• Question: When do you think we are going to have the technology to mine the asteroid belt? Is it worth the trip to get the resources?

    Asked by Chazzaniil to Lisa, Mark, Rachel, Sammie, Stephen, Tim on 13 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Mark Mirmelstein

      Mark Mirmelstein answered on 13 Mar 2018:

      That’s a cool question. I think that the mineral content would be worth it in the long run, and technology-wise – I think it would be best to send robots to do the mining, so it depends on when robots will be produced more commercially. This may happen in the next 20 years 🙂 Then you need to invest money in sending them there and back, which may be more troublesome and expensive.

      However, I think we should learn how to utilize what we have on earth better, mostly by recycling and investing in cleaner energy sources. With that, we wouldn’t need to go that far to get more resources.

    • Photo: Lisa Baddeley

      Lisa Baddeley answered on 13 Mar 2018:

      Hi, I agree with Mark that it would be worth it but only if we can develop the technology and we are a long way off that. You may know about the recent set of probes (Rosetta and the lander Philae) which were in orbit around a comet. This was an European Space Agency mission which took 10 years to get to thet comet! Whilst the lander did survive (Philae) it didn’t land quite as expected and bounced into the shade of a mountain meaning it’s solar panels couldn’t provide enough power. That gives you an idea of where we are with the technology – we can get to a comet and maybe put something on the surface but to collect samples and get them back to Earth is a whole other ball game. Now the astroid belt obviously has more landing sites which is also a plus and a minus – more to aim for but also more to accidently crash into. I would say we wouldn’t manage anything before 2070 and even then I think perhaps missions to the moon or Mars would have taken priority.

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