Colonization of the asteroids
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The asteroids or, more properly, the minor planets, have long been suggested as possible sites for human colonization. The idea is popular in science fiction.
Asteroid mining, a proposed industrial process in which asteroids are mined for valuable materials, especially platinum group metals from metallic objects, may be automated or require a crew to remain at any target asteroid.
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[edit] Advantages
| Space colonization |
- Large number of possible sites, with over 300,000 asteroids identified to date
- Asteroids contain several chemical composition classes, including iron and carbonaceous, providing a variety of materials usable in building and fueling spacecraft and space habitats. The Trojan asteroids, in Jupiter's orbit may be primarily extinct comets.
- Some Earth-crossing asteroids require less energy (delta-V) to reach from Earth than the Moon.
- Material mined from asteroids could be a basis for a trade economy.
- Many asteroids (especially the extinct comet cores) contain large amounts (more than 5% of total composition) of volatiles and carbon, which are necessary for life support.
- Isaac Asimov pointed out the advantage of building cities inside hollowed out asteroids since the interior area in square miles of all the asteroids put together is a great deal more than that of the surface area of Earth (viewed as a series of cubes one mile (1.6 km) by one mile resting on the surface of Earth) and thus a large population could be accommodated in the asteroid belt.
[edit] Disadvantages
- Low gravity. Humans would have to adapt, or asteroids would need to be given a sufficient spin to induce artificial gravity.
- Most asteroids are far from the Sun. The main asteroid belt is roughly 2 to 4 times further from the Sun than Earth. This means that the available solar energy (solar constant) is 4 to 16 times less, although building large reflectors to collect sunlight is possible in space.
- Many asteroids may merely be loose agglomerations of dust and rocks, which may be very difficult to use.
[edit] Asteroids of special interest
- (6178) 1986 DA is a potentially metallic near-Earth asteroid.
- (216) Kleopatra is a metallic main-belt asteroid.
Some C-type asteroids are likely carbonaceous chondrites, which are some tens of percent water by mass.
[edit] Asteroid colonies in science fiction
- See Asteroids in fiction.
[edit] References
- David Gump, Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA, Praeger Publishers, 1990, ISBN 0-275-93314-8.
- Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets
- The Technical and Economic Feasibility of Mining the Near-Earth Asteroids, M. J. Sonter.
- Mining Asteroids, IEEE Spectrum, August 2001.
