CAJ - is it realistic?

Hi,

This post focuses on the question whether asteroid mining is realistic or not.

Eric Anderson, the founder of Planetary Resources, makes very clear that asteroid mining takes its time. He says that he “does not expect to be in the black overnight. We have long-term goals”. This means that the project will probably not start tomorrow or next week. In April 2012 the company announced that they would like to start mining for asteroids in 24 months with a spaceship called “Arkyd”. However, they did not reach their goal. On their website they mention that two NEAs (=near-Earth asteroids) have been explored by robotic spacecraft and that NASA is working on its own mission, the OSIRIS- Rex¹ spacecraft. It should explore the promising asteroid 1999 RQ 36 in 2016 of which observations suggest that it is rich in carbon.

1999 RQ 36: Pretty big, huh?

On the other hand, Planetary Resources is also making progress. Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian-American software executive donated $ 20 million to the company. Simonyi is the fifth space tourist worldwide, a fact that shows that he is a rather wealthy man. The company is investing the money in their Large Scale Synoptic Telescope which is used for further asteroid observation. As you can see, asteroid mining is something that takes time, a lot of money and effort. But the fact that they cannot realize their project now does not mean that it cannot happen in the further future.

Planetary Resources has created a very nice video on the subject of asteroid mining. Of course it supports it but the video is nicely animated, informative and not very complicated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fYYPN0BdBw