More on Asteroid mining

Can't you just tell one of my first loves was space?

"NASA is considering a $2.6 billion asteroid-retrieval mission that could deliver a space rock to high lunar orbit by 2025 or so, New Scientist reported last week. The plan could help jump-start manned exploration of deep space, carving out a path to the Red Planet and perhaps even more far-flung destinations, its developers maintain."

YAY!!!

I grew up in the 70's at the height of the Apollo Program.  As a kid I was given a model of the Saturn V with the LEM and the CSM.  The whole model was almost 4 feet tall.  I also had models of the CSM and the LEM that were almost 8 inches tall themselves.  I read books about the space program, I begged my father for books and models about the Mercury and Gemini program in addition to more Apollo models.  I read hundreds of science fiction novel y Asimov, Heinlein and others.  I wanted to go to space, live on a space station, be able to ride a taxi from the earth to the moon.

In short I was Space Struck.

Well budgets and political situations changed and space was put on a back burner.  It still is on the back burner, but now on the back back burner of the government.  However Private companies are bringing it to the front burner, a little bit at a time.

And I'm happy to see that.  I just hope that my kids can have the same excitement about space travel that I once had.  And that Private space travel can bring about that sense of wonder soon.

This post of Jeff's

got me thinking, the post in question is HERE, I clicked through to the NASA website and looked at all of the beautiful photos.  I saved a few for my desktop backgrounds as well.

But the thought that I had was a cascade.

#1 Which moons/planetoids orbiting Saturn could humans conceivably colonize?

#2 Just how much gravity does Saturn exert on the space around it?

#3 Could the asteroid belt be mined by robotic miners based on moons/planetoids orbiting Saturn?

#4 How hard would it be, if the /GOV got their thumbs out of their butts and fingers out of their nether regions to jump start a new commercial space race?

Just a few thoughts.  Do you have anything to add?

More on Asteroid Mining

"Somewhere in the Asteroid Belt, NASA's plucky spacecraft Dawn is on its way from Vesta, the second-largest object in the belt, to Ceres, the largest. Having finished with the spacecraft's time at Vesta, scientists are now parsing the mound of data they accumulated about the big rock and uncovering some surprises. One of them: It's got water." 

WOW!!  This mean we could be one step closer to colonizing space.   Water in space means several things, it means fuel, water can be hydrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen.  Can you say Rocket Fuel?  Can you say Oxygen to breath?  And water to drink, and to water plants with?  Water in space means actual space stations/colonies since water won't have to be sent from earth, which doesn't have an abundance of it in the first place.  Water in space means that humans can climb free of the bonds of earth and prosper.  Humans in space means industry in space, which means new materials with unique properties possibly bringing about a new industrial revolution.

Water in space means all of these things.  If we just reach for the brass ring.

H/t Insty

Asteroid Mining

Instapundit had a link to Popular Mechanics about some new technology being developed.  The link to the Popular Mechanics story is: How to Mine an Asteroid.

Now all this very interesting, but it begs a question.  How can this be made more cost effective?

I had a small thought about that.  In hundreds of Science Fiction books, there are what is called Asteroid Miners and Asteroid Minig companies.  Where Miners in small ships go out and started to disassemble the asteroid in situ.  While it makes for good writing and plot elements, until such time as mining space ship technology becomes affordable, any type of space mining will be done either by Governments or large private corporations.

So I was thinking to myself, "Self, what if a specially designed satellite was to dock with an asteroid, anchor itself to same, then using an Ion drive similar to the New Horizons Spacecraft,  to slowly add acceleration to the asteroid to bring it to a moon capture orbit.  The asteroid would be put on a trajectory that will allow it to be captured by the moons gravitational pull.  From there the asteroid could be broken up, shaped into a re-entry shape and have a spray on heat shield attached, then sent to earth for use in our industries."

That really is the thought I told myself.

But what would we need to make it happen?

One of the largest obstacle I see is how to properly anchor to the asteroid through it center of mass so any thrust applied to it would make it go in a straight line.  Plus to keep the original costs down, the return trip of the asteroid would take several years before it would enter the moons gravity.  Any attempt to make the trip quicker would in my opinion be dangerous and much more expensive.  Faster acceleration means more thrust, which an Ion drive cannot provide, plus steering and attitude control under slow thrust can be achieved with smaller Ion thrusters also anchored to the asteroid or mounted to the main engine similar to RCS thrusters on spacecraft.  However as I stated before the problem will be ensuring the engine thrusters assembly is anchored at the proper place so the main line of thrust passes through the center of mass of the asteroid.

There are other problems, from political, to safety and other things.  But I will stop here to let you do some of your own research if you desire.

Space is our destiny, I don't feel that we are destined to be constrained here on this one planet.  There is so much to learn and explore, we should make the leap even though it can be frightening.