I believe in asteroid mining and I want to tell the world

Prepare to be amazed (if you're not already). This is it. The world has known a few industrial and technological revolutions, these periods of growth and wealth, with wonderful inventions and totally new stuff that man did for the first time. I was a bit disappointed to think that our generation wouldn't know such a revolution. The computer boom is over, yes there are always improvements, but no completely new stuff that blow you away. But why couldn't we have something huge, awesome, enormous, to dream about ?

Well, now we have. Asteroid mining.

This is no joke ! For now, we can't just go into space, climb on an asteroid and start digging for gold and precious metal. But I believe one day we will (well, it will not be exactly like that, but still). I do believe that humankind will be able, and will have to, develop a successful asteroid mining industry.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect to see it myself. It will take decades and centuries to get there. But what do we really mean by "asteroid mining" ? What's an asteroid exactly ? Why should it interest us ? Why and what should we mine ? How ? Will it be possible ? (Like, really mine asteroids ? Life is not a movie !) How much will it cost, will it be financially profitable ? So many questions. And yet so few real answers : because we are in the middle of it. Or rather, in the beginning. This will be our thing, our revolution, our dream : it's a little blurred now, it seems impossible. But we're pioneers. Defining a new possible is what pioneers do.

Let's start by the beginning.

How it began

PR's first telescope, Arkyd, supposed to be launched
in August 2015

In April 2012, a company named "Planetary Resources" revealed its existence and its purpose. You can read the wiki article about it, or visit their website, but here it is : created in 2012 by Peter Diamandis, a guy pretty well known in the space field, Planetary Resources has a long-term goal to mine asteroids. In the short-term, it will develop some small (but effective) and low-cost ... stuff, such as orbital telescopes or small robots that will go explore asteroids. They have both the dream to go in space and the business aspect of it. Planetay Resources is strongly supported, by James Cameron and Google for example.

Is this all just a silly dream ? The debate has started.

Then less than a year after that, another company, Deep Space Industry, was announced. Pretty much the same goal, asteroid mining, but another vision of how to achieve it.

Lots of criticism, many reasons to think that asteroid mining will never be reality. The main reason ? Money. The second reason ? Time, or technology, which is quite the same, I guess. But these companies are real, they have real money and real goals. And maybe a few more companies will bloom in the next years.

You may have heard of NASA's "Asteroid Redirect Mission" that intends to capture an asteroid and put it in orbit around the moon to study it. Another reason why I can't wait for us to be in the 2020's.

What is asteroid mining ?

We still haven't said what exactly asteroid mining is. And that's a good question. First, an asteroid (and that's a pretty vaste name) is some sort of big rock in space. It can be composed of ice, metal, rock. They're sometimes big, like big big, but sometimes they are just about a few meters long. They are orbiting around the sun, just as we are. Some of them are pretty far and our orbits will never cross. But others sometimes come near our planet (less than 30 times the Earth-Moon orbit), and these ones, called near-Earth asteroids (NEA), are the ones we're interested in. But are there many of them ? Yes ! For example, in 2010, they were ... just 7000 to come close to us. So I think we'll be able to find a good rocking one full of beautiful metal. Or water. Yes, we'd like to extract water from asteroids. Why then, when we have plenty on Earth ? The answer if simple : money. It costs from $4.000 to $40.000 to send just one kilo of something into space. And water is even more important in space than on Earth : its many uses (from propellant to shield against the solar emissions, and, optionnally, as something vital for every living being) makes it the first thing we'd mine from asteroids.

Photograph of the comet 67P-Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken by
the Rosetta Mission in 2014

By the way, what kind of asteroid are we looking for ? The perfect candidate :
- should comme close enough to reduce the cost of the travel (and have other properties that also reduce this cost)
- should have good quality ore
- this ore should be the easiest possible to extract
Of course, before we can send a real robot to test an asteroid, there aren't many ways to know these last two points.

Ths hows and the whys of asteroid mining

Then, how ? How on Earth (or somewhere else) can we mine an asteroid ? Sending little miners robots with huge spaceships that will come back with the ore ? Capturing an entire asteroid with a big fishing net and placing it in orbite around the moon ? Or deflect it to place it in one of the Lagrangian points ? And should the ship use some of what it would have mined as propergol for the return ? Should we transform the ore directly in space ? All is possible. We're not there now, we will have to wait some time before having to answer this problem.

Economically ? Yes, it would be worth it. For example, 2002 DY3 (what a charming name) is an asteroid that came close to Earth, less than 0.3 AU (that's 40,391,425 km, about 100 times the Earth-Moon distance ... well, ok, it's not that close ...) on 10th March 2013. It has a value of $1.43 trillion (yes, yes, trillion) and an estimate profit of (only) $78.56 billion. Just that. Even if it's overestimated, it's still quite motivating.

I literraly fell in love with the idea of asteroid mining, and that's what made me initially want to work in the space field. I believe it's our future.