NASA On Mining Extraterrestrial Sources

FortKnox writes "Looks like something from the game "Homeworld", but NASA discusses mining ore from planets/asteroids or any other source of "Cosmic Dirt"." I remember debating this idea in high school debate - it's a wonderful idea.

Comments

Recent IEEE Spectrum article on Asteroid Mining

[orac2]

I'm some shameless self promotion, /. reader's may be interested to read this article by Mark Ingebretson in August's issue IEEE Spectrum on the topic - he talks about how water, not metal, is the most likely first choice for a mining economy.

Don't forget about energy

[Walter Bell]

One of my co-workers was telling me that NASA is also actively researching the possible drilling for petroleum on other planets (Mercury comes to mind, IIRC). He said that there are a lot of ways that "fossil" fuels could have been generated on other planets through chemical reactions between the soil and the atmosphere and the responsible research group would like send a few probes out in the coming years to investigate the possibility.

Although an incentive for continued reliance on petroleum is a Bad Thing(tm) for the environment, alternative energy research, and noise, it is nice to see that there may be a breakthrough that helps ease our pain when we run out of oil on Earth.

~wally

mine WHAT?

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

I just read the article, and the big unanswered question is: WHAT are you going to mine?

Taylor explained that work should focus on the "unusual economics" of planetary ores, including the relationship of lunar and Martian development to each other.

Unusual economics is a good euphimism for "ungodly expensive", especially in transport costs. Whatever we're mining, it would have to be extremely valuable per ounce, right?

Aggregate will be an important resource on both the Moon and Mars. Here on Earth, it is the most mined material in the United States, at some 2.3 billion tons a year. It is used for roads, concrete, bridges, roofing materials, and glass

Aggregate? Not Iridium, Gold, Plutonium, Scandium, or "rare earth" metals so expensive we haven't even heard of them? AGGREGATE? Rock?

I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Space travel costs are in the billions of dollars per ton right now. A metric ton of aggregate crap... you can mine out of my back yard.

I must be missing something.

Re:mine WHAT?

[SirSlud]

> Space travel costs are in the billions of dollars per ton

Isn't that because of takeoff? Once you get something going in space (ie, out of gravities way), it's cheaper to move shit in space than on earth. Basically, you get to stop paying tariffs to our good friends friction and air resistance.

I suppose once you start saying that you're going to mine the galaxy, you've already got some sort of low-cost method of escaping earths atmosphere, a la space elevator, or maybe even anti-gravity.

Anyone here read James Blish's City in the Stars? (I think thats what it was called)

Where's My 'Ore?

[StaticEngine]

That's good thinking on NASA's part, because after being cooped up in a spaceship on a multi-month trip to Mars, I'd be in a mood for a few hours with any 'ore I could find.

Ba Dum Bum.

Birth of the Orbital Railgun...

[Bonker]

...Or any other of a hundred disasters waiting to happen.

One of the big, big problems I see with interplanetary mining is the inherent possibilities for danger in the celestial shipment process.

Say you mine an Iron-rich asteroid, and then send the packets of ore back home to earth via a cheap, long-trajectory orbit. How easy would it be to hijack huge chunks of ore from their trajectories and then fire them at the enemy of your choice on the planet with the aid of a rail gun.

I'm not a engineer, but I've seen enough 'build your own railgun' pages out there to know that it would be fairly easy and cheap for any given interplanetary free-lancer to build such a weapon in orbit.

There is also a high probability of space accidents. With all that ore just floating around, someone is bound to hit it sooner or later. Worse, suppose that the mining activities send large-enough chunks of poorly aimed metal-rich debris toward earth? Worse, suppose mining activities affect the orbit of certain Near-Earth Asteroids.

Asteroid and Planetary mining is a very good thing, because it will help save the Earth's environment, provide massive amounts of employment and wealth on Earth. Unfortuneately, there are very serious risks that should be addressed before mining begins.

comets

[Alien54]

If they're going to go as far as start mining on Mars, then why not just colonize it and start up some industry and communities there?

I suspect that more resources are going to be needed. And a bit of terraforming to make it much more sustainable. You want to be able to have the thing last on it's own, sustain itself and grow.

