3 ms·
You could plausibly get a nearby asteroid into a wide orbit of the Earth for 500 m/s of delta v. But getting it from there all the way down to LEO would take 3
by Symmetry 9y ago
You could plausibly get a nearby asteroid into a wide orbit of the Earth for 500 m/s of delta v. But getting it from there all the way down to LEO would take 3 km/s. So I expect most asteroid mining would take place fairly far out as a practical matter since the products of mining would be lighter and easier to move. The main downside would be days of travel time to and from the mining site. And there is a market for the products of asteroid mining in GEO in the form of commsats who might want to be refueled or someday maybe even have some parts make from asteroid stuff.
- jandrese 9y agoRefueling GEOs will probably never be profitable. They already last for 15+ years and are replaced by much improved satellites when they are retired. Keeping an old one running isn't worth it because the orbital slots they are in are too expensive. IMHO, asteroid mining only makes sense if you are also manufacturing things in orbit (like spaceships and orbital colonies). All of these plans to deorbit the mined materials are crazy talk IMHO. Even if you find some amazing near solid platinum asteroid nearly in orbit already the costs of mining it and bringing the material back to Earth make it extremely difficult to compete against terrestrial mining. If you are actually manufacturing stuff, then you are much more free to choose your orbit. You can even choose to orbit the moon instead to reduce the possibility of disaster.