Nudging it into some near-earth orbit is far safer and more useful.
(More difficult though? Depends on whether you can get the EIS for the
aerobraking pass approved...) As Henry points out, you'd need to touch
it down relatively slowly - far below escape velocity - to keep it from
exploding and scattering over a huge area. Once in NEO, you can carve
off smaller pieces and controlled-reenter them - or, possibly even more
valuable in the long run, use them in near-earth space.
Henry
On 8/15/2020 1:07 PM, roxanna Mason wrote:
I know that on both accounts the latter is a bit of humor if that's ok.
But what was thought impossible even unheard of 50 years ago is commonplace now. But with cheap rockets asteroid mining has just entered the realm of possibility.
Think about deorbiting a stadium sized asteroid into a dessert in the SW US or Sahara or Australia. It would break up and melt upon impact doing most of the work of disassembly.
"Precious" metals may become a thing of the past.
K
On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 12:58 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
It's not that simple to make money mining asteroids, and the Moon
and Mars are not for sale.
On 8/15/20 12:25 PM, ken mason wrote:
I wonder why SpaceX/Musk isn't putting emphasis on asteroid
capture and mining. He could become the first multi trillionaire.
He could buy the moon and Mars.
K
On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 12:05 PM Keith Henson
<hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
snip
> We really need to visit a bunch of these things, not just a
handful, to
> get a good idea of what's out there. The 2km near-Earth
asteroid 1986 DA
> really does seem to be bare metal, as best we can tell by
radar (and it's
> actually rather more accessible than Psyche).
I ran through a rough analysis of mining 1986 DA for gold here:
https://htyp.org/Mining_Asteroids
Keith
