http://www.ausimmbulletin.

com/feature/ensuring-health-and-safety-through-the-entire-
mining-cycle/

Ensuring health and safety through the

entire mining cycle

 By David Cliff MAusIMM, Jill Harris and Carmel Bofinger, Minerals Industry
Safety and Health Centre, Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of
Queensland

Improvements in technology and reductions in fatality rates demonstrate great progress

in the minerals sector, but a continued focus on health and safety will help prevent
complacency

As the 21st century progresses, serious questions have been asked of the capacity of the
minerals industry to maintain or improve its occupational health and safety (OHS)
performance. The pressures on mining and mineral processing will come from many
directions. Cost pressures are only going to increase, societal acceptance of mining may
well become harder to obtain and mining and mineral processing conditions will likely
get worse as lower-quality orebodies have to be mined at deeper depths. This in turn
places pressure on OHS. In the developed world, there will be smaller workforces
operating more autonomous machines. The challenge is to ensure that good health and
safety practices are not optional but compulsory, and incorporate these practices into a
normal part of the work culture.

In the last 25 years, great progress has been made in reducing accidents and incidents in
the mining industry in developed regions. Large, highly-mechanised mines that employ
relatively small workforces have achieved significant reductions in fatality and injury
incidence rates. This is exemplified in Australian mines, where the sector’s fatal injury
frequency rate fell to a low of .01 deaths per million working hours in 2011-2012
(Figure 1). Going back further would show an even steeper fall in fatality rates.
Another important factor underpinning improvements in safety has been the better
management of major mining hazards – the single incidences that have caused multiple
fatalities. Historically, principal hazards such as fire, explosion, outburst, rockburst and
fall of ground have been the major causes of fatalities. However, a comparison of
Australian coal mining fatalities over the last two decades demonstrates changes to this
pattern. As shown in Figure 2, between 1991 and 2000, more than half of fatalities were
due to principal hazards. In comparison, the leading cause of fatalities in the following
decade was non-principal hazards such as vehicle collisions. The safety focus has now
shifted to managing incidents that cause individual fatalities.

Contributing to the reduction in multiple fatality events was a reform process initiated in
the 1990s for mining OHS legislation across Australia. In line with the findings of the
Robens Report (1972), there was a push to move from prescriptive to risk-based
legislation and adopt principles such as safety management systems, greater workforce
representation and duty of care principles (Cliff, 2012). Major mining disasters such as
the Moura No 2 Mine explosion in 1994 provided additional impetus. This regulatory
reform – as well as mining equipment, technology and services innovations such as
enhanced inertisation, gas management and ventilation methods – has undoubtedly led
to better management of high-risk unwanted events in the coal mining industry. The last
fire or explosion in an Australian underground coal mine that caused fatalities was in
1994.

The fatality curve (Figure 1) is typically aligned with changes in safety culture (Figure
3) and the reduction in rates to the progressive implementation of technology, systems
and culture (or a people focus; Figure 4). Safety culture is important because it is the
context within which individual safety attitudes develop and persist and safety
behaviours are promoted (Zohar, 1980).
The future
Australian mining safety now faces new challenges associated with sustaining the
current improved safety levels while working towards continued improvements in the
management of emergent mechanisms of harm. Human factors, ergonomics and
psychosocial injuries are some examples of these. Adding to the challenge is that
organisations are facing a changed mining landscape due to major economic, social,
technological and environmental disruptions.

The safety gains experienced in the last 25 years have occurred against a background of
general economic growth, interspersed with brief and shallow downturns. The
significant drop in coal mining fatalities between 2001 and 2010 compared to the
previous decade (Figure 2) was perhaps even more notable because it occurred when
Australia was experiencing a resources boom that led to a rapid increase in production
and associated labour requirements. It now contends with a very different economic
environment characterised by the reduction of production costs and urgency for
operational efficiency. Higher extraction costs associated with declining ore grades,
longer lease approval periods and the availability of energy and water add further
pressure. Maintaining ‘boom’ levels of commitment to safety is more difficult when
there is an imperative to produce and a tendency towards overreaction to the market. It
can lead to a focus on doing what has to be done rather than what should be done. While
exploring safe employee behaviour in the steel industry, Brown, Willis and Prussia
(2000) found that during times of increased production, employees felt that the need to
meet production quotas abated safety procedures, and that their bonuses and jobs may
be placed in jeopardy if they were to follow these procedures.

Technological innovations continue to develop in the mining industry with the

introduction of autonomous vehicles and the widespread use of remote control
equipment. These technologies offer reduced operating costs, improved productivity of
activity and better health and safety conditions when workers are removed from
potential operational hazards. However, a danger of low manning levels is that the
knowledge and awareness of operational risks also diminishes. As incidents become
less frequent, the awareness of them and their potential for harm reduces, which can
actually increase the risk of harm. Unless innovations are properly understood, we run
the danger of creating new risks – not from malfunctioning systems, but from complex
systems functioning as designed, just not as predicted (Dekker, 2011). A recent accident
between an autonomous haul truck and a water cart in an iron ore mine in Western
Australia highlights this point. The autonomous haul truck performed as it was
programmed, but the driver of the water cart was not aware that the vehicle was about to
turn across its path (Latimer, 2015).

Effective safety and health management systems require continual vigilance to ensure
that the systems are being implemented as designed and are achieving the desired
outcomes. This monitoring and review process requires personnel, resources and
management commitment. Reducing either effort or resourcing increases the health and
safety risk. Where a low fatality rate breeds complacency, personnel can assume that the
hazards are not real as they have not experienced them themselves. This in turn leads to
underestimating the risk and the need for controls. In the past two years in Australia,
there have been a spate of fatalities in the mining industry, and the rate is much higher
than for the previous four years. While this may just be a coincidence, it could also be a
warning of things to come. The New Zealand Pike River coal mine disaster in 2010,
where 29 miners lost their lives, is seen as a classic example of failing to recognise the
hazards. With limited resources, there is a tendency to retreat to rules and compliance,
but compliance aims to ensure a minimum standard, not best practice. There is a need
for companies to reassert their commitment to the health and safety of workers and
ensure that no corners are cut. As illustrated by Bradley (Dupont, 2015), a mature state
of safety culture is characterised by a focus on the workforce – the right side of the
Dupont Bradley Curve (Figure 3). These are independent and interdependent attributes
that are not exclusive to OHS. Investment in OHS practices and systems also yields a
positive economic return to organisations.

Now more than ever, the old mantra ‘a safe workforce is a productive workforce’ is
true. Fiedler et al (1984) demonstrated that working on productivity and safety
cooperatively improved both. McLain and Jarrell (2007) investigated the outcomes of
compatibility between safety and production. In line with theory, this research
suggested that safety-production compatibility (and thus conflict) was linked to safe
work behaviours and the extent to which hazards interfered with tasks performed
(McLain and Jarrell, 2007). In his classic paper on competitive strategy, Pfeffer (2005)
argues that organisations that view their workforce as a source of strategic advantage,
rather than just as a cost to be minimised, are those that outperform their rivals.

The financial benefits of good OHS performance are well-documented. The costs not
only include the direct costs (workers’ compensation premiums or payments), but also
the hidden costs such as lost productivity and loss of income and quality of life, which
can be up to 200 per cent of the direct costs (Oxenburgh, 1991). Thus, it can be argued
that reducing accidents and illness makes good financial as well as ideological sense. It
is not just time away from work that reduces productivity but also presenteeism (where
one is at work but not functioning at full capacity) that also reduces productivity.
Williden et al (2012) showed that workers affected by stress and anxiety at work have
reduced productivity of over ten per cent. Presenteeism can multiply the real cost of an
illness by up to four times (Goetzel et al, 2004).
As well as causing illness and lost productivity, work stress has been shown to influence
employee safety through a number of mechanisms. Masia and Pienaar (2011) found that
work stress and job insecurity had an inverse relationship with safety compliance. In
addition, several studies by Maiti and colleagues (Maiti, Chatterjee and Bangdiwala,
2004; Paul and Maiti, 2008) have suggested that job stress encourages employees to
avoid safe work behaviours, thus increasing their likelihood of workplace injuries, and
that job stress can indirectly lead to employees becoming less job-involved. This may
also increase their likelihood of injury as greater job involvement is associated with
better safety performance (Maiti, Chatterjee and Bangdiwala, 2004; Paul and Maiti,
2008). In the same studies, Maiti and colleagues also suggested associations between
safe work behaviours and negatively personified individuals. They suggested that these
individuals not only fail to avoid work injuries, but that they are also unable to extend
safe work behaviours in their work and instead engage in risk-taking behaviours, all of
which makes them more susceptible to workplace injuries (Maiti , Chatterjee and
Bangdiwala, 2004; Paul and Maiti, 2008).

