Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft tumbling and probably be lost
According to a video update by the company’s founder, Matt Gialich, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft is slowly tumbling, and is likely going to be lost.
Gialich noted that they still have one more possibility to save the spacecraft, but “hope is fading.”
The goal had been to make the first fly-by of an asteroid by a private company, getting data on the M-type asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron which would make it extremely valuable.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to a video update by the company’s founder, Matt Gialich, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft is slowly tumbling, and is likely going to be lost.
Gialich noted that they still have one more possibility to save the spacecraft, but “hope is fading.”
The goal had been to make the first fly-by of an asteroid by a private company, getting data on the M-type asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron which would make it extremely valuable.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I don’t think it will be valuable in my lifetime. >30 we (earthlings)have plenty of ore and scrap for he next 30 years (i am 63). Hopefully in the next 30 years we will have the ability to smelt it and return it to earth or not need it.
I have long thought that the most valuable resource from asteroids are the ices, volatiles. If you have water ice in quantity, you end up with fuel, water, O2, and radiation shielding. John Lewis has long suggested that half (or more) of the NEA / NEOs (all earth orbit crossers) are extinct comets, with high percentages of water ice by volume. As they are earth orbit crosseres, they are pretty close in terms of delta-V, though the trips will be long.
That being said, there’s always the possibility that we will find some surprises processing the ices, not unlike what we are finding about both lunar (electrostatic, sharp grains) and Martin (perchorates) soils.
Metals are the shiny. The thing that will make you real money are the ices. Cheers –
I would agree that water ice and other volatiles are more valuable to a civilization (hopefully) spreading out into the solar system.
Billb,
You wrote: “I don’t think it will be valuable in my lifetime. >30 we (earthlings)have plenty of ore and scrap for he next 30 years (i am 63).”
With luck, most of this material will be used in space for manufacturing either space structures, so we don’t have to lift heavy materials from the Earth, or for the creation of materials that cannot be made under the influence of gravity — materials for use here on Earth. These new materials could be more valuable than the raw materials themselves. Instead of an asteroid being worth $1 trillion, it might be able to provide materials worth ten or a hundred times that value.
Can we do this within the next thirty years? Probably some materials and maybe some structures. Lunar material may be used before asteroid material, but I like that there are and have been companies looking far forward into the future. One company thought that they would make money producing space telescopes while they explored asteroids, but that didn’t work out so well after another company bought them.
Varda, a recent startup company, has been testing space manufacturing for a couple of years, but they have had to take their raw materials to space from here on Earth. How much less expensive would their products be if they could buy their raw materials for cheap from an asteroid miner or a lunar mine and could launch their reentry vehicles empty on a cheaper rocket to space?
agimarc‘s comment is part of the former: for use in space. Water is cheap, here on Earth, but it costs hundreds of dollars per pound to take it to space. No wonder NASA was so eager to recycle drinking water on the ISS. Meanwhile, water can be turned into propellants for rockets. If we can get water from asteroids or the Moon and don’t have to spend a lot of money taking propellants to space, then as you noted, our voyages around the solar system can be much less expensive than they are today. This we can definitely do within the next thirty years — if we find the water in space.