Students Compete to Design Manned Asteroid Mission
Dozens of students from 14 countries around the world came together recently to map out a manned mission to a captured asteroid in lunar orbit — a project very much like one NASA hopes to achieve by 2025.
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"Each team was given the basic ingredients of a crewed asteroid sample mission," Qi said. "An asteroid sample would be delivered via robotic probe to an orbit about 61,500 kilometers [roughly 38,214 miles] from the moon. It will be a type-C [carbonaceous] asteroid … The crew will have to interact with the asteroid sample, do resource extraction and in-situ resource utilization."
The challenge mirrors NASA's real Asteroid Redirect Mission, which aims to pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid using a robotic probe, then drag the rock into orbit around the moon. Astronauts would then visit the asteroid chunk by 2025.
During the first few days of the challenge, both teams received background instructions from a variety of speakers from Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, the asteroid-mining company Planetary Resources, NASA and other space operatives.
http://www.space.com/15391-asteroid-mining-space-planetary-resources-infographic.html
Asteroid Redirect Mission: Identify, Redirect, Explore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4IBW4XuUFo
... Mining water use is water used for the extraction of minerals that may be in the form of solids, such as coal, iron, sand, and gravel; liquids, such as crude petroleum; and gases, such as natural gas. The category includes quarrying, milling (crushing, screening, washing, and flotation of mined materials), re-injecting extracted water for secondary oil recovery, and other operations associated with mining activities.
During 2005, an estimated 4,020 million gallons per day (Mgal/d) was withdrawn for mining purposes. link
First Quantum Minerals’ $1.7 billion Sentinel copper project, which will be commissioned in the second half of the year, will require about 400 megawatts once it’s fully operational - link
400 megawatts = 400,000 kilowatts. That's over 4,000 x more than the ISS
The ISS weighs almost one million pounds (approximately 925,000 pounds ~ 460 tons).
The 75 to 90 kilowatts of power for the ISS is supplied by an acre of solar panels.
Cost to build ~ $100 Billion Dollars
Maintenance ~ $500 million/yr
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stat ... gures.html
Specifications:
~ The mover stands 311 feet tall and 705 feet long.
~ It weighs over 45,500 tons (91,000,000 pounds) - 100X larger than the ISS
~ Cost $100 million to build
~ Took 5 years to design and manufacture
~ 5 years to assemble.
~ Requires 5 people to operate it.
~ It can remove over 76,455 cubic meters each day.(100,000 large dump trucks at 40yds. each ~ 400 tons)
Luxembourg to set up Europe space mining centre
Luxembourg is stepping up efforts to achieve its goal of becoming Europe’s hub for space mining by announcing plans to create a European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC), in charge of laying the foundations for exploiting extra-terrestrial resources.
In collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), Luxembourg aims to make the centre an internationally recognized entity of expertise for scientific, technical, business and economic aspects related to the use of space resources, including water on the moon, and metals and minerals in asteroids.
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The centre, based in Luxembourg, is also expected to contribute to economic growth by supporting commercial initiatives and start-ups, offering a business incubation component and enabling technology transfer between space and non-space industries.
The tiny European nation is one of the euro zone’s wealthiest countries and already has a long-standing space industry, playing a significant role in the development of satellite communications.
While its drive to become a significant actor in the asteroid mining industry is only four years old, the country has already taken major steps towards achieving that goal.
In June 2016, Luxembourg agreed to buy a major stake in US-based asteroid miner Planetary Resources.
The country also announced the opening of a €200 million ($225 million) line of credit for entrepreneurial space companies to set up their European headquarters within its borders.
Previously, the government had reached an agreement with another US-based company, Deep Space Industries, to send missions to prospect for water and minerals in outer space. Both parties are currently developing Prospector-X, a small and experimental spacecraft that tests technologies for prospecting and mining near-Earth asteroids from 2021.
Luxembourg hasn’t stopped there. In 2018, it created its own Space Agency (LSA) to boost exploration and commercial utilization of resources from Near Earth Objects.
