By Chris Gayomali
Brace yourselves for the come asteroid gilt spate . U.S. companyDeep Space Industriesthis week revealed plans to send space vehicle on missions to mine near - Earth asteroids for treasured metals . According to the announcement , the caller plans to dispatch a serial publication of pocket-sized , low - cost satellites by 2015 . A year later , a big ballistic capsule equip with mining tools will land on any potentially lucrative space stone to dig out the good . The mission , says chairwoman Rick Tumlinson , would tap into resources necessary to " inflate the culture of Earth out into the cosmos ad infinitum . "
How would it work?The company is hoping to vanish two flyspeck prospecting probes — FireFly and DragonFly , both of which weigh less than 75 Ezra Pound — into space . To save on price , these vessels would piggyback on the launches of large communication theory satellites . Once airborne , FireFly and DragonFly would then spend half a year buzzing around asteroid to collect rock samples .
accord to some estimation , it ’s easier to reach some 1,700 asteroids than it is to fly to the moon ; each one of those asteroids could comprise worthful materials likeplatinum , gold , and other rarified - earth minerals . Because it ’s so hard to get expensive materials such as these into space in the first place , the asteroid scraps might even be used to assemble share for space stations or spacecraft . The Guardianexplains :
Some critics question whether harvest space stuff isa financially sound investment . NASA , for instance , is reportedly view a young mission proposed by the Keck Institute for Space Studies that would transport a robotic space vehicle totow a belittled asteroid into the synodic month ’s orbit . entire price : $ 2.6 billion .
Just last year , film director James Cameron , Google executives Eric Schmidt and Larry Page , and other wealthy investor revealedsimilarly ambitious plans for a separate asteroid - minelaying venture . Apparently , they see dollar signs in the superstar , too .
