Space Mining
Space Mining means mining in other space. Space mining challenges include the cost of assembling the experts, spaceflight, space logistics, identifying the suitable material for mining, extracting usable material in a space environment, and bringing it back to Earth or using it in space. Sounds unrealistic, it would be if we weren’t miners, and billions of dollars are currently being raised to do space mining. Miners are known for finding things that make the world modern.
Space Mining Methods:
- Assembling a strong team of experts dedicated to the missions.
- The mining process in space will be similar to the current techniques on Earth. We will likely use strip mining, open pit, and underground (tunnel) into veins of specific substances.
- Infrastructure development in space is highly needed to profitable mine, process, and refine.
- Types of material in space:
- Meteoroid (space rocks) are objects traveling through space between the size of a grain of dust and a small asteroid.
- Meteor is a meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere and burns up (catching it beforehand)
- Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun and the average size between a meteoroid and a planet.
- Comet is an object mainly made of ice and dust, often with a gas halo and tail, that sometimes orbits the Sun.
- Planet is a celestial body smaller than a star having moon(s) and Sun(s), having an apparent motion of its orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass for itself and gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and has cleared the area in which it orbit.
- Moon is a natural satellite of a planet, normally visible at night by reflected light from the Sun; it orbits planets and asteroids.
- Cosmic Dust (Extraterrestrial Dust or Space Dust) exists in outer space or has fallen on Earth. Most cosmic dust particles measure between a few molecules and 0.1 mm (100 micrometers). Larger particles are called meteoroids. Cosmic dust is the stuff planets made, such as carbon, oxygen, iron, and other atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium left behind from asteroid or comet collisions.