Of course, Asteroid Mining is the next big thing for the country which has that stupendous technology.
A Japanese spacecraft called Hayabusa 2 was sent into space and landed two rovers on a small asteroid named Ryugu, named after an underwater palace in a Japanese folk tale.
Hayabusa 2 will retrieve samples containing metals like nickel, cobalt, and iron, as well as a variety of other elements. If the sample’s results matches with what astronomers predicted the Ryugu, then the mineral’s wealth might be $82.76 billion.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson famously declared that the first trillionaire would be an asteroid miner. The value of Earth's annual extracted metals and minerals is about $660 billion. Moreover in the asteroid belt, there is an asteroid named 16 Psyche that is worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion. Of course this a jaw dropping figure but earth’s economy is just estimated to be 10 Trillion.
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Currently, we don’t have that kind of insane technology that would extract tons and tons of metal from an orbit and chunk that into a spacecraft and settle it within an area on earth. Most probably no, and private sectors aren’t ready for building a prometheus spacecraft quickly. Private sectors still doesn’t have the prospectus path for asteroid mining.
Yet another big thing we haven’t witnessed
Electronic waste is the underrated big thing happening on earth. Companies like e-RecyclingCORPS, Gazella and ecoATM recycle electronic waste including discarded televisions, computers and mobile phones with an estimation of around 500 million dollars (collectively). Yet, 40% of e-waste are yet to be recycled.
But still there is another category of e-waste markets that still staggers us unknowingly, eBay has managed a marketplace for collecting and redirecting up to $100 billion in hardware annually. The value of the secondary IT market is estimated at more than $300 billion.
A new frontier for Mining will take time?
We must remember that most of the earth’s precious metals are found and extracted from earth due to the collision of many asteroids years and years ago. There is still a lot to Dig in the earth with surplus potential. While private sectors are still facing ethical issues in mining and facing exodus difficulty in extending land for mining and at the same time maintaining an environmental stability. But even though they stay on the verge and continue digging, those materials will eventually run out, and, even if we get another "delivery" from outer space, it might render the whole economic endeavor moot. We need precious metals to build machines, but we also need living human beings to buy those machines, and we must make sure that those machines are affordable and yet the companies should not lose profit.
The ultimate vision of asteroid mining will consist of sending out space probes, and developing fully automated mining and processing facilities on or near their target asteroid with maximum safety and with least financials in the fast future comapared to the first asteroid mining hunt. Private sectors won’t boost the spacecraft until they reduce the asteroid mining financials equal to earth mining financials atleast with a 1% crucial difference.
