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NASA Plans Space Mining in About 30 Years

Space mining isn’t a new concept and those who ventured on the dark corridors of Dead Space’s USG Ishimura, the biggest planet cracker in her class, know what I’m talking about here. Thing is, this could actually become true, because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has already contracted private companies to explore the possibility of using other resources than what Earth provides.
Space mining mockup 1 photo
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
This space mining project will firstly be used to provide precious spaceship resources like fuel and water during long missions. For example, frozen water inside asteroids could be collected and turned into oxygen for the astronauts and hydrogen rocket fuel.

Carrying a lot of materials with you in space bumps up the prices sky high because you need a lot of fuel for each pound of stuff you have to send out there. For example, just 1 kg (2.2 lb) of resources being sent to the Moon will set you $100,000 off.

However, it will cost almost nothing or at least considerably less if you extract that supply/material right from an asteroid or small planet while you’re already in space. Some scientists say this is already possible and the recent comet landing stands as solid proof.

The two companies NASA has chosen for asteroid harvesting are Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources Inc., both having a good background in asteroid tracking and space research.

Sounds like a promising plan, especially for obtaining rare-Earth materials needed for certain equipment manufacturing. Let’s just hope they don’t stumble upon some dubious artifact turning people crazy.

Oh and here’s the Dead Space part I was talking about...

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