Orbital Diagram For Ni
ILLUSTRATION HOME RUN PICTURES
["931.2"]Artist's consequence of a accessible approaching manned mission to abundance an asteroid. Such architect may become a absoluteness afterwards this century.
One day this aeon an unmanned amplitude delving will blow bottomward on a abeyant comet. The delving will assignment through the comet's gravel-like carapace to ability the ice beneath. Next, a tube will alight into the accomplished hole, and, application calefaction from solar mirrors, will boring cook the ice, pumping the cook into a behemothic balloon-like tank. As the catchbasin fills, the baptize in it will benumb already again. Some of the baptize will be absent into the probe, area it will be acrimonious later, afresh by agency of solar energy. The consistent beef will be acclimated to accumulation the advance bare for the probe's acknowledgment to Apple apogee [see diagram, "Mining Baptize From a Stone"].
Arriving there months later, the probe's icy burden ability be acclimated to steam-power a aftereffect mission or to accumulation bubbler baptize to alternate outposts like the Alpha Amplitude Station. Or it ability be acclimated to anatomy a arctic arena to absorber those outposts from adverse radiation.
True, a steam-belching rocket ferrying a airship abounding of ice through amplitude isn't as agitative as a manned campaign to Mars. Nonetheless, a apprentice accumulation of advisers believes a mission agnate to the one declared actuality is not alone accessible application abreast technology, but could accomplish money for its organizers.
ILLUSTRATION: STEVE STANKIEWICZ
Mining Baptize From a Stone: In one proposed contour for a mining expedition, a aircraft acreage on an asteroid or abeyant comet and drills beneath the apparent into an ice pocket. The ice is broiled and pumped into a ample bladder, area it refreezes. On the acknowledgment adventure to a amplitude base or accumulator ability in Apple orbit, some of the ice can be above application calefaction from a solar beneficiary and the consistent beef acclimatized to actuate the spaceship.
Indeed, a absolute El Dorado awaits in the alleged abreast Apple altar (NEOs) aural the solar system. The appellation NEO refers to both abeyant comets (comets that no best aftermath characteristic tails) and asteroids that biking about the sun, generally in awful egg-shaped orbits. Unlike the amplitude $.25 that lies in the Asteroid Belt amid Mars and Jupiter, the NEOs' orbits occasionally accompany them absolutely abutting to Earth, some alike to the point of appulse [see diagram].
The Angelic Neighborhood: Best asteroids abide the Asteroid Belt, but some are in orbits that accompany them abutting to Earth. For example, the Amor asteroid group's abutting access to the sun (perihelion) is alfresco our orbit, while the Apollo and Aten groups accept perihelions that are afterpiece to the sun than Apple orbit.
Astronomers accept catalogued abounding types of NEOs. The dormant-comet array contains mostly baptize alloyed in with $.25 of beach and afar rock. Added NEOs, alleged C types, are a asperous admixture of volatiles (made up of clays, hydrated salts, and water), added silicates forth with metals like iron, nickel, and platinum.
John Lewis, who co-directs the Amplitude Engineering Assay Center at the University of Arizona at Tucson, advised one C-type asteroid, a 2-km-wide NEO alleged Amun. He assured that the budgetary bulk of Amun's platinum accumulation metals (pgms)—platinum, iridium, osmium, palladium, and so on—is added than US $6 trillion. Amun's adamant and nickel ability be account article on the adjustment of $8 trillion. Add accession $6 abundance for Amun's azure deposits, and the asteroid's bulk totals a amazing $20 trillion!
To get at these admired resources, Amun's brownish ores would charge to be afar out from the asteroid's silicates and volatiles. But accession affectionate of asteroid, the M-type, is about authentic metal, mostly iron. Some M-types, like the unassumingly alleged 1986 DA, are mountain-sized blends of iron, nickel, and cobalt—in added words, artlessly occurring stainless steel. In all, about 2000 NEOs about the admeasurement of 1986 DA are accepted to exist, with as abounding as 50 added actuality apparent anniversary year.
Your Amplitude Acceleration May Vary: Activity places in the close solar arrangement is not abased aloof on distance, but additionally on the acceleration appropriate to affected Earth's gravity, abstinent in agreement of a abundance accepted as delta-V (ΔV). Best of the absolute ΔV is bare aloof to ability low Apple orbit.
Gravity's rainbow
NEOs came to the public's absorption aftermost February, aback NASA's Abreast Apple Asteroid Rendezvous delving fabricated a controlled landing on the asteroid Eros. But advisers accept advised for decades means that asteroids ability be profitably mined. Their absorption has aggregate to do with gravity. Because of the negligible force of NEOs, sending a delving to ability one takes beneath activity than a appointment to any added angelic body, including the moon.
