If you like science fiction, you know that the idea of colonizing the moon produces incredibly imaginative stories. Asteroid mining could happen much more quickly, given the speed with which science fiction dreams have come true so far.
Two companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space, deployed the first spacecraft from the International Space Station last year. The Washington-based asteroid mining company aims to launch a series of increasingly ambitious and capable explorations over the next few years. So in fact, asteroid mining could be starting sometime in the next 10 years. While new continents or islands were discovered in the world, the countries that discovered those regions planted their own flags and declared dominance. The same battle and race will be on asteroids. In fact, considering that the first and second world wars were actually a ‘sharing war’ rather than a world war, perhaps these asteroids could be the cause of the third world war. For now, even if a few countries are really ahead in this race, they will enter this race in the future, but they can trigger a war environment for the asteroids that they will colonize and mine. If mining can be done on asteroids, this event will really be a game changer.
The annual raw metal production of the world is around 130 billion dollars. The prospect on asteroids is estimated at quadrillion dollars. The reality is that some types of asteroids (like type X) are composed almost entirely of pure metal. A near-Earth type X asteroid is believed to hold more platinum than it has ever seen in human history. Even this may be a sufficient reason for the two countries to fight without hesitation. Both companies we mentioned above are naturally interested in asteroids, which are especially close to Earth, in the near term. About 15,000 asteroids with their current orbits close to Earth have been discovered. Planetary Resources has already added 8 of them and Deep Space 6 of them to its list of ‘very attractive targets’.
Scientists think that asteroids are formed from debris from the early formation of the solar system or the destruction of a planet. There are hundreds of thousands of asteroids orbiting the sun. Most of them are grouped in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some asteroids escaping this orbit sometimes come towards Earth. Sometimes it even crashes into our world or burns out in the atmosphere. We, too, make wishes by watching them below, so that the stars have fallen. So I believe that space mining can be more real than science fiction.