By 2040, will an organisation be mining asteroids for resources?

Technology Space

Basic

Ṁ3.5k

2040

39%

chance

ALL

Resources includes metals and consumables. The organisation could be mining the resources to sell or to use for their own space operations.

A demonstration mission is not enough, the process must be used for its intended purpose. It does not have to be regular, or frequent, but should be routine.

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This needs more specific criteria

@RemNi can you provide more specific feedback please

@JoshuaWilkes Maybe needs to have a minimum mass extracted from the asterioid, and moved at least a certain distance?

@RemNi so a couple of points:

Firstly the question is a year old and has gotten a pretty decent amount of bettors, so I'm not going to do anything that changes the criteria under which they bet.

But secondly, any attempt to put constraints on mass or distance runs the risk of excluding a common sense understanding of what asteroid mining might be. The question is deliberately broad and low-bar.

predicts YES

arb with

There is a YC startup dedicated to making money via mining asteroids. They are aiming to mine asteroids by the end of this decade. While it's not a given that they would succeed, I think it's a sign that asteroid mining could ultimately be feasible.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/astroforge

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/26/astroforge-raises-13m-seed-round-for-asteroid-mining-ambitions/

AstroForge: We Mine Asteroids | Y Combinator

We Mine Asteroids. Founded in 2021 by Jose Acain and Matt Gialich, AstroForge has 10 employees based in Huntington Beach, CA, USA. AstroForge is hiring for 4 roles in engineering and science.

How strict is the plural "asteroids" in the title? Given the difficulty of mining and the potential resources from even a single asteroid, I think it's entirely plausible there will be an organization with regular, frequent and routine robotic expeditions returning resources from a single asteroid.

@whenhaveiever that's a great point. I will say that would definitely count

predicts NO

@JoshuaWilkes How will this market resolve if an organization routinely mines asteroids for resources before 2040, but then discontinues mining before 2040, and no organization is routinely mining astroids for resources at the start of 2040?