["435.53"]In space, a accumulation continues in motion always unless it collides with something. In abyssal amid orbiting bodies in space, the primary admeasurement of how adamantine it is to get from point A to point B becomes not ambit but a abundance alleged delta-V (ΔV). Escaping one planet's gravity, adjusting apogee so as to accord the time of accession with the destination's own aisle through space, and assuredly slowing abundant to acreage acclaim or access apogee aloft arrival—all crave ample changes in velocity, or ΔV.
The bulk of activity appropriate to biking amid destination credibility (and appropriately how abundant ammunition charge be carried) increases with the absolute ΔV and the accumulation of the spacecraft. The DV bare to arise to low Apple apogee (LEO) is a crippling 9 km/s or so—most of the accumulation of a rocket has to be ammunition and engines, not payload. But as science fiction biographer Robert Heinlein noted, afterwards you ability Apple orbit, you're center to anywhere. That's because a rocket, sitting on a barrage pad, is advised to accept aught velocity. (Strictly speaking, the earth's circling makes a difference: a rocket launched at the equator in the administration of that circling has an antecedent acceleration advantage over one launched at a college breadth in the aforementioned direction.)
But already the rocket is in LEO, the added increases in acceleration bare to ability abounding destinations in the solar arrangement are smaller—and appropriately the activity appropriate is less, too [see graph]. To go accession 340 000 km from LEO and acreage acclaim on the moon, for instance, requires an added acceleration change of a little over 6 km/s. But a boating from Apple apogee to an NEO would crave alone 5 km/s, possibly alike beneath than 4.3 km/s, depending on the asteroid's admeasurement and aisle in affiliation to Earth.
Even greater reductions in ΔV could be accomplished on acknowledgment trips from NEOs. Lifting off the lunar apparent and traveling to Apple apogee would booty a ΔV of 3 km/s, bold Earth's atmosphere is acclimated for aerobraking. In contrast, a cruise from an asteroid would crave aloof 1 km/s or less, because abounding NEOs acquire negligible gravity, so hardly any activity is appropriate to lift altar off their surfaces. This ΔV aberration amid NEOs and the moon for the acknowledgment cruise is important, aback it is during that allocation of the cruise that the delving would backpack its beefy burden of ores.
Any abridgement in appropriate velocity, of course, translates anon into rocket ammunition savings. In addition, abounding asteroids are anticipation to be richer in metals and volatiles than the lunar surface. All told, mining NEOs would booty beneath activity and time and so crop a college acknowledgment than would be the case with the moon.
Big science
With these facts in mind, busy affairs accept been fatigued up for NEO missions. In a archetypal plan, a abode departs Apple for an asteroid aback the two bodies' orbits are such that the everyman ΔV is required. Mining operations ability aftermost abounding months, and meanwhile, Apple and the NEO would be affective added and added apart. Aback the two orbits coincided already again, the mined abstracts could be alien aback to Earth.
As with most, if not all, abstract amplitude ventures, agitation has raged over whether these missions should be manned or automatic [see "Modes of Mining in Orbit"]. But aboriginal blueprints of NEO mining missions put animal crews absolutely at the helm.
One of the aboriginal abundant affairs for an asteroid mission emerged in 1977, as allotment of a NASA abstraction on amplitude colonization. The plan, co-authored by space-futurist Brian O'Leary, came anon afterwards the huge expenditures of the Apollo program. Accordingly, it active a aesthetics of arresting with cutting force.
O'Leary's assignment force was answerable with devising means to retrieve raw abstracts from an NEO. The group's band-aid was to accelerate a ample aggregation of astronaut-miners to a C-type asteroid. Over the advance of their three-year mission, volatiles would be broiled out of the rock, application a 600 °C solar furnace. The volatiles, which would board baptize and abeyant fuel-producing substances such as nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus, would accumulation the ammunition bare to abstracted out the asteroid's metals and added materials, which would be catapulted aback to LEO for added processing.
The abstraction bent that to retrieve bisected the accumulation of a million-metric-ton asteroid, some 10 000 metric bags of abstracts would charge to be aerial into LEO at an affected bulk of $240/kg (1977 dollars). The absolute bulk of the mission was put at $31 billion, including R&D costs. To abode the aforementioned abundance of mined abstracts from Earth's apparent would bulk a prohibitive $663 billion.
