Plans for Asteroid Mining Emerge

What many critics of this plan seem to miss is this: If we as a species are to survive the next fifty years, maybe even the next twenty-five years, we will need to do at least three different things. One, find a new renewable, non-polluting energy source. Two, not kill each other fighting over this technology, i.e. share the wealth. Three, find new resources.

Folks, the asteroids have more raw materials of every conceivable type than we have EVER mined on Earth! And should we mine the cometary belt, the Oort cloud, we will have access to more water than in every river on this planet.

Getting to it is a problem, but not impossible. Getting it back is not. Simply slow it's orbit, the sun's gravity will do the rest.

As for an energy source, He3 can be mined on the moon, or collected directly from the solar wind. Simply place a large charged grid outside the Earth's magnetic field, and ship the HE3 back to Earth. The Sun produces millions of tons of HE3 per day. It is the only known method of sustained controllable fusion that can be made to work on earth.

As far as not killing each other, I will leave that to the politicians and religious leaders, I hope they are up to the task.

Regards Dragon

You left out #4, which is to conserve the resources we do have until such a time as 1 and 3 are actually achievable. Which may be a much longer time than we wish to believe.

Regrettably, too many such arguments rely heavily on the word "simply". I'm afraid there's no simply involved in slowing an asteroid down, maneuvering it somewhere convenient, mining it and retrieving the ores. Nor is there a simply in collecting, shipping or fusing He3. It's akin to men 500 years ago saying all it takes to fly is to simply jump in the air and stay there.

And lastly, leaving our safety to politicians and religious leaders is at best unwise. Neither has a particularly good track record when it comes to preventing bloodshed.

Dear AP#1, Thank you for reminding me of 4. You are correct we must conserve what we have and use it MUCH wiser that we do now.

Slowing an asteroid or comet down can be done with current technology. I submit the ION engine. Or even perhaps a mass driver. Land a small craft on the asteroid and use material taken from the mass of the rock itself propelled at a high rate of speed in it's direction of motion. Not much change at first but, if done at calculated intervals it will have the desired effect.

HE3 can be used as a fusion power source for a craft. He3 can be collected with our current technology as well. Yes I did simplify the process of it's collection. Mainly because I did not think anyone would reply. I just wanted to make people think.

Thank you for your reply, and perhaps it is time for a new political and religious paradigm, hm?

Regards Dragon