Space mining is one of the most popular topics today. Our world has a structure that is mainly made up of silicon, magnesium, iron, and nickel. However, it is possible to find asteroids composed of very different minerals in space. Several projects are being developed to obtain these minerals, which are rare in our world, from asteroids by mining. Large companies dealing in different branches such as Tesla and Google are looking for their future in space mining.
Asteroid mining is the work of making the minerals useful to humanity by drilling the minerals they contain as asteroids enter our Solar System and pass through orbits close to our Earth.
Similar to the movie Armageddon, the drilling tool sent from Earth will try to extract the desired minerals and bring them to our Earth. Of course, while doing this, it should be taken into account that environmental effects will not be mentioned as in the world.
It is very expensive to send a vehicle into space and bring it back to Earth full of ore. Considering that NASA is designing spaceships even considering the weight of astronauts, anyone can visualize how costly this is. But just imagine that 100 kilos of diamonds can be brought to Earth from an asteroid consisting of only diamonds. Or, new materials, devices, and spaceships can be designed and made on Earth by finding a mineral that has never been found in the world.
Apart from the cost of this job, it should also be taken into account that the astronauts who will be sent to space need to be trained. Astronauts must be sufficiently trained to mine in space. This work should be done by the minimum number of people and by the most educated people.
When talking about the difficulties, can you imagine the difficulties of calculating the entire orbit of an asteroid, tracking it when it enters our solar system, and mining it when it reaches the closest point to the earth and returning to earth? Of course, it is necessary to determine beforehand that this asteroid contains precious metals. All these steps make the process even harder than it already is.
It is possible to determine what kind of minerals a space object consists of by viewing it at different wavelengths. Here, basic physical and mathematical sciences are involved. In other words, this business is a big project that requires collaboration between professions and sciences.
Could we detect space objects if the telescope wasn’t invented? If the light had not been detected to be emitted by photons, could we view and take pictures of these asteroids? Science is like building a building with briquettes stacked on top of each other. If the bottom briquette were not placed, we would still believe that the earth is a flat surface resting on the horns of an ox. For this reason, I firmly believe that humanity will also mine in space and that one day it will establish a colony in a different solar system.
Every progress starts with dreaming.