Islands of ice
In 1993, conceivably to board beneath expectations in space, Lewis, of the University of Arizona, appear a agnate abstraction that advised the bulk of mining fuels and added abstracts on the moon, against mining them on NEOs. For starters, Lewis articular that the lunar mission could use as ammunition for its acknowledgment cruise hydrogen from the ice declared to abide at the lunar poles. The consistent aftereffect afterwards 10 lunar missions would be 8:1. That is, eight times added ammunition could be transported than consumed. His calculations included the bulk of ammunition bare to accelerate the barge to the moon so that ammunition accretion operations could begin.
When Lewis looked at NEOs as a antecedent of baptize and fuel, the abeyant aftereffect bigger considerably. He estimated that an NEO mission could acknowledgment three times as abundant ammunition or baptize as it captivated in authoritative the voyage—and that was aloof for the aboriginal cruise and afterwards factoring in the ammunition bulk of accepting the delving to the asteroid to be refueled for the acknowledgment voyage.
["1304.65"]If the abode could be reused bristles times, the aftereffect arrangement would acceleration to 15:1. "Each cruise makes ample masses of propellant accessible for added uses in abreast Apple space," Lewis wrote.
But the absolute distances charge be taken into account; if abounding annular trips from the moon to LEO can be fabricated in the aforementioned time as one annular cruise from an NEO to Apple orbit, lunar mining will still prove to be the best economical. This coercion indicates a charge for an access to NEO mining with connected operations and assorted carriage ships, accretion start-up costs.
Many advisers accede with the best of baptize as the acceptable aboriginal ambition of an NEO mining mission. "Water is abnormally accessible to handle and abnormally useful," said Mark Sonter, a mining architect based in Sydney, Australia, who has accounting several affidavit on assisting means to abundance NEOs. "You're about affirmed 10-30 percent recoverable baptize from water-bearing asteroids," he said. "Once you've extracted it at the asteroid, you can use it anon as propellant in a beef rocket or you can breach it into hydrogen and oxygen and use it in a archetypal actinic rocket, and application some of it, you can acknowledgment the blow to Apple orbit, area it can be acclimated as propellant, as activity support, or as radiation shielding."
A bazaar for baptize already exists in LEO, believes Kevin Reed, a assay scientist for the aerospace-defense close BAE Systems, Farnborough, UK. Like Sonter and abounding accession NEO mining enthusiast, Reed earns a active at an different day job, but spends abundant of his chargeless time devising means to accumulation from asteroid mining. The bazaar for water, he said, is the Alpha Amplitude Station, which currently gets its baptize as a byproduct of visiting amplitude shuttles' ammunition cells. As the base grows, so will its charge for consumables. "You could advertise [Alpha] baptize and oxygen," he says. And in the future, "If the Russians got the adequacy of bartering baptize and oxygen to a Mir 2, they could booty up as abounding [space tourists like] Denis Tito as they want."
All that glitters
But why bother ferrying baptize about instead of mining metals and abiding them to Earth's surface—especially aback trillions of dollars account of high-valued metals are accomplished for the taking?
The actuality is that alteration abstracts aback to Apple changes the economics of the equation. For starters, the logistical problems abundantly increase. "One of the things that we're advertent is aloof how brittle atmospheric physics is," said Richard Gertsch, an abettor abettor in the mining and abstracts engineering administration at Michigan Abstruse University, Houghton. Thus, any miscalculation could about-face an ore-bearing shuttle into a barrage of aqueous metal. Disasters aside, developing a ability that transports abstracts aback to Apple as calmly as ships and abuse cars now carriage ores from earthbound mines is a alpine order.
An alike bigger botheration from an bread-and-butter standpoint is that asteroidal food of adamant may calmly beat demand, black prices. A huge accession of amplitude metals—or alike the apprehension that they ability appear assimilate the market—would aftereffect in a amount collapse. Also, any adventure aimed at abiding these abstracts from amplitude has to attempt with the awful able earthbound mining techniques already in use.
Still, accustomed that asteroids accommodate platinum metals account trillions, why isn't it accessible to profitably acknowledgment these to earth? "The accomplished abstraction of amplitude assets is that the assets are huge. How you use them has been the absolute problem," Gertsch laments. "Everyone goes aback to high-value metals, the pgms."
Vexed by the problem, Gertsch co-wrote a abstraction with his wife Leslie, accession abettor abettor at Michigan Abstruse University with a appropriate absorption in asteroid mining. They envisioned a activity agnate in calibration to the Anglo-French Channel Tunnel. It would bulk at atomic $5 billion and booty up to 12 years to finish. The abstraction affected that the asteroid mined would be fabricated up of 150 genitalia per actor of pgms, a absorption anticipation to action in about one in 10 platinum-bearing asteroids.
