The Bell Nucleus 2017-2018 BN Jan 2018 Issue | Page 11

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Asteroid mining is a practical concept that will prove invaluable for the
colonization of other planets, interplanetary commerce, and space
missions in general.
bodies, particularly asteroids, and then
companies such as SpaceX simplify ac- selling them as raw materials to compa-
cess to space by developing new technol- nies back on Earth. Asteroids are catego-
ogy to increase the efficiency of travel. rized into three main types based on
However, expansion into space still faces their composition: C, M, and S. While C
several obstacles. The American asteroid type asteroids consist of water, metals,
mining company Planetary Resources and organic compounds like carbon, M
describes current challenges with space and S class asteroids both contain plati-
travel as “attempting to travel from New num and other metals like iron and nick-
York to Los Angeles on a single tank of el, respectively. But what truly distin-
gas while storing 100% of your consuma- guishes space mining from traditional
bles in your car,” highlighting the long mining is the massive economic poten-
distances and limited resources space tial: according to MIT, a single asteroid
travel demands. With the status quo far could contain “$25 billion to $50 billion
from practical, companies such as Plane- worth of platinum.” Though the market
tary Resources are attempting to over- for precious metals would certainly de-
come these limitations by creating a cline with a sharp increase in supply,
whole new industry: space mining. space mining would be a worthwhile
Space mining consists
of harvesting resources from celestial
A new age is dawning as private
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venture in the short term, with immedi-
ate profits to be made, and in the long
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