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.

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.

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.)

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.