News
Release 40 -
Mining
Asteroids
Tuesday, January 1,2002
Mining asteroids will provide untold riches.
Various mining techniques and modes
are being evaluated. There are two basic types of asteroids: Iron and Stony.
-
The Asteroid
3554 Amun is an iron asteroid about the size of a typical open-pit mine and has a mass of
thirty billion (30,000,000,000) metric tons. Assuming the composition of a
typical iron meteorite, the market value based upon values on earth of $20
Trillions.
-
Stony asteroids have contain complex
mixtures of fine-gained clays, magnetite, water soluble salts and organic
compounds. The volatile gaseous compounds like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen,
sulfur, etc can be easily extracted and represent 40 percent, iron-nickel
metals make up 30 percent, and the remaining 30 percent is composed of
various types of solid residue.
Asteroid can be used a natural sources of
material for living in space, manufacturing
products, or building future spacecraft and space
facilities.
|