Legal frame
Luxembourg’s administration has also set up a legal frame for exploiting space resources. The law, passed in 2017, says private companies can be entitled to the resources they mine in outer space, but they can’t own celestial bodies.
The only international legal body available until then dated back to 1967. The Outer Space Treaty, signed by the US, Russia and a number of other countries, says that nations can’t occupy nor own territory in space.
“Outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States,” the treaty says, adding that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
The United States has also been working on setting its own rules. Former President Barack Obama signed in 2015 a law granting American citizens rights to own resources mined in space.
The ground-breaking rule was touted as a major boost to asteroid mining because it encouraged the commercial exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids obtained by US firms.
Such law included a very important clause, clarifying that US citizens were not granted “sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body.”
Order to mine
President Donald Trump signed an order in April encouraging citizens to mine the Moon, stars and other planets with commercial purposes.
The directive classifies outer space as a “legally and physically unique domain of human activity” instead of a “global commons,” paving the way for mining the moon without any sort of international treaty.
“Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space,” the document states, noting that the US had never signed a 1979 accord known as the Moon Treaty. This agreement stipulates that any activities in space should conform to international law.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos quickly condemned Trump’s move, likening it to colonialism.
“There have already been examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interest — everyone remembers what came of it,” Roscosmos’ deputy general director for international cooperation, Sergey Saveliev, said in May.
Russia has been pursuing plans in recent years to return to the moon, potentially travelling further into outer space.
The government revealed in 2018 it planned to establish a long-term base on the moon over the next two decades, while President Vladimir Putin has vowed to launch a mission to Mars “very soon.”
NASA’s global legal framework for mining on the moon, called the Artemis Accords, would be the latest effort to attract allies to the agency’s plan to place humans and space stations on the celestial body within the next decade.
It also lines-up with several public and private initiatives to fulfill the goal of extracting resources from asteroids, the moon and even other planets.
Trump has taken a consistent interest in asserting American power beyond Earth, forming the Space Force within the US military last year to conduct space warfare.
NASA recently put out a call soliciting bids from explorers anywhere on Earth who are willing to finance their own trips to the moon and collect soil or rock samples without actually returning the material to earth. The effort is meant to set a legal precedent for mining on the lunar surface that would allow NASA to one day collect materials useful to colonies on the moon and, eventually, other planets.
The agency hopes to start mining the Moon as early as 2025, especially after finding evidence that the Earth’s natural satellite may, underneath its surface, be richer in metals than previously thought.
On Wednesday, NASA launched yet another initiative to boost exploration on the moon — The Break the Ice Lunar Challenge.
The contest calls on people with ideas and approaches for a system architecture capable of excavating and moving icy regolith and water at the lunar South Pole.
The entries will compete for a portion of the $500,000 prize in Phase 1 and $4.5 million in the second phase.
Geologists have long highlighted the mineral value of asteroids. They say the bodies are packed with iron ore, nickel and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on earth, making up a market valued in the trillions.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
vox_mundi wrote:Some Mining Reality ...
Mining requires many things but three of them stand out. Power, Water, and Gravity. Two cost money but one is free.
...
Specifications:
~ The mover stands 311 feet tall and 705 feet long.
~ It weighs over 45,500 tons (91,000,000 pounds) - 100X larger than the ISS
~ Cost $100 million to build
~ Took 5 years to design and manufacture
~ 5 years to assemble.
~ Requires 5 people to operate it.
~ It can remove over 76,455 cubic meters each day.(100,000 large dump trucks at 40yds. each ~ 400 tons)
Zarquon wrote:Since "Asteroid Mining" appears to be one of the dreams that never die, here's a post on the subject from an actual professor of physics:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/stranded-resources/
It's a non-starter. After doing the basic math on the energy requirements, he doesn't even bother to think about the economics.
And since the OP's question (from 2012) hasn't been answered yet: an object's orbit does not depend on its mass.
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