Conclusion
The 21st century poses many challenges to improving the health and safety performance
of the worldwide mining community. In some ways, the recent success in reducing the
fatality rate in mining in developed countries is its own worst enemy as it can breed
complacency. When this is coupled with the pressures to reduce costs and improve
productivity, there is a real danger that the health and safety performance in developed
countries will get worse rather than better. It is essential that we fully understand how
new technology works and the full implications of its operation.

Low commodity prices leave less money to spend on discretionary items. The challenge
is to not make good health and safety optional, but compulsory and a normal part of the
way of life.  

References

Brown K A, Willis P G and Prussia G E, 2000. Predicting safe employee behaviour in

the steel industry: development and test of a sociotechnical model, Journal of
Operations Management, 18(4):445-465.

Cliff D, 2012. The Management of Occupational Health and Safety in the Australian
Mining Industry. Crawley, Western Australia: International Mining for Development
Centre. Retrieved from: http://im4dc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/01/UWA_1698_Paper-03.pdf

Dekker S, 2011. Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to

Understanding Complex Systems (Ashgate Publishing: Farnham).

Dupont, 2015. Dupont Bradley Curve [online]. Available from:

www.dupont.com.au/products-and-services/consulting-services-process-
technologies/brands/sustainable-solutions/sub-brands/operational-risk-
management/uses-and-applications/bradley-curve.html
Fiedler F E, Bell Jr C H, Chemers M M and Patrick C, 1984. Increasing mine
productivity and safety through management training and organisation development: a
comparative study, Basic and Applied Psychology, 5(10):1 -18.

Goetzel R Z, Long S R, Ozminkowski R J, Hawkins K, Wang S and Lynch W, 2004.

Health, absence, disability and presenteeism cost estimates of certain physical and
mental health conditions affecting US employers, Journal of Occupational and
Environmental Medicine, 46(4):398- 412.

Hudson P, 2007. Implementing a safety culture in a major multi-national, Safety

Science, 45(6):697-722.

Kirsch P A, Harris J, Sprott D and Cliff D, 2014. Industry-scale knowledge

management – RISKGATE and Australian coal operations, CIM Journal, 5(2):79-86.

Latimer C, 2015. Autonomous truck and water cart collide on site UPDATE [online],
Mining Australia, 26 August. Available from: www.miningaustralia.
com.au/news/autonomous-truck-and-water-cart-collide-on-site

Maiti J, Chatterjee S and Bangdiwala S I, 2004. Determinants of work injuries in mines

– an application of structural equation modelling. Injury Control and Safety Promotion,
11(1): 29-37.

Masia U and Pienaar J, 2011. Unravelling safety compliance in the mining industry:
examining the role of work stress, job insecurity, satisfaction and commitment as
antecedents. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 37(1). Retrieved from
http://sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/937/1116 on 27 April 2012

McLain D L and Jarrell KA, 2007. The perceived compatibility of safety and production
expectations in hazardous occupations. Journal of Safety Research, 38, 299-309.

Oxenburgh M, 1991. Increasing Productivity and Profit through Health and Safety,
CCH International Australia, North Ryde.

Paul P S and Maiti J, 2008. The synergic role of sociotechnical and personal
characteristics on work injuries in mines. Ergonomic 51(5): 737-767.

Pfeffer J, 2005. Producing sustainable competitive advantage through the effective

management of people. Academy of Management Executive, 19(4), 95-106.

Williden M, Schofield G, and Duncan S, 2012. Establishing links between Health and
Productivity in the New Zealand Workforce, Journal of Occupational Medicine, 54(5),
545 – 550.

Zohar D, 1980. Safety climate in industrial organisations: theoretical and applied

implications, Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(1980):96-102.
http://www.ausimmbulletin.com/feature/using-mine-fire-simulation-software-to-enhance-mine-safety/

Using mine fire simulation software to

enhance mine safety

 By Casey Slaughter, PhD Candidate, Monash University and Jerry Tien MAusIMM,
Chair of Mining, Head of Mining and Resource Engineering, Monash University

Computer programs can have significant benefits in training mine workers and rescue
teams through dynamic and detailed scenarios

Mine health and safety is a critical component of the mining process, and a
comprehensive and varied training program is integral to safe operations. Training
programs can be as simple as periodic evacuation drills through to comprehensive,
industry-wide disaster simulations such as the Queensland Level 1 exercises. While the
topics in these training courses are varied, there are often portions dealing with mine
fires and firefighting methods.

