Bringing an Asteroid to Earth: What Kind?

Philip Metzger,

Asteroid Retrieval It has been proposed that NASA go out, grab an asteroid, and bring the asteroid to Earth. It would be placed into high lunar orbit (not directly in Earth orbit).  Once there, astronauts can go out to visit it. This would demonstrate key technologies like the solar electric…

Can Space Hackers Colonize the Solar System?

Philip Metzger,

I am sitting in a room at at the Kennedy Space Center for the International Space Apps Challenge.  It is late at night, I’m very tired, and there are eight other people in the room:  all much younger than me, all college students, all writing software for a game called…

How to Make Space Industry Profitable

Philip Metzger,

From a certain point of view, California remained an “unprofitable” part of the world for hundreds of years after the Westerners arrived in the early 1500’s.  It was a long distance to ship anything around the southern tip of South America from California to the Eastern U.S.  There was little…

Get Ready to Mine Space!

Philip Metzger,

We are living in an awesome generation, the first one that will mine space!  Some companies want to mine the Moon.  Others want to mine asteroids.  Here’s a brief survey of the Who and the Where. At the most recent count, I found eight companies with a focus on space…

Space Resources

How Do You Make Money in Space?

Philip Metzger,

People sometimes ask me if space industry is “for real”.  They want to know if you really can make a profit launching rockets into space, doing exotic activities like deep mining on Mars, bringing back metal ore to Earth, refining it, and selling it on the Earth’s metal markets at…