Project RAMA

A Californian company wants to turn asteroids into autonomous spacecraft in order to mine their surfaces before relocating them in space

A Californian company wants to turn asteroids into autonomous spacecraft which will then mine and relocate them in space

Every year NASA selects a range of speculative projects through its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. It is through this program that Made In Space (MIS) has received an award for Project RAMA. The project is partly named after an Arthur C. Clarke story where an empty, automated colony ship built in an asteroid arrives in the Solar System – the initials in this case stand for Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata.

Based in Mountain View, California, MIS was founded in 2010 with the aim of using additive manufacturing – or 3D printing – to dramatically reduce the costs of operations in space. In additive manufacturing a supply material, often a plastic filament or metal dust, is fused together into objects rather than cut out of a bigger piece. For launches from Earth this would save volume and mass, and space missions would be able to print spare parts as needed. MIS supplied a printer to the International Space Station in order to test the process in microgravity.

But MIS’ ultimate goal, which would enable mass settlement in space, is to employ additive manufacturing with materials sourced in space; this is where RAMA comes in. Not only would it save the cost and difficulty of launching stuff from Earth – we’d only need to send people and

their luggage – but there are far more resources available up there.

The RAMA concept will likely consist of a whole range of technologies that could be deposited on an asteroid, where they could extract raw materials, process them into usable forms and pass them on. These materials could then be used for additive manufacturing to build things – possibly even bigger versions of the extraction and manufacturing systems. A small initial lander could build up an asteroid-scale installation out of the asteroid itself.

RAMA’s other main system will be propulsion, which will use material from the asteroid as a reactive mass. In its most basic form this could mean firing rubble off the surface with an electromagnetic catapult. Better performance could be gained if the asteroid could provide water or hydrocarbons that could be used in a conventional rocket engine. Once a RAMA installation is in place on an asteroid it could be moved en-masse to wherever in the Solar System its resources were needed: a self-contained and propelled mine and factory all in one.

It only takes a small change in speed to gradually change the orbit of an asteroid, so as well as delivering resources to future space colonies, RAMA may also prove useful for Earth defence. Astronomers are making increasing efforts to track and record the orbits of potentially Earth-crossing asteroids. When a candidate is found, its orbit is analysed so that the uncertainty of its future path is reduced until we can be sure whether it will hit the Earth or not. Because of the consistency of orbits we should know this several years – even decades – in advance. A RAMA mission could then be sent to the offending asteroid to push it off course or collect it for its resources – saving the planet while also gaining materials.

Although NIAC projects are not expected to deliver immediate results, RAMA does build on technologies that are already maturing. Now it’s just a question of scale. MIS could soon become one of humanity’s most significant companies, making huge profits while enabling space settlement and protecting Earth from asteroid impacts in the process.