By Donna Westfall – February 16, 2018 –
When our oldest grandson told us he wanted to mine asteroids for a living, I thought he was kidding. Turns out he wasn’t kidding. As a stepping stone to his career aspirations, he joined the Navy and is currently on a nuclear sub.
At this mornings Town Hall Meeting held at Fisherman’s Restaurant starting at 6 am, we were talking about the Forida school shooting and how inured people have become since the Kent State schooting in 1970, 4 people killed, that left the county in a state of shock, there have been so many more.
With that, we leap-frogged to “Remember when Astronaut Alan Shepard in 1961 made the first manned flight and millions of people got up early to watch it on TV? Today the space station, a miracle of modern science, has rockets going to and fro and we’re ignorant of most of what’s going on.”
From there, I mentioned our grandson. As resources become scarce on earth, and the cost of spaceflight comes down, mining asteroids becomes more likely. I didn’t know this morning all the minerals that could be mined; here’s a list:
