Likely quite a lot, since we know that there are extremely large amounts of many other important metals. However, while I'm not an expert, it is my understanding that nobody is entirely sure how much there is, simply because we haven't taken a systematic look yet, or anything approaching one. Due to ionization, most of them probably have a thick layer of dust sticking to them, even if they are nearly solid metal underneath, so techniques using reflected sunlight (all that has been attempted thus far) are not likely to be of much value. We need to hit them with a powerful laser, vaporizing a small amount, and then determine the composition of the resulting cloud.
Here's one intriguing passage that I came across: (from http://science.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-mining1.htm ) "One NASA report estimates that the mineral wealth of the asteroids in the asteroid belt might exceed $100 billion for each of the six billion people on Earth. John S. Lewis, author of the space mining book Mining the Sky, has said that an asteroid with a diameter of one kilometer would have a mass of about two billion tons. There are perhaps one million asteroids of this size in the solar system. One of these asteroids, according to Lewis, would contain 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and 7,500 tons of platinum. The platinum alone would have a value of more than $150 billion!" -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of LARRY KLAES Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 1:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This won't help with the support of JIMO How much uranium is there in the planetoids? ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean McCutcheon To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 10:27 AM Subject: RE: This won't help with the support of JIMO Another possibility might be that once we have a moon base, we could obtained uranium from asteroids instead, with little risk to Earth. There would be some initial difficulty in setting up the operation but it could quickly become very profitable indeed, since there are absolutely enormous quantities of various, valuable metals (fissionable and otherwise) just sitting there waiting to be taken, without any need to take them out of a gravity well or even to dig for them. If we were very, very careful about it, we could send robotic probes to nudge some of the more valuable ones (like the little one that's essentially 12 tons of platinum, for instance) into closer orbits, to avoid having to set up a mining operation a long distance away. Can you imagine anything more likely to accelerate the establishment of off-world colonies? I can't. The potential profits would be irresistable. That's what we need to settle the new frontier: a new gold rush. I think that discovery of life on Europa would be likely to greatly accelerate interest and efforts toward eventual interstellar travel (because many people would realize that if there is life on two worlds within our own system, it must be quite plentiful throughout the galaxy--and in many cases, evolution would have produced other intelligent life). However, in the short term what we really need is for private industry to become highly motivated to establish a permanent presence in space, and to set about developing and refining all of the related technologies. Sean McCutcheon -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 2:54 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This won't help with the support of JIMO Just a kind of random thought here .... Getting plutonium safely away from Earth and to some moon base, or orbital construction facility near the moon, or at a libration point, seems like a real challenge. To do it economically might be even more of a challenge. How do you package it for all scenarios? For fission-powered probes to Jupiter, this might be the biggest political and technical challenge of all. I don't think I can address all scenarios with one idea, but ... I read a book by Freeman Dyson's son, about Project Orion, in which an interesting experiment was devised at thermonuclear bomb test sites. They dangled some metal spheres (copper, IIRC) fairly close to ground zero. These spheres survived with remarkably little damage. And were used as supporting evidence that Orion could work. Last year, a friend of mine, professor of mechanical engineering, sent me a copy of a formal request for proposals for some research into demisable satellite fuel tanks, asking if I had any ideas. I sent him a few, and I don't know what's become of my suggestions, but it struck me: a hollow metal object is pretty hard to kill with atmospheric reentry. Most satellites self-dispose of their parts pretty nicely, and could be made even better in this respect with more investment. But tanks made of aluminum alloys frequently come back nearly intact. Getting them to burn up nicely is actually a hard, and largely unsolved, problem. Well, so roughly spherical, mostly empty, metal objects are tough buggers. Make the most of it. Send plutonium up inside spheres, suspended in a mesh of very strong wire or fiber. Your rocket blows up? It's OK, so long as you can track the payload. Launch goes off course and the payload reenters? It's OK, so long as you can track it. Something hits it (debris, meteor) in transit ... well, that I can't tell you anything about. But maybe there are shielding concepts that are both lightweight and strong enough to handle almost anything at this point. No point in thinking about patenting something that almost certainly won't get used within the lifetime of the patent. Who has time, anyway? And for all I know, somebody else has thought of this already, and it's full of holes. FWIW. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: LARRY KLAES To: europa Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 3:15 AM Subject: This won't help with the support of JIMO And you know the anti-nuke forces will not bother to differentiate between some old Soviet satellites and the new JIMO. Science/Astronomy: * Havoc in the Heavens: Soviet-Era Satellite's Leaky Reactor's Lethal Legacy http://www.space.com/news/mystery_monday_040329.html Old Soviet nuclear powered satellites leaked a trail of menacing radioactive droplets that have become a debris threat to other spacecraft. == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