This gets into things like altering the paths of comets so that they crash into Mars depositing all kinds of extra water into the place. But that raises all kinds of questions. For example there is this old debate on if the earth is being constantly pelted on by mini-comets. If this is happening on Earthe, what is going on at mars?

All kinds of things to talk about.

Re:Mines in Space

[Jburkholder]

Surely the primary focus of "Exterrestrial Mining" would be to produce raw materials needed for space exploration and colonization, not just to bring it back to Earth in lieu of terrestrial sources?

Watershed moment in space exploration

[Tsar]

Nothing ever collected in space has ever been practically useful. Dust, rocks, etc. were only used as research material, and then only back on earch. In effect, when it comes to space travel, we've always carried a sack lunch, and tend to pack out our trash.

In Earth's history, voyages of discovery have always taken enough supplies to get them to their destination, then they used indiginous resources to keep going. How far could Columbus (nasty Eurotrash that he was) have kept going if he'd had to get back before his food ran out?

Mining operations in space needn't be self-sufficient to represent a new era in space exploration; they need only become marginally profitable, and we'll be over the hump. The new "New World" will begin to move past the exploration phase, and on to exploitation and settlement. Thank God we aren't carrying smallpox around anymore.

What they don't seem to mention

[drinkypoo]

Is that space-based mining's biggest saving comes when you build big heavy things in orbit. This is especially true of asteroid mining since you don't have to move the mass off of a planet, paying to fight gravity.

It costs quite a bit of money just to put a pound of mass into orbit. Just looking for a quick ballpark, I found http://www.orbit6.com/et/ngfido94.htm which asserts:

Launching the 80 tons of fuel into orbit will cost about $150 million? for one launch of a Shuttle-Derived HLV (or its Energia equivalent) or $1.5 billion if Titan IV vehicles (5 Titan IV's at $300 million each) are used (see how cost-effective developing a Heavy-Lift vehicle would be. Without a Heavy-Lift vehicle it would cost ten times as much to launch 80 tons of fuel to LEO: $150 million versus $1.5 billion. An HLV would pay back its development costs in short order).

So it's about US$1.875M to launch one ton of mass into orbit (best case.) Therefore one ton of, say, iron in orbit is worth whatever a ton of iron is worth normally, PLUS some fraction of US$1.875M.

If you're building things for space, the best way to go is to build them IN space, which should cut their cost dramatically. We shouldn't forget about reusing the shuttle's bigass tanks, which NASA says they can do for free, and supposedly will do for anyone who is willing to do something responsible with them. We should be thinking of ways to use those tanks to do something clever WRT space-based mining, because they're cheap. Perhaps one should build some sort of machining facility, and a smelter; Having done that it should be possible to make ISS parts or similar. This would save huge piles of money, because you only have to lift the most specialized components.

Asteroids = $$$$$

[cryptochrome]

I don't know if anyone remembers this earlier slashdot article, which also discussed the matter of mining space. It also mentioned that one near earth asteroid (NEO 3554 Amun, about 2km wide) that was worth about 20 trillion dollars. Mind you that's in today's market, but I'd say there is more than enough economic incentive to go for it. I don't understand why NASA hasn't already - just one rock could solve their many budgetary woes for years to come, would be a tremendously telegenic venture, and would stimulate practical space technologies tremendously...

Re:Asteroids = $$$$$

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The counter argument is that the asteroid isn't much more valuable than the rock in your backyard- it has much the same abundances; although more platinum group metals.

But the counter-counter argument is that the asteroid has something you don't have in your backyard- a continuous supply of mostly free solar energy. Smelting on the earth is enormously expensive. Smelting at an asteroid only needs a big sheet of foil and you can obtain ~5000C.

Solar ovens give 1.6 kw/m^2. That's a lot. On earth solar power is less than 1/6 of that due to weather, oblique angles, atmospheric effects and this phenomena called 'nighttime'. 200 watts isn't much. 1.6kw is getting respectable.

(And no- solar ovens are not hard to build- they don't require any kind of high precision; but they are not used much on earth chiefly because of weather and mounting/pointing issues, in zero gravity this is not an issue.)

