![]() So - space opera SciFi aside - I don't think that there is any real risk of a "space race" even if an asteroid made of (a substantial fraction of) pure gold or platinum in native metal form is found, and it is really rather improbable that one will be found.īut this isn't the real problem. And finally, gold (or other trace metal) extraction on Earth from anything but raw gold nuggets is chemically toxic and extremely difficult, WITHOUT all of the problems attendant on trying to make it work in the absence of humans (adding human asteroid miners makes the cost increase by a factor of hundreds or more). ![]() Finding an asteroid with a minable gold content bound up the way gold frequently is on Earth is at least somewhat unlikely, although certain kinds of meteors have gold concentrations much higher than normal Earth crustal material in some of their mineral complexes. Finally, if we make the not-too-extreme assumption that meteorites are at least approximately representative of the mineral composition of asteroids, finding a pure gold asteroid is enormously unlikely. And this does not include the cost of altering the energy and orbit of the asteroid in question which requires fuel at FOB prices at the same location at the asteroid to accomplish or technology that we can imagine but that has yet to be built capable of altering orbits without fuel lifted from the Earth. That has been true of every single gram of material brought back from space so far. At this time, the cost per gram of returning with a 60 gram load makes the recovery cost many, many times the cost of gold. OSIRIS-Rex is costing very close to $1,000,000,000 to launch, and it isn't even CLOSE to complex enough to actually mine it. To get TO an asteroid to mine it is the big problem. Dropped from orbit to the Earth, it would arrive with (roughly) 32,000,000 Joules/kg of kinetic energy - 6.4 e11 J total, or around 0.15 kt (360 pounds) of "TNT equivalent" explosive power - energy that would have to be non-destructively dispersed without melting or vaporizing the metal. With a specific gravity of around 20, one cubic meter of gold in space has a mass of around 20 metric tons, or 24 english tons, so it would be worth ballpark $1,500,000,000. "Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft brought back a small sample of asteroid Itokawa dust in 2010." The report adds that while the mission is a first for NASA, it is not a first for mankind. It spells the name of the Egyptian god Osiris. ![]() A parachute will guide the capsule to the ground at the Utah Test and Training Range in Tooele County." OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for the objectives of the mission: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer. In a bit of Hollywood-style drama, it will fly over Utah and drop off the capsule holding the asteroid sample. OSIRIS-REx heads home in March 2021 and arrives back at Earth on September 24, 2023, but it won't land. NASA hopes to get at least 2 ounces (60 grams) and maybe as much as 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of asteroid dust and small rocks. During those seconds, the arm will use a blast of nitrogen gas to kick up rocks and dust and then try to snag a sample of the dust and store it. Then in July 2020, OSIRIS-REx wil unfurl its 11-foot-long (3.35-meter) robot arm called TAGSAM and make contact with Bennu's surface for about five seconds. For months it will hang out - take pictures, make scans of the asteroid's surface and create a map. CNN reports: "The probe is scheduled to arrive at Bennu in August 2018. ![]() NASA has successfully launched the OSIRIS-REx space probe on Thursday, which aims to take a sample of asteroid Bennu and return to Earth. ![]()
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