Extraterrestrial minerals: Delicious but difficult to eat

Human ambition in exploiting the universe is unlimited.

The ambition to exploit the universe's human resources

With the fact that the amount of mineral resources on Earth is getting smaller and in danger of disappearing completely, people have begun to think of a relatively crazy idea - extraterrestrial mining . Many economists predict that this could become a market worth hundreds of thousands of billions of dollars in the future, especially with the emergence of rare earth elements.

From the ground to space

Rare earth ores contain 17 elements with very small content in the Earth's crust, such as Yttrium and lanthanum. They are in the middle of the periodic table of chemical elements and the first element in rare earth discovered in 1787.

For the past four decades, special physical and chemical features of rare earth materials have been at the heart of research, innovation, and invention with a wide variety of applications from macro to micro and nano for many. Different industries: chemical catalysts in the refining industry, pollution testing in the automotive industry, ceramic liners for jet engines, permanent magnets for magnetic applications . and of course in industries lighting, metallurgy, electronics, in military techniques from radar screens to lasers and missile control systems.

Image of a future extraterrestrial mine.

America has been a major source of rare earth for 50 years. However, thanks to low labor costs and the absence of strict regulations on environmental protection, China has become the world's lowest selling country for rare earths. This position did not last long when in 2009, Chinese authorities took environmental reasons to limit the supply of rare earth to the world.

In response to Beijing's move, electronics-producing countries such as Japan, the US and South Korea must speed up exploration of other reserves to maintain supply for industrial operations. In 2011, Japan succeeded in detecting REE mines at the bottom of the Pacific waters. In 2012, the US-based Molycorp Group continued to operate at the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California.

In the face of fierce competition in finding REE reserves , the exploitation of abundant REE resources on the moon and near-Earth asteroids (NEA) is a new trend for the big players in the mining industry. of the world.

• People are willing to exploit the Moon mineral

Trillion market - not a dream

The application of the rare earth element is extremely extensive but its price is still very high although we have repeatedly adjusted it by detecting additional reserves and improving production technology.

The price of Neodymium, the necessary element for products such as headsets and hybrids (running in parallel with two fuels), reached $ 283 / kg, although a year ago its price was only about $ 42 / kg. Samarium, a key element for rocket production, has climbed to $ 146 / kg from $ 18.5 / kg a year ago.

Although their prices are very high, but because of their non-toxic properties and physicochemical properties, they cannot replace rare earth elements in many high-tech applications.

Currently, the world's rare earth reserves are about 99 million tons and at the rate of development of this technology, some experts have predicted only 50-70 years from now the humanity will consume up reserves. this. Therefore, finding sources of extraterrestrial exploitation becomes an important issue.

Rare earth elements on Earth.

The US Geological Department has teamed up with NASA to build a website that assesses the economic potential of more than 600 thousand asteroids, meteorites present in the Solar System and named it Asterank . Scientists from both agencies estimated the value of the minerals that these asteroids hold and how much people can exploit them. See the picture below to better understand:

Profit from mining on meteorites is extremely attractive. According to experts' estimates, a meteorite in our Solar System - like Germania 241 meteorite , can contain up to 95 thousand billion dollars worth of minerals, nearly equal to the total income of the whole world in 1 year.

The leading names in bringing this huge amount of mineral to the ground are two companies based in the United States, Planetary Resources (PR) and Deep Space Industries (DSI). These two companies have poured many millions of dollars into the research of building ships in the space environment, even they have invested a lot for the Asterank website.

On January 22, 2013, the DSI company officially announced plans to mine minerals at asteroids near the Earth and they claim they are developing unmanned cylindrical vessels used to mine minerals. produced on small meteorites when they fly near our Earth and processed in space to fuel the satellites or bring them to Earth for business.

Video introducing the space mining program of Deep Space Industries.

First, the DSI will launch an unmanned probe, nicknamed Firefly , weighing only about 25kg this year, flying up into space and performing missions that last for 2-6 months. The next step is to launch a larger spacecraft called Dragonfly to collect samples and bring them to Earth and will perform this task within 2-4 years.

DSI aspires to build a space-based factory to receive materials, process them into usable compounds or materials, and use a three-dimensional printer to produce accessories. The cost for the first project is about 20 million USD. DSI will mobilize funding from the US Government, research institutes, advertisers, sponsors .

Rick Tumlinson, president of the DSI company, said: 'Using low-cost technologies and incorporating existing space programs, we can make things seem impossible in just a few. next year ' . He even stated: 'We can create smaller spacecraft, cost less and faster than before. Imagine a series of Firefly spacecraft production lines and they are ready to fly to any meteorite near Earth. "

Planetary Resources' space mining program.

Even so, DSI is not the only company offering the idea of ​​mining on meteorites. Movie director Avatar, James Cameron, along with two Google owners Larry Page and Eric Schmidt publicly supported Planetary Resources's meteorite mining project (PR). Even British billionaire Richard Branson also expressed interest in investing in financial PR.

Planetary Resources is rushing to complete the Arkyd mining project to catch up with the DSi. If the DSI projects will rely on fossil fuels, which may be nuclear energy in the future, Arkyd is relatively friendly when using only solar energy. Currently, a model version of Arkyd has been posted to the International Space Station ISS and will be tested later this year.

Feasible does not mean easy

NASA said that launching a spacecraft to 1700 asteroids flying near Earth is much easier than flying to the Moon. However, many space scientists have warned about the exploitation of space resources, although feasible, but it will be difficult to become a commercial industry after at least a few more decades. The main reason is that the current cost of launching spacecraft is still too expensive and the resources on Earth are not fully depleted.

This is not to mention the actual cost of mining for these ore mines, which makes many people think again about going out into space to dig mines. Time magazine reported that according to the report of the Keck Space Research Institute, the cost to exploit 500 tons of minerals falls into about 2.5 billion USD. Even Barclays Financial Company and the Financial Times have issued a comparison to make profit in the universe profitable, a gram of gold must be traded for about $ 20 million instead of $ 1160 today.

Epilogue

The idea of ​​extraterrestrial mining is like bringing people to outer space, it is full of novelty, boldness, and people are fully capable of doing it. But again, we have to ask the question: "Is it still not enough to exploit the Earth and still want to do it in the universe?" Perhaps instead of focusing on the purpose of exploiting everything possible, we should learn how to use them appropriately before it's too late.