VERY INTERESTING: ASTEROID MINING

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

Asteroid mining

Asteroid mining is the hypothetical exploitation of materials from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-Earth objects.

Difficulties include the high cost of spaceflight, unreliable identification of asteroids which are suitable for mining, and ore extraction challenges. Thus, terrestrial mining remains the only means of raw mineral acquisition used today.

The research done by asteroid sample return research missions, such as the completed Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 and in-progress OSIRIS-REx, provides data that could possibly enable a study of future asteroid mining, although this was not the primary focus of these missions. 

These missions are complex endeavors and return a small amount of material (<1 mg Hayabusa, 0.1 g Hayabusa2, 60 g planned OSIRIS-REx) for the size and expense of the project ($300 million Hayabusa2, $800 million-$1.16 billion OSIRIS-REx), though these small samples are enough for researchers to study and analyze. 

There are major technical hurdles in the way of potential asteroid mining. Asteroid mining shifted to a more distant long-term goal and some 'asteroid mining' companies have pivoted to more general-purpose propulsion technology.