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Wandering mines
All the rock objects in the solar system are made up of a single rotating mass belonging to when the sun was a baby star. Mercury, Venus, Mars, and asteroids orbiting Mars and Jupiter all have the same origin, so they are expected to have almost the same mineral composition. This issue of using mines has turned these objects into a dream that has been talked about again these days, yes again!
This is not the first time that humans have sharpened their teeth for minerals lost in space. Humans have long known that most asteroids are made of valuable materials such as aluminium, iron, titanium and even gold. The presence of ice on them has also been proven.
Therefore, asteroids are not only a target for metal extraction, but water alone can be the first, most important and, of course, the easiest target for space miners. Water in space means life and movement. Life, because astronauts need to drink, and because oxygen is one of the constituents of water, and motion, because hydrogen, which is the second component of water if we combine it with oxygen, we can start our spacecraft engines. So water in space is very important.
First, space miners may first look for an ice-filled asteroid orbiting the sun in the right direction to build the first space refuelling station on it. A fuel pump that uses solar energy to convert and store ice into water, oxygen, and hydrogen to inject water, hydrogen, and oxygen into a spacecraft’s thirsty spacecraft when a space customer arrives.
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Who owns the space
Plantry Resources, with its official announcement for space mining, did not just call on the tech world to fight, because the real war has started in law firms. This is not the first time that lawyers have been introduced to space travel. By September 1336, the solar eclipse had not yet reached its peak when the former Soviet Union was able to successfully launch the first terrestrial satellite, called Sputnik 1, into Earth orbit. This great victory of the Eastern superpower raised the concerns of other nations, especially the Western countries, against the Russian rival.
The concerns were mainly security and, of course, economic. Even at the same time, everyone knew that the earth was a small, small part of the universe. When millions of innocent lives can be taken for earthly riches, why not set a planet on fire for the boundless and ownerless wealth that awaits greedy man in outer space.
Mankind’s self-awareness of its own wildlife prompted the then powerful heads of state to immediately sit around a table and try to cut off the rival’s hand from this vast table. It was then that the Universal Outer Space Treaty was ratified in 1967 and the first step was taken to write space law. Article 2 of the treaty states that nations may not claim ownership of extraterrestrial space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, for exploitation or occupation or for any other purpose.
The text is simple and straightforward, but it has a big weakness. Planetary Resources is not a nation, but a company that can even gain international prestige by adding partners from other countries. Almost all jurists believe that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty explicitly does not accept any claim of ownership of outer space and officially declares space to be the eternal heritage of humanity. A legacy that, if it is to be exploited, must benefit all of humanity.
Planetary Resources, of course, with the nobility of this legal restriction, tries to draw the attention of legal and legislative circles to the future capacity of space trading by publishing its historical news and trying to provide the ground for changing or passing new laws.
The value of mining in asteroids
Gravity of asteroids due to their small size is so small that it can almost be ignored. This feature makes mining there a dream. Maybe that’s why when it comes to space mining, everyone’s eyes are on the asteroids, and no one cares about the moon and Mars.
On the other hand, day and night on asteroids is almost meaningless, and all this small space object can be covered with solar panels to have enough electricity at any time.
Free 24-hour electricity and very little gravity, along with rare minerals and chemicals and the price of a small asteroid that has a diameter of about 30 meters, makes a check travel of 50 to 100 thousand billion tomans. Who can resist this great wealth left in the heavens?
Asteroids, on the other hand, become tame quickly because they are small. It is possible to use ion motors that use sunlight to produce propulsive force to change the rotation plane and even change the direction of movement of these celestial bodies and bring them as close to the ground as possible. So close that it is economical to mine and control things, and at the same time not to endanger the earthlings.
Undoubtedly, in order for space mining to become an economical business and for space minerals to be able to compete with their terrestrial counterparts in terms of price, many private companies must already be thinking about building economical space rockets that are safe to transport into space. To finish with the lowest price and the highest possible security.
The space in the future is a vast table of jewelry. If we want to have a share of this great treasure, we must think about it now.