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That's not what mining is. Mining isn't deflecting. They would use and ideally process the material they mine. Not blow it up, not deflect it, possibly strip
by will_work4tears 14y ago
That's not what mining is. Mining isn't deflecting. They would use and ideally process the material they mine. Not blow it up, not deflect it, possibly strip it down entirely and use as much of it as possible. Could be trillions of dollars of materials there.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoRight. But unless you want the products to stay on the asteroid, you have to ship it somewhere. Shipping it somewhere would also move the asteroid.
- will_work4tears 14y agoSo you are saying if they mine 10 tons of Iron, and bring it to earth, sans the rest of the asteroid, it'll blow up and cause destruction on earth? I think I missed that part in physics. Otherwise I don't see your point.
- dredmorbius 14y agoApophis has a mass of 27,000,000 tonnes. 10 tonnes is 1/2,700,000 the total mass of the asteroid. This would be the equivalent of trying to reduce the impact of a 180 lb human by trying to reduce his mass by 0.001 oz (or 82 kg man by 0.03 grams for civilized humans). Too small to matter.
- will_work4tears 14y agoYeah, it was just an example number, earlier I mentioned mining it down to nothing and I still got "it's just as deadly" kind of comments. Unless I'm missing something from physics, stretching the potential energy of the out across ~10 years from mining it will not be the same as letting it hit the earth.