Mining the Heavens

Mining & Minerals - Evaluations / Off-World Exploration, Mining, & Technology

Date posted: 12/01/15

Greg Klein asks how is the best way to describe the asteroid mining act that the U.S. signed into law on November 26? A skeptic might say that one small penstroke for POTUS, one giant leap of fantasy. But to Eric Anderson, it is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history. The co-founder of Planetary Resources said recently that this legislation establishes the same supportive framework that created the great economies of history and will encourage the sustained development of space. While the law does not actually grant Americans extraterrestrial property rights, it does say they can keep anything they find out there. Maybe other earthlings will follow through with their own finders-keepers laws. And there is much to be found, according to enthusiasts of asteroid mining. A 500-meter asteroid can contain more platinum group metals than have ever been mined in human history, according to the Anderson company, perhaps alluding to the possibility of non-humans mining elsewhere. Preliminary estimates bandied about for asteroid 2012 DA14, for example, range from $195 billion to $20 trillion, less costs to mine, process, transport, and market, etc. To put the last figure in perspective, that is about 20 Afghanistans, according to an oft-repeated but completely unsubstantiated estimate for another difficult-to-access part of the universe. Visionaries see the market for off-planet resources not so much on Earth but in outer space, helping colonize beyond the continents exploited during our Age of Exploration. In fact, Moon Express refers to its hoped-for robotic mining location as the eighth continent of Earth. But asteroids remain the destinations of choice for companies like Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources. Chris Lewicki, the company president and chief engineer, foresees asteroid mining within 10 years.