Posted on 06/25/2013 7:02:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
An asteroid less than a mile in diameter could hold more than $20 trillion in industrial and precious metals
Resources on Earth are limited. Our planet was born with a fixed amount of water, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, and industrial and precious metals.
And we're collecting, processing, and eventually throwing out those resources at an alarming rate: A United Nations report on resource depletion says that between 1980 and 2008 natural resources per capita declined by 20 percent in the United States, 33 percent in South Africa, 25 percent in Brazil, and 17 percent in China.
For now, only protection and better resource management can safeguard the planet. As we burn through Earth's resources, a wealth of physical resources like metals, water, and hydrocarbons are floating around in asteroids, moons, and other planets, ready to be harvested. If human civilization is to continue to grow and expand over the centuries and millennia to come, hunger for resources is likely to drive us to explore and mine what's way, way out there.
And as wild as it may sound, asteroids in particular could be highly profitable. In 1997 scientists speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 0.99 miles contains more than $20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals.....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I suspect asteroid mining would produce metals mostly for use in space but I’m sure there would be plenty of products manufactured in space for use here.
sounds like a good place illegals and unions to get a first shot at the jobs
So, there’s this rock — it’s about a mile across, OK? And it’s zipping past at ... I dunno ... a couple thousand miles an hour or something. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. The thing is, I want you reach out — and grab that bad boy!! You with me? Just — grab it!! And we’ll all be rich!
I’m sure he has. But descendants of some of the families formerly involved in manufacturing on U.S. soil (decades back) sent much of the scrap steel to other countries in order to avoid being shown-up by new, small shops and to generally prevent competition. And yes, such international transportation is very costly.
The more “precious metals” you discover in space, the lower the market value is here on Earth.
Isn’t the Earth’s atmosphere made up of 78 percent nitrogen? I would bet in the future liberals will be protesting the addition of mass added to the planet and guys like Algore will try to institute a mass trading scheme in the inner planets that would only enrich themselves and deny others ease of self enrichment.
What happens when one of these nearby asteroids’ orbital path is affected by man’s influence and collides with the Earth? Who pays?
Maybe not colliding now, but say in 80 years or 250 or whatever.
“For now, only protection and better resource management can safeguard the planet. As we burn through Earth’s resources, a wealth of physical resources like metals, water, and hydrocarbons are floating around in asteroids, moons, and other planets, ready to be harvested. If human civilization is to continue to grow and expand over the centuries and millennia to come, hunger for resources is likely to drive us to explore and mine what’s way, way out there.”
I swear I can hear a violin being played while reading this crap...
Asteroid mining is a science fiction writer’s fantasy. It would cost trillion$ to get it using technology we do not have. Hexk, we barely made it to the moon.
all i know is, I put stuff out on the sidewalk. the only stuff that is there in the morning for the trash men is trash.
Along with adding more mass to the planet. What do they think will happen if they add more water to the planet? The water levels will rise. The world climate cycle keeps water shifting, as well as transforming it between solid, liquid and gas. The amount of water also stays at more or less a constant amount I’d assume. Adding more would burden the world’s climate, and really change it irreversibly.
This isn’t hard to figure out.
As Keynes said, in the long run, we’ll all be dead.
If the UN has anything to do with the report it is a bogus screed of lies!
Fantasy...just like the millions of Green jobs we were told to expect.
I try to drink my share of it, but I end up just putting it back down into the ground at the end of the day.
Since when have facts mattered?
With that attitude, maybe we should declare that the current manpower on the International Space Station to be the last mission, and when that crew leaves, have them shut off the lights. With that attitude, there’s no more reason to look at the sky and wonder what lies beyond the orbit of our moon. There’s no hope that our descendents will leave Earth in a few billion years when the sun expands to a red giant and turns this planet into a dead rock, if not totally vaporizing it.
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