The beginnings of space mining

NASA and SpaceX aim to launch the mission to the asteroid Psyche on October 12 using a Falcón Heavy rocket. The mission will depart from launch complex 39a at the Kennedy Space Center.

It is a giant asteroid, it is 210 km in diameter, you can imagine what would happen if it crashed into the earth, there is no need to do any calculations, it would be the end of everything, it would melt the Earth's crust, it would be the end of life, there would be no recovery, but don't worry because Psyche orbits the sun peacefully between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt.

The ship's journey is going to take a long time, it will arrive in 2029 and this asteroid is so special because it turns out that it is basically metallic, the most abundant metal in the universe is iron, therefore it is basically made of iron, but there are also other metals. , there are of course reserves of gold, silver, platinum and other metals that are formed in cold space.

It is extremely dense, it may have a completely different orography than the asteroids we know, the objective is to mine the asteroid, and it will be one of the space mines of the future, to date it is the most valuable asteroid known, but that will depend of supply and demand, since the value of a thing is determined by first, how much we need that thing, then how much it costs to get it and also the relationship that exists between supply and demand, if we do not need something then it does not cost anything, if it costs a lot to get it because it is not worth it and if it turns out that it is very abundant and the demand is very low, then that will be worth very little.

There are curious things, for example, water ice is worth nothing to an Inuit or Eskimo, but for an astronaut on the moon, water ice will be worth more than gold, because there water will be an essential element, It is a very scarce and essential element to survive.

On Comet Psyche there are reserves of gold and silver that multiply by many the amount of gold, silver and platinum that may be on Earth, but of course we must extract them and right now send a mission to Psyche, even if it is a robotic mission and it is For the robot to pick up pieces of gold directly from the ground and bring them to earth would be much more than extracting that gold in any mine on earth.

So in this century it will not be profitable for terrestrials to extract gold or any other resource from an asteroid.

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