Asteroid mining possibilities
Mining asteroids could shift from science fiction to reality, driven by the need for off-Earth resources.
Phillip Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of CentralFlorida, said the reasons to mine in space are many – sci-fi fantasies, AI and geopolitical boasting to name a few -- but the real hold up has been economic need.
“For decades now, it has not been a technological barrier,” Metzger said. “We've had the ability to do it. It's always been an economic barrier and a political barrier, because there's never been a real business case, and the amount of investment up front is going to be gigantic, and there aren't a lot of stepping stones along the way. There aren't any intermediate business cases where you can make a profit unless you go big scale.”
Asteroids come in a variety of shapes, sizes and makeup, each coming with their own unique challenges of capture and extraction.
"Imagine [miners] might want to get a smorgasbord of different types of asteroids,” Metzger said. “The carbonaceous asteroids have a lot of water and they have some carbon. The metallic type asteroids have a lot of iron and nickel. Then you've got the silicate asteroids if you want rocky material, but they also contain inclusions of metal, and some of them include precious metals. By getting a variety of different asteroid types, you could fill out your supply chain.”
The question of who owns what in space is still up in the air, but Metzger said he sees the benefits of asteroid mining for not only humans, but all species on Earth.
“We can off load a lot of our environmental burden in the future,”Metzger said. “Eventually, Earth's going to get wiped out one way or another. It might be billions of years from now, but there's always a risk. Out of all the species on Earth, humans are the only ones so far capable of building spaceships. So, there might be an ethical responsibility for us to ensure the safety of all life on planet Earth and take it all with us to space.”
Space hospitality and tourism
The Rosen College of Hospitality Management has its sights set outside our planet with its pursuits of space hospitality and tourism.
As humans inch closer to an off-planet settlement, there must be a space to put every worker and tourist.This involves not only shelter, but relaxation.
Amy Gregory, the University of Central Florida’s Endowed Chair of Space Tourism Programming & Initiatives, focuses on food and lodging.She likenedthe space tourism industry to the cruise ship industry.
'We've got private astronauts that are making their way to the ISS, and that's really cool,” Gregory said. “But if you see the pictures, it's not really a very pretty place. And I hear it doesn'ts mell so great either, and there's an awful lot of noise because of the machines. That's fun when you're pioneering, but as we continue to advance from exploration to habitation, be it planetary or low-Earth orbit, people need a place where they can relax, kind of rejuvenate themselves.”
Hospitality does not start and end with destination. Building up an ecosystem of information about space lodging and vacations is also an objective of Gregory.
“Think about before you travel anywhere. You go out and find information about where you're going,” Gregory said.
“That's very easy for us now, but all of that stuff had to be built up as well. Hospitality naturally thinks in those terms --how all of that comes together throughout your entire stay, until you leave and hopefully come back again.”
Gregory said that she believes that in her lifetime, space hospitality and tourism will become a reality.She said workers’ lodging will come first.
"Where we are with space right now, we know that we can do all of the propulsion and we can do the landings, and we can do the exploration,” Gregory said. "Naturally, with that further exploration, eventually comes habitation.”