The most prevalent training systems that incorporate mine fire information are new
miner safety training programs. These aim to give the average miner a working
knowledge of fire prevention, firefighting and self-escape methods as well as a
rudimentary knowledge of mine ventilation and gases common in these scenarios.
Usually, more advanced fire theory is omitted because it is often too complex to convey
readily using traditional training methods of lectures and presentations. Demonstrations
and practical exercises can sometimes convey these ideas, but they are not always
feasible to set up and some require strict oversight for safety considerations, especially
firefighting exercises and demonstrations with live fire. Immersive virtual reality can
overcome some of the difficulties of live demonstrations (Tonegato, 2013), yet this
option may still suffer from feasibility issues due to the cost and equipment required.

Another set of common safety training programs are periodic evacuation drills. While
typically just a matter of escapeway navigation and familiarisation, many mines add
levels of realism by describing the scenario that necessitates the evacuation – often a
mine fire of some kind. Typically, these are led by mine management and only involve
the section foreman instigating preplanned evacuation plans at a predetermined time.
The alarm is sounded and the miners proceed to follow the evacuation procedures and
exit the mine. Rarely do these involve judgement or decision-making on the part of
those involved, despite it being demonstrated that the addition of these aspects improves
training significantly (Brnich and Hall, 2013).

The Level 1 emergency exercises staged yearly in Queensland are an advanced form of
mine safety training. These are large-scale, industry-wide exercises that aim to test a
mine’s emergency response system with a detailed and realistic scenario. The past
reports from 2008-2014 are available online at the Queensland Government’s
Department of Natural Resources and Mines website.

Fire simulation software as a training tool

Computer-based simulations have had a role in training for a number of years in other
sectors, especially for testing judgement and decision-making in emergency scenarios
(Brown et al, 2004). They have also been used in Australia in the form of virtual reality
environments used in training scenarios by training and research groups (Tonegato,
2013). The virtual reality environments are used for a variety of simulations, including
normal operations, vehicle accidents, outbursts and mine fires. There are also dedicated
programs available to individual mines that can help add capabilities to their training
programs, and, in some cases, they may already be available with the mine’s ventilation
simulation software package.

Mine fire simulation programs have been readily available since the early 1980s. There
are a variety available today for use in the mining industry, such as Ventsim Premium,
VNetPC’s Mine Fire module and Ventgraph. These programs have been analysed
repeatedly and compared against validation trials and data from actual mine fire events
to judge their accuracy (Dziurzynski et al, 1997; Gillies, Walla and Wu, 2004; Laage
and Yang, 1998; Pritchard, 2010; Wala et al, 1995), with acceptable results. These
programs all have the ability to model mine fires within a ventilation model based on
given parameters: the fire site, fuel involved, fire development time, etc (Brake, 2013).
They also allow for the modelling of response strategies to be trialled in the simulation,
demonstrating their effectiveness in reducing the temperature in the fire area or clearing
fire gases and smoke from affected areas with reasonable accuracy (Pritchard, 2010).
Some use a scripting feature that allows for more detailed control over the simulation
that can also be saved and repeated later without user intervention.

To date, mine fire simulation programs have been mainly used in academia and have
seen limited use in mine health and safety training, with one notable exception: the
Queensland Level 1 emergency exercises. Introduced to the exercises in the mid-2000s,
the programs have been used to a limited extent to plan out some of the scenarios,
mainly gas and contaminant concentration and spread (Gillies et al, 2004; Department
of Natural Resources and Mines, 2014). However, they have seen quite extensive
testing and validation in those areas and have proven to be quite reliable in predicting
the effects of a mine fire on the ventilation system.
It should be noted that these programs do have some limitations. They are only capable
of modelling system-wide ventilation changes unless special care is taken in the model
construction. Furthermore, some of the more insidious aspects of mine fires, such as
smoke rollback and flashovers, are not capable of being modelled at this time in the
readily available programs. However, Zhou and Smith (2011) have developed an
algorithm for estimating smoke rollback, which they have integrated into the MFIRE
3.0 program and validated with experimental results.