Politics and Self Sufficiency

[Embedded Geek]

Most of the other postings make good, solid points on the economics of these things. Specifically, that any material you find in space just isn't valuble enough to transport the equipment "up the well" to orbit.

But, what about self sufficiency for a space colony? Robinson's Mars series points out how any colony that becomes self sufficient is destained to become its own nation (think of the U.S. colonies in 1776). Extraterretial mining technology would be the first step in that direction.

Most SF on the topic (including Robison) focuses on a revolution scenario, with Earth trying to maintain its grip on the colony in question. On the other hand, skeptics of human space colonization say colonies will never happen beacause they cost too much and will drain resources from Mother Earth over the long term.

What if they're both wrong? Would Earth be willing to front a large, but finite, amount of cash to set up a colony with the understanding that it would one day become an independant political entity and not an ongoing drain on resources? Would immigrants be more willing to join up, and front some of their own capital, with this promise of independance when "the mortgage is paid off"?

Uh. No. Re:mine WHAT?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

"I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Space travel costs are in the billions of dollars per ton right now. A metric ton of aggregate crap... you can mine out of my back yard."

Actually the costs to LAUNCH is "only" ~$2600/kg. That's $2.6 million/tonne, that's 3 orders of magnitude less than you quoted. And although that still sounds expensive, it usually turns out that what is launched costs 5-10x more than that to develop and build; so launch costs aren't the issue.

But that's launch. There's many reasons to think that space transport is going to be many times cheaper than that- if you use space resources to move around; IN space, rather than getting INTO space, the costs are much, much lower. For one thing, reusable interplanetary craft are pretty trivial to design- fully reusable launch vehicles are harder.

Incidentally, some materials are 'ungodly' expensive. Check out the price of platinum group materials- they run at over $500/ounce.

Oh yeah, BTW the underlying cost of launching something into space are under $10/kg. That's more than the fuel costs. We're a long way from that at the moment- but from my studies, there's a pretty convincing argument that that's mainly because the launch rate is so low right now (the costs are, surprisingly, roughly fixed, and amortise across the amount of launched mass).

I'm expecting the launch cost to go down by atleast 4x in the next ten years, and to do the same in the ten years after that. That will put Space Tourism in the ballpark of a Concorde flight.

Not NASA leading the way

[Cujo]

The posting implies that NASA is leading these studies. Not at all. It's primarily the academic community and non-profits like the Space Studies Institute and the National Space Society. NASA generally puts its mouth where its money is, and that's the ISS, which does little or nothing to help advance the cause of space development.

Given the very poor ROI of the ISS, who would seriously trust NASA to lead the way on lunar, asteroid and cometary resource exploitation? The best they can do is sponsor science missions so that we can understand what these resources are and where. In fact, they are doing that.

Like any conference, there will be loads of good and not so good ideas presented, but the fundamental logic is the same: it makes no sense to build things in space with materials brought from the ground. There are loads of materials on the moon (and no biosphere to damage) that have the potential to supply a large proportion of a spacefaring civilization. Big question is, do we want to be a spacefaring civilization?

The Rape of the Moon

[EccentricAnomaly]

"On the Moon, we want to look at those lunar polar regions, where there may be hydrogen concentrations...water ice, perhaps"

Water is far more valuable for being water than for being a source of hydrogen. Mining the ice on the moon for propellant is stupid and short-sighted. The moon has very little water and that water will be needed to support eventual human colonies on the moon.

There is a real danger that missions to the moon in the near future will use the water ice to make propellant and lower their cost. I don't think that wasting this water is a good idea... the Moon is the only water source near Earth that won't cost you hefty launch costs. This lunar water will be valuable to lunar colonies as well as colonies on asteroids and in orbit around the Earth as it will be much easier to get than water from Earth or Mars.

Economics

[photon317]

Another thing is that when/if we establish fully functional mining colonies on the moon, the next stage will be to create the industrial resources there on the moon to construct and launch spacecraft. There's some startup costs getting materials there for the first few spacecraft... but construction and launches should both be much more efficient in a low gravity environment. Those first ships can then hopefully lead to cheaper mining elsewhere (Mars?) for raw materials to build more in space, leading to progressively less and less launches from Earth.