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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt: The total mass of the asteroid belt is about 4% that of the Moon. htt
by Someone 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt:
The total mass of the asteroid belt is about 4% that of the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Size_and_mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Size_and_mass:
The Moon's mass is 1/81 of Earth's
So, the total mass of the asteroid belt is about 1/2000 that of earth. Assuming (slightly incorrectly) an even distribution of mass throughout earth, thats’s about as much as in the outermost 1/6000 of the radius of earth, or the top km.
That’s a lot of material, but there also is the complication that asteroids are far away, and far away from each other.
⇒ I wouldn’t count on asteroid mining making our resources orders of magnitude larger.
- XorNot 5y agoSpace is both big and small though. The distances are large, but everything is measured in Delta-V - once something is on its way, it's going to get there no matter what. And unlike Earth, we don't live in any of that volume.
- mr_toad 5y agoComposition is important. Most of Earths metal is in the core and completely inaccessible. However there appear to be some asteroids that are largely composed of metal and are completely exposed. We mine about 3 billion tonnes of iron a year. A single iron rich asteroid could plausibly have hundreds or even thousands of times as much iron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-type_asteroid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-type_asteroid