Moon and asteroid mining

I got myself tangled into a discussion about the merits of moon mining. While mining in space is very expensive and has a lot of technical obstacles that does not make it very feasible in the near future, it does have number of advantages to earth mining:

• Low gravity, means moving mined material around requires little energy


• One does not need to dig deep to get to the minerals. There is no thick layer of soil etc.


• Pollution from mining operation is no problem, because on asteroids or the moon, there is no biologic life to pollute. The stuff inside an astroid is more or less the same as on the surface.

Okay that is the sort of obvious parts. I googled around and found some interesting facts about off world mining. Here from how stuff works:

Most asteroids fit into three basic categories:

• C-type - More than 75 percent of known asteroids fit into this category. The composition of C-type asteroids is similar to that of the sun without the hydrogen, helium and other volatiles.


• S-type - About 17 percent of asteroids are this type. These contain deposits of nickel, iron and magnesium.


• M-type - A small number of asteroids are this type, and they contain nickel and iron.

With regards to the potential economics of asteroid mining:

Corporations that might not be interested in exploring space for the adventure and science could be interested in the treasures that a space mining operation could send back to Earth. One NASA report estimates that the mineral wealth of the asteroids in the asteroid belt might exceed $100 billion for each of the six billion people on Earth. John S. Lewis, author of the space mining book Mining the Sky, has said that an asteroid with a diameter of one kilometer would have a mass of about two billion tons. There are perhaps one million asteroids of this size in the solar system. One of these asteroids, according to Lewis, would contain 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and 7,500 tons of platinum. The platinum alone would have a value of more than $150 billion!

And at least the Chinese think moon mining is a good idea, according to new scientist.

Ziyuan said exploring the Moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development". Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010.

As I was reading about moon mining and space exploration I discovered this anecdote at slashdot.org:

About 1966 or so, a NASA team doing work for the Apollo moon mission took the astronauts near Tuba City where the terrain of the Navajo Reservation looks very much like the Lunar surface. Along with all the trucks and large vehicles, there were two large figures dressed in full Lunar spacesuits.

Nearby a Navajo sheep herder and his son were watching the strange creatures walk about, occasionally being tended by personnel. The two Navajo people were noticed and approached by the NASA personnel. Since the man did not know English, his son asked for him what the strange creatures were and the NASA people told them that they are just men that are getting ready to go to the moon.

The man became very excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts. The NASA personnel thought this was a great idea so they rustled up a tape recorder. After the man gave them his message, they asked his son to translate. His son would not.

Later, they tried a few more people on the reservation to translate and every person they asked would chuckle and then refuse to translate.

Finally, with cash in hand, someone translated the message, "Watch out for these guys, they come to take your land."