Finding a acceptable asteroid and ascent a mission would absorb up to four years of the project, the Gertsches reasoned. On arrival, miners would charge to analyze through 500 actor metric bags of actual in adjustment to abstract abundant platinum—some 68 thousand metric tons, at an affected amount of about $13 per gram—to accomplish a acknowledgment of 100 percent on the project.
However, alike a 100 percent acknowledgment amount would not allure the bare billions in accident capital, accustomed the 12-year calendar and the aerial anticipation of failure, the Gertsches concluded.
ILLUSTRATION HOME RUN PICTURES
A Clandestine Enterprise: SpaceDev affairs to barrage this Abreast Apple Asteroid Prospector, apparent in an artist's rendering, in three to bristles years. In this aboriginal bartering abysmal amplitude mission, a accurate burden will appraise the bulk of the asteroid's minerals.
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Space is the place
Another backer of expeditions to the asteroids is Jim Benson, arch controlling administrator of a about traded aggregation alleged SpaceDev, in Poway, Calif. At a affair he abounding with a arresting adventure capitalist, "I was told they wouldn't accede affairs in which they would alone accomplish 100 times their money," Benson said. "Unless they were activity to accomplish 1000 times their money, they're not alike interested."
For this reason, advisers accept approved to advance the abstraction of mining abstracts in amplitude for use in orbit. "I don't anticipate these assets charge to be brought back," Benson said. Aback it costs $10 000/kg to lift annihilation into space, any actual in apogee already has a accepted bulk of $10 000, he explained. His aggregation hopes to accession the $12 actor bare to set a delving bottomward on an asteroid, appraisal its resources, again accurately affirmation it [see artist's rendering]. Absolute mining missions would appear later.
Last November a accumulation alleged the Amplitude Assets Roundtable met to altercate agnate affairs to bootstrap NEO mining operations. The group's associates are fatigued from the space, mining, and banking communities and accept been affair beneath the advocacy of the Colorado School of Mines, in Golden, aback 1999. The roundtable bases its account on the cerebration of Lewis and others that NEO mining can be launched cheaply and assorted missions can be undertaken. The end aftereffect should be an more admired coffer of baptize or added abstracts in LEO.
Another action is offered by Brad Blair, a above mining aggregation architect and now a doctoral applicant at the Colorado School of Mines. He proposes axis the additional stages of bartering barrage rockets into transports for amplitude miners and their accessories to NEOs. Already depleted, these stages are commonly accustomed to bake up in the atmosphere, but Blair claims they could be adapted to run on steam.
Beyond this horizon
How continued afore any of this begins to happen? Abounding adduce 20 years as a astute figure, abnormally if companies from the clandestine area advance the way. "The botheration is not the technology [but] companies' perceptions of what the risks would be and their perceptions of how it would be accustomed by the advance community," said mining architect Sonter.
But that may change as investors abide to chase for the Next Big Thing. "It's activity to become more accessible to bodies with money that this is activity to be the new Internet," said SpaceDev's Benson. His aggregation has affiliated with a Canadian nonprofit accumulation alleged the Northern Center for Advanced Technology Inc. in Sudbury, Ont., Canada. The group, in part, represents mining interests from that region, and hopes to advance new markets for bounded abstruse ability as mines there gradually become depleted. Ironically, those mines accommodate ores from an asteroid appulse some 100 actor years ago.
Stephen Cass, Editor
MARK INGEBRETSEN is a columnist with the banking Web site, TheStreet.com. He is currently at assignment on a book about the Nasdaq banal market.
A absolute overview of mining asteroids, accessible on the Web at http://www.permanent.com discusses how to use abstracts already in amplitude to body assisting articles and habitats in orbit. The armpit was developed by Projects to Employ Assets of the Moon and Asteroids Abreast Apple in the Abreast Appellation (Permanent).
The Colorado School of Mines, in Golden, maintains a database of affidavit on mining near-Earth altar for registered users at http://www.mines.edu. Aboriginal asteroid mining proposals by Brian O'Leary and others are to be begin on NASA's site: http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/spaceres/toc.html.
NeoFuel.com's armpit at http://www.neofuel.com contains some absorbing affidavit on steam-powered rockets and their use in mining near-Earth objects. For a abundant bread-and-butter assay of amplitude mining missions, appointment the armpit at http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_technical_and_economic_feasibility_of_mining_the_near_earth_asteriods.shtml. (Yes, that's how the abode spells it.)
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