Five Contributions of Nickel in Alloy Steel

Rather interesting bit of Nickel trivia (at least to me.)

Something like 60% of all the Nickel ever mined came from a single deposit near Sudbury Canada. This deposit is an ancient asteroid impact crater and the nickel (and copper, gold, and platinum group metals) is the remains of the asteroid.

And that was just ONE ASTEROID. and there are hundreds of thousands of them of a similar size in our solar system, Thousands of them cross the Earths' orbit.

Anybody still think mining the Asteroids is crazy? we've been doing it for over a hundred years already.

Should be done the sooner the better.

A space probe with a strong? ion-drive to bring up there will cost 199 to 300 M$.

If the ion-drive needs 20 years - why not.

To use the moon as a decelerator: proven technology.

To cut chinks of 10 tons each: no idea how to do that as no circular saw available.

To bring down the chunks to a mining area will have

to dissipate 0.5 x 10⁴Kg x 10⁸ m²/s² or 0.5 TJ.

Atmospheric drag will eat some of this - I have no idea how much and how dependant on mass.

0.5TJ as an explosive is equivalent to 100 tons of TNT.

So any desert would be suitable as mining ground.

Steering into a slowly shrinking orbit may be a challenge.

So the main obstacle seems to be the unknown cutting operation.

Cost calculation per ton?

Do you know if Norilsk is of the same origin?

RHABE

why not select asteroids that are already in the size range you are looking for? that eliminates the need to cut them at all. or you could set up a solar mirror to smelt it in orbit (in vacuum!) and cast it into standard sized/shaped ingots with cast-in mounts for single use deorbit rocket/guidance packages, and just let em impact out in say the salton sea, or offshore florida, or the Great Salt Lake, or just in the middle of the nevada desert or white sands new mexico.

why not select asteroids that are already in the size range you are looking for?

A cheap tugboat will not be available for some time to come?

I was thinking about minimum 1000 tons to bring here, crack while orbiting, send down the pieces. Maybe no active steering is necessary at touch down.

Smelting and casting will be possible but likely as a second approach.

Cracking by heat (thermal gradients) may be possible too but I don't know of this is possible with FeNi of high Ni-content.

Maybe cracking with directed blasting is working?

Any desert will be suitable landing place.

So I would start today or tomorrow with this action. Depending on Gold and Platinum and other valuable metals content this may be profitable soon.

Can we analyse the chemical composition out there in their momentary orbit to select the best big fishes? Excited by solar plasma this may be possible. Reflection spectrum?

1000 tons Fe 60%, Ni 30%, Gold and precious 0.1% will give near $ 3M for Ni and $ 40 M for Gold etc, at cost above $ 300 M ???

So we will have to search for more precious, 10% would be good.

RHABE

Ah, but how much of that 300M is NRE to be amortized over say 10 years or so?

Nothing like this.

Cost is roughest possible estimate, taken from typical cost for a 2 ton geostationary communication satellite.

All these thinkings seem to be near reality only with a very clever multiple swingby approach. But how to start the first?

So may be we have to wait for another 50 years or more???

RHABE