Science
Related: About this forumThe Most Profitable Asteroid Is…
Not sure we are yet at the point where we can accurately quantify profitability but it's a start.
Artist impression of the Arkyd Interceptor, a low cost mission to explore asteroids. Credit: Planetary Resources.
The winners are, according to Asterank:
Most Profitable: 253 Mathilde, a 52.8 km-diameter C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid that has an estimated value of over $100 trillion and estimated profit of $9.53 trillion (USD)
Most Cost Effective: 2000 BM19, a very small O-type asteroid (less than 1 km wide) that makes several close approaches to Earth. Its estimated value is $18.50 trillion and an estimated profit of $3.55 trillion.
Most Valuable: 253 Mathilde
Most Accessible: 2009 WY7, another small asteroid with regular close approaches of less than 1 AU. This is an S-type asteroid, a silicaceous or stony object that has a high accessibility score on Asterank of 7.6577.
http://www.universetoday.com/95169/the-most-profitable-asteroid-is/
phantom power
(25,966 posts)seeing as they were produced w/out either physical samples or actual asteroid mining technology.
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)sofa king
(10,857 posts)Consensus right now is that Mathilde is a "rubble pile" asteroid of unusually low density for its size. It sports two craters which were probably made by objects large enough to shatter a solid body. It may be pieces of a larger solid body which was shattered by a massive collision and then re-coalesced, suggesting that it could be relatively easy to scoop up and process parts of it.
It has a really nice spread of elements and minerals including the holy trinity of water, organic chemicals, and olivine, which together can be used along with solar power to create fuel, breathable air, and carbon dioxide scrubbers. Iron, magnesium and silicates are readily available for construction materials (and perhaps eventually, soils), which can be easily melted using plentiful and still fairly powerful sunlight.
The ability to maximize solar power is probably helped by its modest size and slow rotation, which would allow for constant sunlight at the poles with counter-rotating collector and reflector towers.
People could potentially go there and live there for an extended period of time with the technology we have already perfected, pretty much today. It's only a question of money now, and a hundred trillion dollars is one hell of a lot of money.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)The most profitable asteroid would clearly be whichever one a James Bond supervillain captures and threatens to use to destroy the Earth unless the world's governments pay some exorbitant fee.
NickB79
(19,253 posts)Wouldn't the influx of once-rare-but-now-common metals flood the world market and drop gold prices to the point it would no longer be profitable to mine the asteroids?
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)FogerRox
(13,211 posts)Use the damn stuff to establish industrial infrastructure in space.
Imagine the first company to be able to extrude 20 ft wide alloy tubes, 100 ft long, and link them to build large Habitats, er ah, sorry factories.
.....come on- why would anybody bring that stuff back to earth? Do you really think Bill Gates or Warren Buffet think like that?
Park a carbon asteroid in geo sync, use the carbon to build an elevator. Now thats money and power !