low
escape velocities make it easy to hop between em, or even send stuff back to Earth
or Mars.

We could even mine our rocket fuel from asteroids
too. Here on Earth, we use a lot of electronics,
and many of their components are made from rare Earth elements, which like the
name says, are difficult to find on our planet (either because weve mined all we can reach
cheaply, or theyre trapped deeper in the Earth where we cant get them easily). As we race to always have the newest gadget,
our supply of these metals may run out in 15-20 years, but on asteroids those elements
are abundant and easy to get to, so space iPhones for everyone! Or Galaxies. Get it?! The only likely way to make space mining profitable
is to refine and build things *in* space.

Theres at least 10 good prospecting targets
near Earth, but how do you land on a big lumpy space rock? Asteroids look solid, but their low mass and
weak gravity mean theyre actually more like floating rubble heaps. One bad hop could eject an object right off
the surface. And this is where the giant space nets come
in. In microgravity, it would actually be possible
to wrap and snare an asteroid to land on it or even drag it around.

Surveying asteroids for mining has one more
bonus: Well know where all the big ones are, and hopefully avoid any extinction-level
surprises. It should come as no surprise that without
laws humans tend to act stupid. With so much at stake we have to consider
what to do if space pirates become a real thing, or if asteroid wrangling technology
falls into the wrong hands. Theres only one space law on the books.

The Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967. Its meant to prevent any nation from declaring
land in space as their own, though I seem to remember one country sticking a flag on
the moon. Still, well definitely need a space sheriff
to keep things shiny. This idea isnt too different from how the
United States promoted westward expansion: A government supports the drawing of maps
and early exploration, and good ol capitalism builds transportation and establishes an economy
around new resources.

But depending on your perspective, Westward
Expansion wasnt all that great. It makes you wonder if we humans even have
the right to permanently damage land that isnt part of our own planet? So sure, the idea is a little out there,
but assuming its legal, and we dont bounce off into the vacuum of space, and we
figure out how to make fuel, water, and factories up there, theres plenty of stuff in asteroids
to build the space house of our dreams Stay curious..