First Survey of Commercially Viable Asteroids Estimates Only 10 Are Worth Mining

[DEAD7]

"In 2012, Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt announced the launch of Planetary Resources, an ambitious start up with the goal of mining nearby asteroids for natural resources. Now an academic survey of ore-bearing asteroids estimates that only about 10 are likely to have resources worth mining. The new approach is to create a Drake-like equation that starts with the total number of asteroids and determines the percentage that are close enough to Earth, the percentage of these that contain valuable resources, the percentage of these large enough to pay for a space mining mission and so on. Each of these factors is filled with uncertainty but the bottom line is that when it comes to platinum group metals such as platinum, palladium, and iridium there are likely to be very few worth exploiting. That has significant implications for the future of space exploration. With so few commercially-viable space rocks out there, knowing which ones to pursue will be hugely valuable information, concludes the study. And that means the prospecting of asteroids is likely to become a highly secretive commercial endeavor in the not-too-distant future."

 

[Shogun]

hard to imagine what the world is going to look like in 50 years

 

[mbewane]

Maybe they aren't worth mining NOW, but they obviously contain some other minerals that we might find a way to exploit some way or another. If there's one thing humans know how to do is transform nature into dollars

 

[Leasy]

I refuse to believe this crap like seriously ten. I believe these companies just don't want to take the jump. Look at the asteroid belt they have micro planets that probably have all types of composites.