Asteroid Mining Issues

Asteroid Mining Issues
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Asteroid Mining Issues
The assignment responds to several questions about asteroid mining raised by Panel 34, which describes asteroid mining’s issues for ownership, private mining, and the distribution of benefits
1 Introduction
In recent years, with the development of aerospace technology, policy limitation of mineral resources production, and more and more country government join in sustainability development treaty. The government and mining company have moved their eyes to the asteroid mineral resource. Asteroids have a rich mineral resource, and mining operations are not regulated by ant laws making an efficient and cost-effective process (Hellgren, 2016). Mining companies also do not need to consider that mining operations can damage the environment and impact local communities. However, some groups and individuals have raised some questions about asteroid mining. They figure out developing asteroid mining will produce a number of issues that go against engineering ethics. These issues include resource ownership, mining by private companies, and subsequent benefits.
2.0 Background
Since humans first entered space, every country has been fantasizing and desiring the resource available in space. In 1969-72, astronauts from the U.S. Apollo program brought rock samples from the lunar surface rich in metals and rare earth minerals. In 2005, a Japanese unmanned spacecraft brought samples of asteroid rocks back to Earth (Rivkin et al., 2021). It also confirmed the feasibility of asteroid resource mining. These actions have greatly encouraged mining companies, and asteroids rich in rare minerals have become a new gold rush.
3.0 Benefits
It is necessary to understand who would benefit from asteroid mining due to its high mineral resource and lenient regulations. The benefits of asteroid mining range from economic to ecological and thus must be taken keenly in the engineering field.
3.1 Economic Benefits
The key economic benefit of asteroid mining is cost-saving. The asteroid miners would adequately benefit from highly advanced technology due to high-cost efficiency (Hein et al., 2020). The second benefit is higher profitability. The economic value of asteroid Ryugu is $82.6 billion (Vergaaij et al., 2021). The approximated profit is $ 30.8 billion after deducting the mining costs. It shows that the miners would adequately enjoy higher profitability generated from the mining process. Dallas et al. (2020) identified that space mining is worth trillions, and asteroids between Jupiter and Mars constitute $100 billion. Therefore, it means that the miners and the space investors would adequately benefit from asteroid mining due to its economic value.
3.2 Ecological Benefits
Different ecological benefits exist from asteroid mining. The key benefit involves grabbing water from comets and rocks. The water is critical since when it is adequately processed, it generates rocket fuel, thus saving the environment from toxic rocket fuel generation techniques (Hein et al., 2018). The fuel is also efficient and would be used to provide the earth with adequate energy, limiting climat...