THE MINING EXECUTIVE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 EDITION

The
MINING EXECUTIVE
Magazine FEBRUARY 2020
he space industry is globally estimated
Tto be a US$300 Billion market and is
expected to triple that in the next 10
years. Space resources are expected to create
major socio-economic benefits in many areas,
including GDP impacts, employment creation
as well as market and technology spillovers in
several technical domains such as data
analytics, materials science, additive
manufacturing and robotics.
The current rupture within the space industry
in reusable space technology especially
rockets coupled by the growth of the global
population, predicted to be nearly 10 Billion
by 2050 has created streams of interest in the
possibility of us mining from above the earth
in the near future. With current deposits
getting deeper, poorer in grades, narrower and
more challenging to extract, the possibility of
going up for minerals resources is becoming
more real especially where universe
exploration is concerned.
The fragility of our planet and our dwindling
resources have led to governments and
companies looking for alternative resources.
A wave of space focused mining exploration
investments has been created and like never
before, the race is on, not to peg claims of
vast resource rich tracks of lands but for huge
clusters of rich rocks scattered across the
universe. Top 5 space players spent over
US$74 Billion only in 2016 exploring the
universe with USA leading at US$48 Billion,
China US$11 Billion, Europe US$ 7 Billion,
Russia US$ 4 Billion.
USA recently announced its intention to
develop a Space Force, a move that is set to
cement and accelerate space investment.
"Up until now; looking for metals elsewhere
has meant going to more environmentally
fragile regions of the world; the arctic, the
rainforest, under the sea. But in space, there
are resources beyond our wildest dreams,"
BomaGlobal, an organization that delivers
transformational experiences that make
positive change actionable and accessible was
once quoted.
For one company, Astroid Mining
Corporation, this is a venture that has so
much potential and is bound to be the future
of mining. The company in the past projected
that the adventure of buiding a satellite to go
in search of mineral rich asteroids could cost
as much as £2.3million with a a potential to
mine asteroids worth £2.3billion each at an
estimate cost of £500million.
“I realised it was the future and we needed to
be doing it. An asteroid about 25metres in
diameter could be worth £2.3billion –
£725million of that would just be the
platinum content. Rhodium and palladium
can also be found in it.
These are very highly valued and highlyscarce
materials on earth but they're abundant
on asteroids. We estimate to mine an asteroid
like that would cost £500million,” Mitch
Hunter-Scullion, CEO Asteroid Mining
Corporation was quoted saying.
No nation has claim to a space celestial body
and as such, these bodies remains open to all.
Success in asteroid mining may see some of
the earth mining projects being rendered
obsolete due to their cost efficiency, high
concentration on quality metals and
voluminous nature of deposits.
Necessity
t takes more propellant to escape the Low
IEarth Orbit (LEO) which is only about
300km from the earth's surface than is
required to travel the next 300 million
kilometers by the same spaceship.
It takes about 50kg of propellant to just
deliver 1 kg into the LEO but only 4kg to
move the next 35,000km after that only 2kg
the last 300 Million kilometers to get to Mars.
There are over 16,000 asteroids sharing the
same orbit with Earth containing an estimate
of 2 trillion tonnes of water and the number
keeps on growing due to discovery of new
ones. One of the key resources being explored
and will be the first to be mined once their
programs are successful is water which is an
integral life support and rocket propellant
component.
Since asteroids have infinity quantities of this
water, bases have to be set up to extract this
and refine it into the much-needed propellants
for deep space exploration at more than 1000
times cheaper than if provided from the
earth's surface. So, asteroid exploration is a
must to ensure viability of solar system
exploration.
“The asteroid Psyche 16 is a very special space rock. It is almost entirely made of metal, including
iron, nickel, and gold, which has led astronomers to believe that it was originally the core of a
planet. It's also estimated to be worth around $700 quintillion—enough to give each of the 7.6
billion people on Earth about $92 billion each. You read that correctly—$92 billion each. This
asteroid has the potential to make us all richer than the Pharaohs—or, you know, crash the world
economy.”
Aestroid Psyche 16 (source: open)
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