Conference Room 1729, KGF, Bangalore, Circa 2118  

Kolar Gold Fields have been recently resurrected by the Indian Entrepreneur Antriksh Shah who made his fortune in the hi-tech startup. He has bought all the remaining physical as well as the trademarks and branding. But he has been very secretive with what he wants to do with all these assets.

Meanwhile Srini Asteroid 99944 is a Near Earth Object which will be travelling close to Earth’s vicinity in the year 2121. Scientists have already sent out probes and have found that there are 500,000 metric tonnes of gold that is almost double of what has been either mined or found to be on earth.

The conference room is full to the brim and everyone is listening to the Chief Scientist who has worked for the Indian space agency for a long time and recently joined hands with Mr. Shah. The mission being talked about is the first major project for the new KGF. Everyone in the room is excited about the possibilities 

The mission has been named Kanaka and the idea is to first get Srini to come into the gravitational pull of earth which means it will be on a collision path. If anything goes wrong this could jeopardize the whole ecosystem and earth can lose its stability for a while. The asteroid Srini has a diameter of about 350m and is full of rocks that are full of gold.

The proposal is to slightly nudge Srini  from its orbit by pushing it with a small controlled explosion. Once it is over the Indian Ocean and coming with it full speed into the Earth’s atmosphere it will catch fire. Once it is about 50 KM above the earth it needs to be detonated by a larger controlled explosion. The asteroid is not stuck together by  great gravitational pull force and with the explosion it will disintegrate into smaller rocks. 

All this needs to be done in a faraway remote Indian Ocean so that all these rocks can be collected by nets that have been spread over hundreds of nautical miles by using large ships that have been hired from tanker companies that have almost gone bankrupt due to massive movement away from fossil fuels. They have also hired surveillance planes that can make flights to these remote locations to bring personnel and supplies.

All this needs to be done in complete secrecy and the reason for that is both governmental and economical. If the Government finds it out they may not allow such a risky mission by a private enterprise. The economical reason was also equally important. Everyone knows how the market operates and the demand and supply problem, if suddenly there is a known supply of thousands of metric tons of pure gold there is a potential rout in the commodities market and prices can go down to unsustainable levels for the company and the project

Antriksh was clever and after spending years in the startup world, knows how to find a path and keep going. He found a way to do something that will be praised by the world, the government and the citizens alike. He announced that his company has taken up removal of plastic wastes from the remote Indian Ocean. He sourced the technology from a partner who has in this business for a while. He put those big machines on the Tankers and put the nets that were very similar to something he needed to collect the asteroid rocks.

The parallel plan was progressing very well and they had started removing huge amounts of plastic wastes. Thousands of metric tones and he was calling this also gold and this all can be recycled into and put into the circular economy. This was done for a couple of years to make it a normal process. He has got a bunch of venture capital from people who want to support the green economy. The company has also started making some revenue from all the waste that they have collected. Everything is going well and they have been nominated for various government awards.

But the main project Kanaka was also in full swing at the KGF campus and the asteroid will be close enough in another two years and they need to make sure the nudging happens in a short period of a couple hours between 1800-2000 hours on 14th August 2121. They have got two projects in advanced stages for a smaller and larger explosion that they need to do. Huge underground safe houses have been created in the erstwhile mines of Kolar Gold Field for all the upcoming haul that they are going to make.

Antriksh and his team is very positive and they are publicizing their waste removal from the Indian Ocean quite a bit but have hidden their primary goal of Asteroid mining and known only to the core team which was all present in the conference room.

These days, the story of the King who asks God to give him a boon that everything he touches becomes gold comes to Antriksh’s mind all the time. This is a situation more or less similar. Having more gold than the whole world is almost the same. The risk of bringing an asteroid to the collision course of Earth and then making an explosion without the world not knowing is a tall order anyways. 

Mission Kanaka is round the corner and Antriksh and his core team has never been more confused. The asteroid has come to a point on its orbit where it needed the nudge. The company is getting great support for its waste removal project and it has been greatly successful and all the waste is nothing less than gold. 

The team decided to leave the asteroid to go on its path and not nudge it. All the machines, spacecraft and explosives are underground in KGF safehouses. The Kanaka team still jokes about using it in case of any asteroid if it actually is on the collision course with earth  and to harness the minerals even if it is not gold!

                                                                         Finish!