For all you boys and girls who dream of one day ruling the galaxy with a enormous arm of mass destruction , NASA has some trace for you . The caper is to mine asteroids and use the material to make the Death Star directly in quad .
In a video onWired , Brian Muirhead , chief railroad engineer at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory , illustrates how theAsteroid Redirect Missionwill look at the feasibleness of asteroid mining , and although the mission does n’t incisively show you how to progress a Death Star , it will do something nobody has done before . In 2023 , a investigation will capture a boulder and bear it into lunar orbit , where a radical of astronauts will later visit to mine some of the asteroid fabric .
But is Muirhead aright about using asteroids ? Could we set forth building a mega structure around Earth in 2016 ? permit ’s take a quick expression at the calculations affect .
According toWookieepedia , the first Death Star has a radius of 60 kilometers ( 37 stat mi ) , which correspond to a volume of about 904,000 three-dimensional kilometers ( 217,000 three-dimensional Admiralty mile ) . Finding the masses of such an physical object is quite difficult , as we do n’t exactly have intercourse the internal complex body part , the building materials used , etc .
To simplify this problem , we opine that the Death Star would be built likewise to an aircraft carrier , so we used theUSS Ranger , which has a tightness of 210 kilograms ( 460 pounds ) per three-dimensional meter . This gives us a tidy sum of 190 trillion tonnes ( 187 trillion US tons ) .
Above , Wired ’s interview with Muirhead .
Now , a average - minor asteroid is on composition the thoroughgoing campaigner : It is about the good mass and it is plenteous in Fe and carbon ( to make sword ) , as well as other stuff that can be used in the construction . But is it cheaper mining the material on Earth and sending it to infinite , or to directly mine asteroid ?
post stuff into space price about $ 20,000 ( £ 13,000 ) per kilogram , so assembling the Death Star would be us $ 40,000 billion billion dollar sign ( we ’re not commute that to £ ) . That ’s about a billion times more expensive than all the Earth ’s economies combine .
Theboulderthat the Asteroid Redirect Mission will trance is about 450,000 kilo ( 500 tons ) and the mission will be $ 2.6 gazillion ( £ 1.7 billion ) . This is the cost of recovery , so let ’s don that the mining cost is equivalent . If the asteroid is entirely mined , the cloth would cost $ 10,400 ( £ 6,900 ) per kilo . Of course , it ’s unlikely to have 100 percentage of any especial alloy , so the damage are likely to be a bit skewed . On paper though , it ’s possibly like .
But do n’t wave your lightsabers in celebration just yet . There are many unknown variable quantity when it comes to excavation asteroid , which could easily increase the price of materials . On Earth , onlyone in 5,000 to 10,000prospected mine goes into product , and the probability of mining an asteroid might be just as frightening . But hey , when it comes to asteroids , never tell us the odds .
[ H / T : Wired ]
