How far away are we from asteroid mining?

Question

Say, flying to an asteroid, towing it out of solar orbit to a base, lets say, on the moon, mining everything of use from it, and sending it back to Earth?

How far are we from this kind of technology? What would be required?

Quite obviously more efficient rockets...but what else?

Answer 1

It's going to be hideously expensive to get the mined material down to Earth. It's probably not worth it even for platinum. And i doubt that with the advent of fusion reactors that even helium 3 will be commercially viable. However, if you need material in space for some project, getting it from an asteroid makes sense.  The energy required to get to the asteroid and off of it is minimal.  And it will cost much less than getting it out of Earth's gravity well.  So it's not a question of mining technology per se, it's having a space infrastructure that needs the resource.  We have an orbiting space station, so that could be fairly soon.  Even if we don't have usable radiation shielding, we could send robot asteroid miners out.

Mining the Moon?  I'd consider it silly, except that it seems possible to set up a mass driver on the Moon that could throw the mass out of the Moon's gravity well.

Answer 2

Asteroid mining? Hundreds of years. but we will concievably start mining the moon within 25 to 30.

]There is a star that has a diamond core and the size is

one billion trillion trillion carats! I lost the link to it but I did see it in an astronomy fun facts page.

pretty cool huh?

Answer 3

I would say we are a good 250 years away.  First of all, right now, let's say we somehow find this huge hidden pocket of gold or platinum on the moon.  Of course we won't, but if we did, there would be no point in bringing it back.  The cost to lift something into space is thousands of dollars per GRAM.  I think that we'd also have to have more efficient ways to mine.  Robot-mining is an interesting prospect, but in an unstable environment like an asteroid, it is unlikely that we'll be able to fully automate such processes.

I think that it's an interesting idea, but I really don't think that it will ever really be feasible for Earth.  Now, for a Mars colony, I believe that asteroid mining may be more useful, as (a) it's closer to many asteroids, and (b), as far as we know, there are many fewer necessary minerals there.

Answer 4

Oh, goodness don't even worry about it. We're not even close.

Answer 5

Like everyone else said, the economics of bringing that stuff back to Earth or the moon doesn't make sense.  What does make sense, is if you want to build a REALLY HUGE spacecraft (like for an arc to go to another star system) you could go to an asteroid and build it at the asteroid from materials in the asteroid.  That would make sense (eventually).  

Answer 6

400-500 years

Answer 7

Probably about 30-40 years. Depends on how badly we need those minerals and ores from meteors. Also, it would be extremely expensive, so what ever we mine would have to be very valuable.

Answer 8

we will start mining if/when teleportation becomes possible... until then there is just simply no way to bring things even as valuable as gold or diamonds back without us paying more for transportation then they are worth here on earth.... (i.e. even bringing back just a few pounds of either would cost millions... far more then they are worth.)

Answer 9

what will you manufacture?grow batterys,grow NANO motors,make ball bearings,,,,