Martin Elvis, Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics - Astronomy Challenges Of Identifying Ore-Bearing Near-Earth Asteroids

Martin Elvis, Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics - Astronomy Challenges Of Identifying Ore-Bearing Near-Earth Asteroids

Martin has worked in astronomy for thirty years.  He is interested in asteroid mining.  We have been in a golden age of astronomy.  We are hitting a funding wall.  Don't expect many more new off earth observatories.

The way out is an exponentiating space economy.  He likes this because they'll need astronomers!  They'll find the rocks and assay their value.

Some of the areas astronomers can help:

Try to answer the question "How many ore-bearing Near Earth Objects?" (NEO) Martin showed an equation he came up to get a number.  He thinks about one in 2500 asteroids will worth mining for platinum based resources.  A 100 meter asteroid could be worth over a billion dollars.  He thinks there around a dozen asteroids which have profitable platinum based asteroids.

For water based asteroids it is more like one in 200 asteroids.

People belief there are about 20,000 NEO objects greater than 100m.  The guess we about 30% are already know, but only finding about 400 a year so would take another 35 years to find the rest, at the current rate.  There are new surveys coming down the road so could be only another ten years.


Another important question astronomers can help with "What are the characteristics?"  Things like to know: Metallic/Stony/Carbonaceous, Size/Shape, Solid/Fractured/Rubble, Rotation/Tumbling, and mass.  Right now we're only processing about a hundred a year.  Martin went over some of the techniques we have for learning characteristics of asteroids.


Another question: "How Many Assay Missions?"  Going to need dozens and dozens of assay missions. If an astronomer can figure out a way to increase the probability of finding a good asteroid the method could be very valuable: commercial astronomy!


Once we have a large space going economy we can start building bigger and more expensive telescopes!


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