Building a City Inside an Asteroid: Is It Possible?

[@trplankowner3323]

A city inside an asteroid will eventual be made obsolete. It may take a few centuries, or even less than one. However, the time will come when the resources of the remaining asteroid become too valuable to allow them to remain there in their original state. Since there is already a habitat in place and potential workers, the production cost for those minerals will be well below the total cost of obtaining minerals from an untouched asteroid. Eventually the temptation will be too great to resist, and the inhabitant will process the remaining minerals for that profit. It might be an emotional matter with the first generation, having been their dream to build that ideal (for them) city. Future generations will be less attached. Furthermore, if some government can claim authority over the asteroid in some fashion, they will. It is a universal truth about mankind that all government continually seek to expand their authority. If they claim authority over the asteroid, it will only be a matter of time until they force or coerce the inhabitant to mine the remaining materials. Personally, I'd rather build a "gardener" interstellar spaceship. Going from star to star, harvesting materials to build a colony for those that wish to remain, or to build another gardener ship for those that wish to follow in a different direction. There is continuity in that, one that all your descendants and those of your shipmates can look back on in the future. It will take some time yet to innovate the technologies needed for a truly interstellar spaceship. I would say that at least we would need a practical fusion power source. However, we already have the technologies to build a city inside an asteroid. The price is too high now, but it gets lower every day! Perhaps some group will build a mining colony inside a large asteroid in hopes that by the time they have harvested enough resources, they can build an interstellar spaceship with technology that has been developed using the resources they have mined. I'm not saying that in 10 years I'll be mining out an asteroid in Jupiter's "Greek" asteroids, but don't be surprised if someone is!

[@HardRebootTech]

Very thoughtful, and I agree that asteroid mining is coming soon. Asteroid colonies -- perhaps not that far behind!

[@trplankowner3323]

@@HardRebootTech Well, with the exception of very small asteroids which are probably mostly small mountains of rubble and dust orbiting around the Sun, the first mining operations will likely be the first colonies. Unless we're considering completely robotic mining operation, then once you go through the trouble of getting all that equipment all the way out beyond Mars (assuming we're talking about an asteroid like Ceres), then you're certainly going to want to stay there for an extended period, or even the rest of your life. So however, you do that, you've started a village at least. Because you're going to want a significant number of people there. Ceres has over 1 million square miles of surface area. That's like a small nation, if you're from Russia, China, Canada or the US, plenty of room to build a huge city. If you have the people. A problem you'd face is there's not a lot of gravity there. So, you will want some sort of rotating habitat to maintain a healthy amount of "gravity". Another gravity related issue is the actual process of mining. If you try to dig into the surface with a pick or shovel, you'll only end up thrusting yourself into orbit of Ceres. Miners would have to make a hole to get inside of so their equipment can brace itself against the asteroid itself in order to excavate anything. A good book to read about the subject is "Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets " by John S. Lewis. It is older, but it's a good overview of the topic.