Fire simulation software for basic health and safety

training
Mine fire simulation software offers a unique opportunity to expand the knowledge base
of the general workforce when it comes to ventilation and mine fires. This is due to the
software’s visual nature and its ability to present dynamic conditions and show how
they vary with time. Currently, most basic safety training touches briefly on the
ventilation type for the mine, with emphasis placed on which airways carry fresh air.
Additional modules may deal briefly with mine gases and firefighting but rarely are
these all tied together as they are in reality. For simplicity, gases are treated separately
from ventilation than mine fires and are usually presented in a very static way. The
ventilation provides a constant amount of air, gases are either present or not and fires
are of a certain size and type. While throwing new miners, often with little formal
schooling beyond a secondary degree, directly into the complex and dynamic world of
ventilation might be difficult initially, it will give an enhanced appreciation of how the
entire mining process is interconnected.

After introducing the usual basic principles of ventilation, fire simulation models can
demonstrate these principles in a dynamic fashion by showing the contaminant spread
during a mine fire and how the heat from the flames can alter the velocity and pressure
of the ventilating air currents. This will drive home the fact that these are dynamic
scenarios that can rapidly worsen and prevent successful escape in a hazardous
situation. Furthermore, these scenarios can show that when the alarm sounds, the
workers may not see ready evidence of a mine fire. By the time that conditions at their
working section dictate evacuation, the fire may have already cut off their escape route.

Several examples are usually presented during normal fire training at this level, showing
the typical results of a fire in several different airways: level entries, entries on the
incline and entries on the decline (Mitchell, 1996). As an example, the airway on an
incline was selected (Figure 1). The parameters were adapted from Mitchell’s (1996)
text to serve as a comparison with his results. The system reached an equilibrium after
about 30 minutes of simulated time. The results showed an air reversal in the parallel
entry and dangerous levels of carbon monoxide (>1200 ppm) downstream of the fire
and in the parallel airways (Figure 2). This is a simplistic model but serves as a good
demonstration of buoyancy effects and fire-generated air pressures. A simple simulation
like this can easily demonstrate dynamically the complex interactions that fires have
with ventilation underground.
The scenario can also be used to enhance understanding of the ventilation system and
how the air is distributed throughout the mine due to the dynamic display of spreading
contaminants. This can help miners visualise where their intake air comes from and
what areas may need to be investigated when contaminants are discovered in their
sections. Simulation data can also easily be integrated into evacuation drills. Based on
gas readings, miners would be expected to demonstrate when they would don self-
rescue devices, determine which escapeway to use or return to refuge chambers as a last
resort if conditions prevent their escape. Providing these realistic conditions, even as a
mental exercise, would help better prepare miners for emergencies by giving them
realistic expectations of the conditions they may face.

Fire simulation software for mine emergency response

team training
Mine rescue teams have a much better understanding of basic ventilation and
firefighting integrated into their training. The use of mine fire simulation can augment
this, but the real benefit is in the increased realism for the development of training
scenarios. Adding in realistic gas concentrations that the team has to interpret before
developing and implementing an action plan helps build better expectations of actual
emergency scenarios. The mine fire simulation programs can also demonstrate the
effects that a mine rescue team’s actions have on the ventilation system and fire in a
dynamic way.

A training program can be devised so that the team is presented with an emergency
scenario involving a fire. The team would be given a set of tasks, with the trainers
already anticipating an appropriate ‘solution’. This can be programed into the scenario
where the teams assess the conditions underground and then make changes to the
ventilation system to try and control the fire, such as starting or slowing a fan or
building stoppings or regulators. This decision-making process will build the team’s
collective experience in dealing with these types of scenarios in a much safer and more
practical way. These computer-based scenarios can be much bigger in scope than
typical training simulations, such as smoke chambers and fire pits. Scenarios can be
created virtually that involve entire sections of the mine and are done in a more
controlled environment. While they cannot replace practical training in simulated smoke
with actual firefighting equipment, the strength of the simulation software is in showing
the consequences and results of a team’s actions in a dynamic way that more closely
resembles what they may actually see underground.

Mine fire simulations can be developed in conjunction with other training tools to
increase realism. For instance, in most mine rescue contests or training, gas
concentrations are given to the teams as either oral information or written on placards
after they demonstrate proper techniques with their gas detectors or by reading a
mystery gas using typical calibration cylinders and ‘gas boxes’. However, a new system
has been developed using an app that allows for gas detectors and their readings to be
simulated (Alexander et al, 2012). Systems such as these allow a trainer to dynamically
adjust the simulated gas concentrations at will based on the scenario and the team’s
actions. When combined with a fire simulation model, a set of realistic conditions can
be created and conveyed to the teams through realistic means.

