100 Mind-blowing Things You Need To Know About Asteroid Mining | by Fahri Karakas | Sep, 2023

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Here is the prompt I have used:

“100 hyper-specific, surprising, mind-blowing and niche things I absolutely need to know about asteroid mining. Each must be explained with evidence and/or examples. Surprise me each time. Avoid generic stuff and clichés.”

Here is the response:

1. Space Law: The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, essentially the constitution for outer space, prohibits any country from claiming a celestial body. However, it doesn’t necessarily prevent private enterprises from mining asteroids.

2. Silicon Harvest: A single 500-metre asteroid can contain more silicon than has been used in every computer chip ever made. The global silicon market is worth almost $100 billion per year.

3. Water from Asteroids: Asteroids may provide a source of water for human explorers or robotic machines working in space. Instead of carrying water from Earth, spacecraft could “live off the land” by mining water from asteroids.

4. Helium-3 Extraction: Some asteroids contain Helium-3, a potential fuel for fusion power. Scientists believe that the moon and asteroids contain a stockpile of this fuel that hasn’t yet been mined.

5. Trillionaire Potential: According to Goldman Sachs, the first trillionaire will likely be an asteroid miner, due to the almost infinite amount of resources available on these celestial bodies.

6. Replacing Earth’s Resources: Asteroid mining could potentially replace all the resources that are being depleted on Earth.

7. Shortage of Platinum: About 9 tons of platinum is mined worldwide each year and asteroid mining could help address the platinum shortage.

8. Space Mining Companies: A few companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries are working toward realizing the potential of asteroid mining.

9. Luxury Space Tourism: Once fully operational, asteroid mining could potentially kickstart the luxury space tourism industry by providing the necessary fuel and resources.

10. NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission: This mission aimed to collect and return samples from an asteroid named…