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> thriving Lunar and perhaps asteroid belt mining by now

What useful stuff can we mine from the moon or from asteroids?



All the gold on the earth is thought to have come from asteroids. All the gold that was present when the Earth was formed sank to the core a long time ago.[1]

The moon is thought contain Helium 3 which can be used for fusion reactors.[2]

[1]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110907132044.ht...

[2]http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Preparing_for_the_Future/S...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

Lots of stuff.

Although asteroids and Earth accreted from the same starting materials, Earth's relatively stronger gravity pulled all heavy siderophilic (iron-loving) elements into its core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago.[9][10][11] This left the crust depleted of such valuable elements until a rain of asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals like gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium and tungsten (some flow from core to surface does occur, e.g. at the Bushveld Igneous Complex, a famously rich source of platinum-group metals). Today, these metals are mined from Earth's crust, and they are essential for economic and technological progress. Hence, the geologic history of Earth may very well set the stage for a future of asteroid mining.

But I think the exciting part is that you have raw materials outside of Earth's gravity well. It's really expensive to haul stuff up, so a source of water in high orbit is really valuable if you want to do space stuff.


Is there a significant shortage of any of those items that'd be more easily solved by asteroid mining than on-earth mining?

I mean, we currently fashion a decent chunk of gold into useless trinkets.


We also currently throw a bunch of them away because it's easier to just mine more than to recycle.


Enough that there's plenty of economic incentive[0]

[0] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2015/07/19/trillion-dol...




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