Could Asteroid Mining be Possible If we Work from the Inside Out?

Mining asteroids is a dream held by many space entrepreneurs. However, it’s not that easy to drill in microgravity. In this environment, when you exert any force on an asteroid, it will push you away from the rock instead of into it.

Fortunately, this has inspired an innovative idea by scientists from the University of Vienna. The team wants to turn an asteroid into a space station and mine it from the inside out, as reported by New Scientist.

As per the research conducted by the team of Viennese scientists the ideal asteroid for a space station is one made of solid rock that rotates several times per minute. By finding an asteroid like this, it would offer enough centrifugal force to allow space miners to chip away at the asteroid from the inside out.

One of the scientists behind the research, Thomas Maindl, told New Scientist that if they were able to discover an asteroid that’s stable enough, they might not even need aluminum walls or anything, it might be possible just to use the entire asteroid as a space station.

Of course, their research begs further questions. For instance, would you weaken the asteroid by digging a tunnel to form the space station inside? If so, would the asteroid rip apart as it spins? Could the asteroid stop spinning altogether as the miners work? Would we encounter the same issues as drilling into the outside of an asteroid by hollowing it out?

Maindl added that the line between science and science fiction is blurry when it comes to this project. He told New Scientist that his gut feeling is it will take at least two decades before any asteroid mining actually takes place, let alone building a space station inside one.

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