[meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:07:28 -0500
Message-ID: <36A08440494E4DF19F4F1337435C54A0_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Doug, List,

I'll refer you to the book, "Mining The Sky," by
John S. Lewis, which makes a nice solid 260-page
case for the economic value of the asteroids. Or
to Harrison Schmidt's economic analysis of the
value of mining the lunar surface for REE's
(Rare Earth Elements).

Iron is worth about $0.25 per kilo, but nickel is
now over $12 per kilo, Lanthanum oxide $134 per
kilo, Neodymium $260 per kilo, and so forth.
Or maybe, just check this source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
    "At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic
asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mile)
contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth
of industrial and precious metals." At today's
prices? A lot more.

The "not an iron" comment was in relation to
safety only. A 10-20-meter rock is safe to drop;
an iron that size is not. Personally, I think the
worry about accuracy of orbital maneuvers is
silly and mis-placed. Few human operations are
are so precise. Think about matchng up with
Vesta from hundreds of millions of km away!

The usual standard of accuracy is roughly akin
to shooting the eye out of a one-eyed Jack at
100 miles away. Routine.


Sterling K. Webb
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "MexicoDoug" <mexicodoug at aim.com>
To: <Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 6:54 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit


> Hello Sterling,
>
> Well, since the purpose of this is to mine an asteroid, it seems
> pretty foolish to waste all that effort on a 10 meter rock which you
> won't allow to be an iron.
>
> IT HAS TO BE AN IRON unless you want to waste money. Or do you want
> to mine antimony (element = Sb). That would be very successfully at
> mining Antimoney (element = $$$ouch$$$) !!!
>
> The problem is that most of the trace elements worth mining are
> siderophiles. So if you are going to mine silaceous, or most stony
> meteorites, I'd suggest going to a beach on earth (with a K-T
> outcropping if you insist ;-) with a tonka dump truck as the initial
> probe...
>
> Even at the 1 ppm level (a gross exaggeration for a stony meteorite),
> there is 1,200 grams of gold in your 1,200 ton 10 meter diameter
> "spherical" asteroid. Now I know gold is getting expensive, but let's
> keep our feet on terra firma. If you are going to mine anything, it
> needs to be worth it. Considering that "mining" such a small body is
> an expensive proposition (how do you think it would be smelted in
> orbit), they'd be better off just bringing back the 1,200 grams of raw
> asteroid and selling it to scientists and collectors. So, no matter
> how you cut up this "pie in the sky" in a spreadsheet, it ain't
> workin'
>
> Kindest wishes
> Doug
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> To: Bernd V. Pauli <bernd.pauli at paulinet.de>;
> meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Sent: Mon, Aug 29, 2011 7:01 pm
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth
> Orbit
>
>
> Hi, Bernd, List,
> A mere 10-meter spherical asteroid? (To a physicist, everything is
> spherical at the first approximation...) That's 523.6 cu. meters. At a
> rock density of 2 to 3 metric tons per cu. meter, that's somewhere
> between 1047.2 and 1570.8 metric tons.
> As a disaster, it's on a par with dropping a grand piano on a cartoon
> coyote. It would be a slow approach and MIGHT drop 10 kilos of
> meteorites, but probably not unless it grazed the atmosphere at the
> correct angle. However, a 10-meter asteroid is a tiny playground.
> What if it were a 100-meter asteroid, ten times bigger, and lots of
> surface (and about 1,000,000 tons). If you accidentally dropped that
> object on the Earth, you'd have a 250-meter crater and 0.2 MegaTon
> blast.
> Too big to play with.
> A 33-meter asteroid? Airbursts at 14 kilometers and splatters a lot of
> fast fragments, but no craters. From this I conclude that the 10-meter
> asteroid grab is a Modest Proposal.
> Unless, of course, it's an iron...
> Sterling K.
> Webb -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bernd V. Pauli"
> <bernd.pauli at paulinet.de> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 4:51 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] A Plan
> To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit
>> "Interesting idea. What could possibly go wrong?" What if the nudge
>> is a little bit too strong? What if the Moon interferes? What if this
>> NEO is thus sent hurtling toward planet Earth? - utter devestation -
>> millions of people killed - wildfires - tsunamis - earthquakes - tons
>> and tons of material ejected into the atmosphere - etc., etc. Bernd
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Received on Mon 29 Aug 2011 11:07:28 PM PDT