Asteroid Mining Will Change Everything About Our Future In Space

↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓

Asteroid mining sounds like something out of a bad space movie, but harvesting materials from space rocks might be our ticket to building space colonies or living on Mars. Most of Earth’s precious and rare metals are locked too far in the crust for us to get at them, and launching them to space is too expensive for us to supply large colonies off Earth or explore far off worlds. How do we get our hands on the planetary resources inside asteroids? Let’s find out!

SOURCES/EXTRAS:

Badescu, Viorel, ed. Asteroids: Prospective energy and material resources. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013.

Crawford, Ian A. "Asteroids in the service of humanity." arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.2678 (2013).

Kleine, Thorsten. "Geoscience: Earth's patchy late veneer." Nature 477.7363 (2011): 168-169.

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[besmart]

Could mining space rocks be the secret ingredient to humans living off of Earth? You bet your asteroid!

Let us know what you thought of this week's video, and you can always leave your ideas for future videos here in the comments, or on Twitter at @okaytobesmart 🤓

[tvremote]

I must say, this video was well made. The animation and content were out of this planet!

[Striveofficial]

A resource once tapped, will open a new golden era of human innovation and exploration.

[mrwonderwaffles]

Two words: space pirates. Like regular pirates, but in space

[DannyBlack]

spACE hardware... I saw what you did there :) very clever

[Daniel-htwr]

We will build a spacewall and the martians will pay for it

[cholten]

Gorram it - Firefly was cancelled _15 years_ ago and that's the 3rd independant time I've seen references to it today alone. I'm gonna drink my beer and cry over what coulda been.

[Lucian_Andries]

The problem is not mining them. The problem is refining the ore and turning it into building materials while ''in space''.

[AA-fnxz]

It would be so cool if we mined things like Gold and Platinum to a point where it’s incredibly abundant and almost worthless!

[AnimalFacts]

Might even find some new materials to build our cool new tech from.

[wesleyrm]

I just watched Sci Show's episode on the most recent elements. I appreciate that your table at 3:03 had all the new names!

[zak]

Already did the 23andme thing and already own 2 copies of Soonish, so you've obviously got sponsors that are appropriate for your audience!
Awesome topic as always. Asteroid mining (and inhabiting!) is a subject very dear to my heart.

[gpcaraudio]

Saw that ACE HARDWARE plug on there, I suddenly have this strong urge to go get some bolts.

[gktm]

I read Soonish and it's a great book. Not what I expected, but great
I reccomend this book to everyone who likes Space, biology, or health

[hubi]

Although i do not always get the more precise answers i want because of your standardish video length, i started giving you a thumbs up BEVORE even watching your vids .
Good work like always.

[axelsalmeron]

But are those organic asteroids gluten free?

[poorplayer]

I always thought it would make more sense to develop the tech to use resources already found on say, Mars for instance. I remember watching shows as long as 10 years ago that were showcasing those efforts.

[binky]

Asteroid mining would be a truly amazing thing to accomplish, sadly the money that could be used to pull it off will instead go towards the overblown U.S. military.

[ScienceGeek]

3:16 when the newer phones all start looking the same 😂

[benjaminnelson]

Hmmm? On what basis is concern about a "right" to mine our solar system even a question? It's not like any other world has a better claim to those resources.