QI once included an astonishing fact that the entire supply of gold ever mined, 190,040 tonnes, would fit into 3.27 Olympic sized swimming pools but seen we may all be dripping in the stuff like over-enthusiastic rappers because above out heads is £550 quintrillion of the shiny metal.
That it is embedded in an 140 mile wide asteroid, Psyche 16, 460 million miles from Earth between Jupiter and Mars may present a problem but NASA are on it, planning to find a way to grab themselves a piece of the action although their timescale of 25 years to get 'proof of concept', and the same again to 50 years to start building the machines capable of mining it means that i may have to postpone my Run DMC impression for a while.
As well as NASA, China have their eyes firmly on the Asteroid Belt and have been planning to experiment on Near-Earth asteroids, which pass close to Earth and could be nudged into our orbit to make it easier to extract vital elements.
The moon has been mentioned often as being ripe for mining and Europe is developing missions there with a view to mining it as is Japan and even tiny Luxembourg is targeting space ventures to the Moon, and eyeing near-Earth asteroids for mining.
There's a new Gold Rush only in very slow motion and will be going ahead just past Mars, if you see Jupiter then you have gone too far.
3 comments:
No idea who priced it but seems like plenty of people are hoping to go get it.
I noticed.
Nope, just been reading your blog.
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