The ARCA (Romanian Association for Cosmonautics and Aeronautics) Space aerospace company launched, at the beginning of this week, at the cosmobase it has established in the village of Stoenesti, the southern Valcea County, a complex project through which it intends to develop by 2027 the technology necessary for the construction and launch of some space vehicles, with the help of which to exploit at low cost the resources located on the asteroids near our planet.
"For the AMi (Asteroid Mining) Exploration programme, we have taken all our experience accumulated over the last 23 years and put it in a project that will define, dare we say it, the development of the space industry for the next decade and beyond. Specifically, AMi is targeting that in the next decades to set up one of the greatest fortunes by creating a service to exploit the resources located on the asteroids near the Earth. Many other companies in the world want to do these things, but they fail, because they foresee the use of extremely expensive missiles, and the key to the success of such a project is the availability of cost-effective technology," said the president of the company, Dumitru Popescu.
"We will use EcoRocket technology, a technology that we have implemented at ARCA and which uses for the first stages a water-based fuel propulsion technology. It is much less efficient than the polluted and toxic fuels currently in use, but it is ecological and, extremely importantly, much, much cheaper. The current missiles are very expensive, and the amount of ore brought in would not be able to cover the value of the flight. Our goal is to bring for each launch a quantity of ore worth 85 million dollars," said the ARCA representative.
"In 2025 it will be the first operational orbital flight for the AMi spacecraft and the re-entry testing in the atmosphere for the recoverable capsule, as well as the manufacture of the second EcoRocket Heavy rocket. In 2026, EcoRocket Heavy and the cosmo-aircraft AMi will carry out a reconnaissance mission to an asteroid rich in precious metals, simulating a mining mission, and in 2027 it will be the first mining mission, aimed at bringing precious metals worth 34 million US dollars and selling the ore to the market. In 2028 it will be the second mining mission with the objective of bringing a load worth 85 million US dollars and the completion of the construction of the third EcoRocket Heavy. In 2029, there will be two more mining missions, in 2030 there will be five more mining missions, and in 2031 there will be nine mining missions and obtaining precious metals worth one billion US dollars. After 2031, the mining operation must become a routine, with a rate of 12 to 24 missions per year. ARCA will proceed to the development of new generations of vehicles destined for missions on larger distances, to the asteroid belt and even further," said the secretary general of the Romanian Aeronautical Federation, engineer Mihai Ilie, also involved in this Romanian approach to conquer the cosmic space.
The estimated budget for the nine years of the project is, according to ARCA representatives, 100 million US dollars, money that they mostly want to attract by putting up for sale an AMi own cryptocurrency, which will be launched next month.
The Arca officials said that, in total, one billion AMi coins will be issued, their initial value being 10 cents, and they will be used especially for the purchase of ore brought from asteroids within the project. Also, for those interested, ARCA has announced that it will make public all the missile technology they have developed so far.AGERPRES
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