Asteroid mining

[Keith Henson]

I recently spent a lot of time with Claude trying to update an
asteroid mining proposal I made ten years ago. The concept was
induction melting the asteroid in place, drawing off the metal,
rolling it into thin sheet metal, and passing it through rolling seals
into a high-pressure chamber of CO (Mond process). The problem we gave
up on is the slow attack on iron and nickel, the high-pressure
chambers, and the CO inventory got out of hand. If it would work, it
would be about a 50 to one concentration of gold and PGMs, with the
main contaminant being cobalt. I don't know how fine the asteroid
material is in lunar regolith; it might be enough surface area to
dissolve in a reasonable time, or it might not.

Best wishes,

Keith