The solar system is a vast volume filled with resources beyond any conceavable human need, and secrets we've hardly bothered to look at.  Out past the orbit of the moon (the farthest distence any human has ever gone) are worlds, moons, asteroids, comets, burned out comet cores, and a host of odds and ends.  We haven't done a detailed survey yet, but from what we do know.  If we never recycled, and everyone in the world used resources as rapidly as the most consumptive American, it would take us 40,000 years to use up the ore in the asteroid belt.  The near earth comet cores hold tens of thousands of times as much oil as OPEC exported in its best year.  The sun poors out unbeleavable amounts of energy and you can collect it with little more than a sheet of aluminum foil.  If you get bored with all that, we can even talk about some of the planets and moons!  Some may hold life.  All are stranger than we can guess, and vast in scope.  

I'm afraid we don't have much of a Web presence yet. If you're interested in the problems of low gravity mining (i.e. on Mars, the Moon, or wherever), or the problems of zero-gravity mining (i.e. the Belt), please email us at lunar@sunsite.unc.edu, or at the site administrators address accessable below.

Asteroid Mining:

• Apollo and Amor Asteroids
• Carbonaceous Chondrites

WARNING:  

This sites under major reconstruction and redesign.  Be patent!

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Last revision.  July 15 1996