Edit 9/24/15 The better title for this article should have been "Asteroids, the Buffalo of the Final Frontier" (seriously I need to stop with this amateur hour malarkey)
This post is more long term oriented in the overall intent, but it is something we as a society should try to plan for now, better to have basic guidelines now than hope that deep space mining interests will plan for the truly long term.
One of the big risks to astronauts and satellites alike is loose orbital debris whipping around the Earth, causing potential disasters (although not on the same scale as what you may have seen in the movie Gravity.
Currently we have no idea what the waste material from asteroid mining will look like, namely because we don't even have a clear idea on how will extract those resources, as a consequence I will be incredibly vague (shocking I know) as to what said debris will look like, that being said, it is unlikely that the mining process will not create some type of rubble. Under normal circumstances, the waste material is unlikely to start wandering around the solar system and causing chaos, that being said, in the unlikely event that a mined out asteroid does have a collision with another body or there is some kind of explosion on the mining platform, the cloud of detritus has the potential to cause a laundry list of issues for future space exploration.
Instead of allowing waste materials to be loosely floating around their parent celestial body, mining interests should be required to have a future plan for what to do with their waste mass before mining is allowed to begin. Depending on the chemical make up of the mining site as well as the type of body being harvested different options will make sense.
One option is to melt waste metallic compounds or glass precursors and use them to bind waste materials into a much larger mass of slagged material. After the larger mass is created it could be maneuvered via solar sail, laser ablative engine, ion engine, etc.. to a central waste mass reservoir where the waste mass could be refined at a later date when those substances are worth mining separately. Another potential option is to collaborate with mining and space exploration interests in the creation of a refining technology that is intended to provide maximum added value for readily available mineral deposits found through out the solar system.
More likely miners would be asked to fill any mining holes with waste material after the completion of resource extraction. Early mining systems would go for the most obvious resource deposits, harvest as much as financially viable for the extraction system, lift off with a full load of cargo and let future explorers work for more difficult depoits
This post is more long term oriented in the overall intent, but it is something we as a society should try to plan for now, better to have basic guidelines now than hope that deep space mining interests will plan for the truly long term.
One of the big risks to astronauts and satellites alike is loose orbital debris whipping around the Earth, causing potential disasters (although not on the same scale as what you may have seen in the movie Gravity.
Currently we have no idea what the waste material from asteroid mining will look like, namely because we don't even have a clear idea on how will extract those resources, as a consequence I will be incredibly vague (shocking I know) as to what said debris will look like, that being said, it is unlikely that the mining process will not create some type of rubble. Under normal circumstances, the waste material is unlikely to start wandering around the solar system and causing chaos, that being said, in the unlikely event that a mined out asteroid does have a collision with another body or there is some kind of explosion on the mining platform, the cloud of detritus has the potential to cause a laundry list of issues for future space exploration.
Instead of allowing waste materials to be loosely floating around their parent celestial body, mining interests should be required to have a future plan for what to do with their waste mass before mining is allowed to begin. Depending on the chemical make up of the mining site as well as the type of body being harvested different options will make sense.
One option is to melt waste metallic compounds or glass precursors and use them to bind waste materials into a much larger mass of slagged material. After the larger mass is created it could be maneuvered via solar sail, laser ablative engine, ion engine, etc.. to a central waste mass reservoir where the waste mass could be refined at a later date when those substances are worth mining separately. Another potential option is to collaborate with mining and space exploration interests in the creation of a refining technology that is intended to provide maximum added value for readily available mineral deposits found through out the solar system.
More likely miners would be asked to fill any mining holes with waste material after the completion of resource extraction. Early mining systems would go for the most obvious resource deposits, harvest as much as financially viable for the extraction system, lift off with a full load of cargo and let future explorers work for more difficult depoits
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