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Theoretical questions:
1. Let's say we could actually harvest all of this. Would it _actually_ be worth that amount? Once it gets here, wouldn't we have so much of it that people would be trying to give it away?
2. Would this impact our rotational speed at all? Is it possible that adding mass could slow us down?
Maybe not, but people say that Jeff Bezos is worth $186 Billion even though he'd never be able to sell enough Amazon stock at current prices to come close to getting that amount of cash.
No one in practice values large stock holdings without marketability or liquidity discounts. Jeff likely wouldn’t even sell stock if he needed cash, he would just get a loan backed by some stock.
It still would not be free, the cheapest method in theory would be to gently nudge a asteroid to a closer orbit to ours. Then if you can process it in space since not all of the asteroid is useful metal. Then send the processed material down to earth. However, it may just be more effective break chunks off and send those to earth. Either way your going to need fuel to move the material to earth. Energy to process the material ect.... It's not going to be free.
The asteroid in question is only ~120 miles in diameter. Not massive enough to effect earths orbit that much. Earth is hundreds of thousands of times more massive.
However, Platinum group metals are relatively rare in earths crust. This would be the what we would really want from an asteroid. If it was just for iron and nickle not many people would think about asteroid mining.
> Either way your going to need fuel to move the material to earth. Energy to process the material ect..
There is unlimites solar power in the asteroid belt, 24/7.
If you were really desparate, a solar furnace could vaporize mine tailings and accelerate it through a nozzle for thrust. It wouldn't be efficient, but it is pretty much free, (except for shipping and handling). Kind of like that classic black and white movie where they are breaking up the wood of a box car to feed the steam engine pulling the train.
Once you start getting past mars the effectiveness of photovoltaics starts to drop off. We have used them out to about jupiter for probes. This asteroid sits between mars and jupiter. However to power a mining operations you would need a massive solar array. I mean massive. Same is going to happen to a large mirror array for a solar furnace to use for a thruster. It's going to be have to be huge.
It would probably be better to use nuclear. The energy density is high so you don't have to launch as much material to get your mining infrastructure in place.
For 1., there's really no way to know is there? The best analogy I can think of is all the precious metals from the New World and how their discovery and subsequent introduction to the Old World in the 16th century and on effected the economies there.
For 2., I think there's a good case to be made for a lot of that metal staying up in space as opposed to dropped and then launched back up eventually. In the long long term, isn't it reasonable to assume that Earth may end up losing mass due to space launches? Here's my corollary to your question for whoever comes along to answer: Is it possible that lessening mass could speed us up?
> In the long long term, isn't it reasonable to assume that Earth may end up losing mass due to space launches?
Earth masses 6e24 kg. SpaceX Starship can carry 1e5 kg. Suppose a MILLION fully loaded Starships launched EVERY SECOND, starting now.
It would take 20000 years of that for earth to lose 1% of its mass.
>In the long long term, isn't it reasonable to assume that Earth may end up losing mass due to space launches?
No. It is much more likely that Earth would become a long-term importer of space manufacturing for quite some time. It is much cheaper to drop stuff down into Earth's deep gravity well than to hoist it up into space. Pretty much everything in orbit (except for the Moon and mass where the Moon's gravitional influence dominates) will eventually come back down to the Earth's surface, too
It's not 'harder' to take mass off earth than it is to bring mass back. Assuming you want to bring the mass back 'gently' and not have it collide with earth like a comet. Think like pulling a rock out of a hole vs lowering it back down in a controlled manner, controlled here meaning velocity=0 by the time it reaches the bottom. In both cases you are responsible for transitioning the same amount of energy into or out of the rock. To do this with a rocket would required the same integration of force and thus fuel. In the case where you are lowering the rock, ie returning mass back to space, you have to bring fuel to the rock to 'lower' it back down so it is actually harder to bring mass back.
Even for uncontrolled crashing you still need to use fuel. You need to use energy to slow the object down enough to fall into earths gravity well.
Protip: It can't be worth $10k quadrillion if the market demand doesn't exist.
If it were to crash into earth it could obliterate the worlds economy.
One day this metal object will be harvested in space for the construction of a large space vessel.
Claim it for Murica then pay off the national debt.