Asteroid Mining Essay

One of the current best plans, as explained by David (2012), for asteroid mining is to find a good asteroid to mine, go out into space and grab the asteroid through spacecraft docking with the asteroid, bringing the asteroid into orbit around the moon, and then mine the asteroid there. I was planning on my sci-fi story being about the entire process of collecting an asteroid, going from finding an asteroid to grabbing it, to bringing it back the moon, and mining it in the moon’s orbit.

This source will be used to introduce one of the current theories attempting to explain how the EmDrive produces thrust. The article also addresses the lack of scientific explanation which will help to prove my own credibility in the report as I address a multitude of theories. Because the article was published recently I will likely introduce this source last.

Robert Golka was a research scientist working on ball lightning since the late 1960s.““He [Tesla] was ‘way ahead of anything we have today in the equipment he built,” Golka says.” (page 344-345). The U.S. government has been talking about making a family of particle beam weapons for war. “And to the end of his days, Tesla the pacifist hoped that such knowledge would be used not for war among Earthlings, but for interplanetary communication with our neighbors in space, of whose existence he felt certain.” (page

In the year 2065, climate change on Earth has spiraled out of control and nations are now fighting for new real estate in space to begin colonization. Mars had been a likely candidate for many years now and was becoming a massive fighting ground for numerous nations. However, it’s arid landscape and small size made it a questionable choice to some. More adventurous and risk-taking politicians urged their researchers to aim for Pluto or planets outside of our solar system. Feeling modern technology was not yet ready for such long distance travel, the United States has chosen to look toward the asteroid belt. As they are setting off, researchers will monitor sunspots to help forecast the behavior of the sun and predict coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Solar-powered sails will make use of solar wind for the early journey after leaving Earth. Radioisotope thermoelectric

The electron beam system would be powered by a set of induction coils trapping energy from the plasma exhaust stream. 250 pellets would be detonated per second, and the resulting plasma would be directed by a magnetic nozzle. The computed burn-up fraction for the fusion fuels was 0.175 and 0.133 producing exhaust velocities of 10,600 km/s and 9,210 km/s respectively. Due to scarcity of helium-3 on Earth, it was to be mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter by large hot-air balloon supported robotic factories over a 20-year period, or a more abundant source like the

Today, the number of satellites to ever launch into space is about 7,500 (Urry, 2014). The number of space debris identified by NASA is over millions of all sizes (“SciTechTalk”). The satellites and particles in the Low Earth Orbit are of greatest concern to scientists because this is where most of the operational satellites orbit around (Jessa, 2011).

[10] Jet Propulsion Lab [Internet] [NASA] National Aeronautics and Space Administration [cited 2015 January 23]. Available from http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/mars-science-laboratory.pdf

One major issue with the US Space Program is amount of money it cost to fund the missions but, it is all worth the advancements that we will make. The US Space Program provides space vehicles and different advancements in society. According to NASA,” To enable practical interstellar travel, here are the 3 breakthroughs we’ll need...new propulsion methods...transit speeds...new onboard energy production…”. These new breakthroughs and advancements.

When light atomic nuclei fuse together to form heavier ones, a large amount of energy is released. This is a very difficult process to recreate on earth - gases need to be heated to extremely high temperatures (about 100 millions degrees C) to produce a plasma which then needs to be contained for a sufficiently long period for fusion to occur. 2. To reach these temperatures there must first be powerful heating, and thermal losses must be minimized by keeping the hot fuel particles away from the walls of the container. This is achieved by creating a magnetic “cage” made by strong magnetic fields, which prevent the particles from escaping.

The majority of people know that a large asteroid was accountable for the annihilation of roughly seventy percent of all life on Earth sixty-five million years ago, which seems so long ago that it is not really a concern for life now; however, there are an estimated one million asteroids that are orbiting the Sun right now and we can only account for one percent of them. So, that means that there are about nine hundred and ninety thousand other asteroids that we do not know much about that can potentially at any point in time strike Earth. Is this enough to show that the potential threat is in fact real or is there no reason to be alarmed? Scientists fear that if we do not raise awareness on this issue, we the human race may eventually meet a similar demise that dinosaurs and other life met millions of years ago. The main reason asteroid strikes are a problem is unawareness about what they are as well as when and where they are going to strike and the best

This material has a half-life of 88 years; which for all human purposes, has a near limitless supply of energy. Nevertheless, the material itself is short in supply and a limited earthly resource, unlike the sun. This energy may not be as high quantity or as constant as solar energy, however, nuclear power provides continuous power to spacecraft systems. “The advantages of nuclear energy include its ability to provide power for long-duration missions without reliance on solar illumination, high system reliability, and high power output versus low mass.” Regardless of the position of the spacecraft in conjunction with the sun or how deep into space the spacecraft may travel, the systems will constantly have a supply of energy. Size also plays a role differentiating solar versus nuclear power. Like previously stated, solar panels must be a large mass in order to produce adequate electricity, and the further from the sun or the more frequently the spacecraft is not in line with light from the sun, the larger the panels will have to be. In addition, solar powered systems require batteries for back-up power. This is opposite for nuclear power which would require a nuclear generator or several generators based on the necessary power output. However, some spacecraft, such as the Nimbus III required a small radioisotope thermoelectric generator for each subsystem, such as the photography devices and the communications relay. Even

Figure 3.2 was created using modified code from the Eagle Space Flight Team. The modified code is not included in Appendix I because it contains many sub functions and would make the length of this lab longer than 20 pages. The code is available upon request by emailing Carl Leake at leakec@my.erau.edu.

In addition to the high fuel efficiency, all the ion drive needs to power it is electricity, which can be generated by solar panels or, for missions that venture further from the sun, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. An RTG is quite simply a radioactive material encased in thermocouples to convert the heat generated by radioactive decay into energy. These devices are ideal for scenarios in which traditional power generation like solar is not practical or possible, such as near Jupiter and beyond. Another advantage of the ion drive is that it has a higher top speed than any other thruster to date. Though it may take a long time to get there, NEXT is capable of a top speed of about 321,000 kilometers per hour. That means that travelling at top speed, depending on the position of Jupiter, the Earth and Europa, it could take anywhere from 80 to 120 days to reach Europa – significantly faster than any other modern form of thrust (Jiang,

The Magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster (MPDT) is a form of electrical propulsion that utilizes electromagnetic fields to accelerate a propellant to very high speeds, relying on the Lorentz force. Among the various methods of electromagnetic propulsion, this one produces exceptional thrust, though that arguably means less than it sounds…

Re-entry of spacecraft begins with astronauts usually retro firing their spacecraft’s rockets where they position rockets to point ahead of themselves and execute a short burn that will slow down the spacecraft, allowing it to drop down into the atmosphere into an elliptical orbit at an altitude of about 100 kilometres. The time, direction and duration of the burn must be controlled carefully to achieve an optimum re-entry angle. The trajectory on re-entry into the atmosphere must be at precisely a correct angle that is specific to the velocity of the spacecraft involved. The re-entry angle must be chosen carefully as it also affects the space-crafts heat build-up and ionisation black-put period. If the spacecraft enters too steeply, it enters the atmosphere too fast, penetrating to the deeper denser layers before slowing, increasing the heat built up and the spacecraft may burn up due to the heat. The high g-forces experienced in such an entry could also destroy the spacecraft and injure the passengers. If the angle of re-entry is too shallow, the spacecraft may ‘bounce’ or ‘skip’ off the