Fire simulation software for emergency response

management training
Mine fire simulation programs can be used in a similar fashion for mine management
training in how to deal with fire scenarios. This is similar to the use seen in the Level 1
exercises in Queensland, which expose the management team to an emergency scenario
to train them in proper procedures. While the Level 1 exercises are good, their scope
can and should be expanded. Smaller scenarios involving just the management team
could be more easily arranged and have less impact on mining operations, allowing
them to be conducted more frequently.

Conclusion
Mine fire simulation has seen some limited use within the mining industry with success.
It is a powerful and adept tool that can improve mine safety by enhancing training
programs. Current training programs often treat mine fires as a static event when
experience shows that this is not the case. Using a mine fire simulation package allows
a fire event to be simulated while reporting the effects of the fire dynamically as they
change. This allows for training scenarios to be devised that are more realistic to what
workers, rescue teams and management will likely face.  

This article is an extract from a paper presented at the Australian Mine Ventilation
Conference 2015. The full paper can be purchased via the AusIMM Shop.

References

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Development of a gas monitor simulator and mine rescue contest field trials, Mining
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software, in Proceedings Australian Mine Ventilation Conference 2013, pp 265–276
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and Worley B, 2004. Computer simulation for emergency incident management
[online], US Department of Homeland Security. Available from: e-reports-
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Department of Natural Resources and Mines, 2014. Queensland Level 1 mine

emergency exercise reports [online], Queensland Government. Available from:
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report-2014.pdf

Dziurzynski W, Nawrat S, Roszkowski J and Trutwin W, 1997. Computer simulation of

mine ventilation disturbed by fires and the use of fire extinguishers, in Proceedings
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Gillies A D S, Wala A and Wu H, 2004. Case studies from application of numerical

simulation software to examining the effects of fires on mine ventilation systems, in
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Gillies A D S, Wu H, Reece D and Hosking R, 2004. Use of mine fire simulation for
emergency preparedness, in Proceedings Queensland Mining Industry Health and
Safety Conference, pp 13–22.

Laage L and Yang H, 1998. Mine fire experiments and simulation with MFIRE, in
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Mitchell D, 1996. Mine Fires: Prevention, Detection, Fighting, third edition, (Primedia
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Pritchard C, 2010. Validation of the Ventgraph program for use in metal/non-metal

mines, in Proceedings 13th US/North American Mine Ventilation Symposium, pp 455–
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incorporation of smoke rollback into MFIRE 3.0, Journal of Fire Sciences, 30(1):29–
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http://www.mining.com/space-mining-absolutely-viable-nasa-expert/

Space mining absolutely viable — NASA expert

Cecilia Jamasmie | 4 days ago | 3,869 | 10
PEOPLEMINE FACEBOOK LINKEDIN TWITTER EMAIL PRINT

<img width="900" height="549" src="http://www.mining.com/wp-

content/uploads/2016/09/900x549xspace-mining-absolutely-viable-nasa-
expert.jpg.pagespeed.ic.v7UZHVzB7H.jpg" class="img-responsive wp-post-image" alt="Space
mining absolutely viable — NASA expert" data-pagespeed-url-hash="3586583146"/>
Artist's rendition courtesy of NASA.

While many still see space mining as science fiction, the development of a
resources industry and manufacturing supply chain out off-Earth is both
plausible and beneficial, according to former NASA researcher and current
University of Central Florida professor Dr. Phil Metzger.

In an extensive proposal released earlier this month, the academic — whose

work at NASA included developing Lunar and Martian architecture — says
that the main challenge for mining near-Earth celestial bodies is neither
technology nor cost, but simply “convincing people it is realistic.”
The main challenge for space mining is neither technology nor cost, but simply convincing
people it is realistic — Dr. Phil Metzger.
Metzger also argues that taking mining beyond this world would be beneficial
for the economy, the environment, and science, adding that making it a reality
would take up about 3% to12% of NASA’s budget each year for the next few
decades.
The researcher even describes a three-stage plan to achieve what he calls a
Self-sufficient Replicating Space Industry, or SRSI, in which mainly robotic
mining operations would extract resources that would be transformed into
useful goods at robotic manufacturing facilities located out of this world.

Geologists believe asteroids are packed with iron ore, nickel and precious
metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, making up a
market valued in the trillions of dollars.

Not only private companies are planning to mine celestial bodies.

Governments have joined the race too — US President Barack Obama signed
a law in November granting American citizens rights to own resources mined
in space. Shortly after, Luxembourg inked a deal with two US space research
companies, in an effort to become a global centre for asteroid mining.