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Is Space Mining Feasible?
Roland Piquepaille writes "There is a large amount of precious minerals on the Moon and Mars. Would it be feasible to bring these valuable materials back on Earth? Space.com says that mining specialists and space engineers, who gathered at the latest Space Resources Roundtable, think the answer is yes. But there are many issues to solve. The first one is to build a permanent base. Then, you have to live on space resources. The article looks at other issues, such as strategic and economic potentials, before examining legal concerns about working conditions and extraterrestrial resource ownership. As the article says about lawyers, it 'turns out you can't leave Earth without them.' This summary contains more details and a rendering of a possible commercial Lunar base."
Won't this eventually alter the gravitational balances that keep everything cool in terms of orbits and what not?
I'd be a little concerned because we generally are very bad at stopping ourselves once we get started (e.g. burning dead dinosaurs, eating Twinkies...)
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Who ever said we needed to go to have people? It seems with todays advancements in robitics it would be much more effecient to have robots controled by humans down on earth to set about the task of space mining. You also eliminate a large amount of problems with staining life outside of our atmosphere.
Food for thought...
Maybe this will be the final push thats needed to get Nasa the funding it needs. I may be alone in thinking this, but I believe that Nasa is solely responsible for America being where it is today. Think about how many innovations came out of the space program. What Nasa does today fuels the industries of tomorrow.
Or maybe I'm just asking to be modded as offtopic.
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
Would it be feasible to carry minerals by aeroplanes? No, it wouldn't, unless they're extremely valuable minerals.
Much less it's feasible to carry them from space, as space travelling is yet much more expensive than flying.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
If you read the article, or even the slashdot blurb, it's talking about making a PROFIT in space, not spending billions and billions into a blackhole.
After the investors make profit in space, nothing says they won't make donations about AIDS, famine, crime, erosion, etc.
Clearly your troll of for another thread, not this one!
The question would be if there are "large amounts of precious minerals" on the moon and Mars, would they still be valuable if the market was flooded by these new sources?
most of the mass out there is useless crap, it would all stay where we dig it, the good stuff is so small that it will do nothing in terms of gravitational balance.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
America spent what, 2-3 billion dollars to bring a hundred pound of rocks back from the moon. I'm sure they could do the same for Mars, given 50-60 billion dollars. So it's been proven that it is technically feasible. It has also been proven that it is not economically feasible.
The parent actually makes good points. While I'm all for technological innovation, I believe things like this should only be attempted when all of mankind (yes, even the poor, black people, the hispanics, the asians, the indians, etc...) can benefit. We have a lot to be working on before we go for pie in the sky dreams like this. For one thing, human nature needs some adjustment. We need to find ways to eliminate the selfishness and fear that are the cause of so many of humanity's problems. Until one human can look at any other human and realize that we are all the same and deserve to be treated as such, mining in space is the wrong place to look. I say we start by killing everyone who is a racist.
Resource collection from the moon or Mars is certainly possible, but it would make considerably more sense to use the materials mined/collected to help subsidize the operations which would be necessary for such mining/resource collection to begin with, such as the recently discussed plans to construct two large photovoltaic arrays on opposite sides of the moon and beam the power back to earth via microwaves.
like social security?
sure, if we sent humans. but why not send machines?
the only question left in human space exploration - is do we really need to send -humans- into space?
and the answer to that is currently no. there is nothing in space, aside from studying the effects of spacefaring life on human physiology that couldn't be done (and more efficiently and cheaper) from the ground via robots and drones.
(no food or water requirements, no downtime for sleep, no heating requirements, no oxygen requirements, etc)
studying the effects of spacefaring life on human physiology is made nearly moot by those same automated and remote agents.
humans don't need to leave earth until it is necessary for either population dispersal (to mitigate the effects of a 'killer-asteroid' on our species), pure recreation, or should communication between Earth and our remote explorers be too slow for planning to result in effective utilization.
i think the best possible space program will have the first manned human space flight to Mars - ending with the successful automated landing at a fully-constructed, tested, and verified human-friendly space station -- completed ahead of time fully by machines launched in advance.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Mining (with importation to the Earth) will only be feasible if energy is cheap enough. Otherwise the cost of delta-V (the delivery cost of getting the materials from the destination to the Earth) will make the materials not cost effective. It takes energy to boost materials from the Moon, move materials to low-Earth orbit, bring them down to Earth, etc.
Platinum might be a very valuable metal (until the market is flooded by extra-planetary platinum), but I would expect that extraction costs would be extremely high in space and delivery costs would chew up any remaining profit (and not cover the amortized costs for R&D and initial launch of the space mining colony).
The real value for space mining will be in self-sustaining colonies.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I imagine the cost of getting the materials safely to Earth, where they can compete with local sources, would do a lot to offset the savings generated by the sudden surplus of such minerals.
I further imagine that the value of these space minerals will be based on the new things they allow us to do: manufacture things in space. That is, their value will be based on the demand for space-built items (stations, mining facilities, moonbases, city-ships, &c.). So long as these space-built items remain desireable, demand will remain high, even as scarcity is reduced in space the same way it's been reduced on earth.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Summary orbit of moon:earth set will remain untouched. And because earth mass increases, moon mass decreases, the effects like ocean level changes will remain untouched. Bringing material from Mars will lenghten Earth orbit, decreasing global temperature - just go on with global warming to counterballance. Or export excess water from ocean level rise - will surely be needed if you plan growing plants to provide local food and oxygen.
Plus assume supereffective space lift, 1 ton/s, how much time to change earth mass by 1%?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm not sure I like the idea, though, of having speculation in Martian land at this point. Ownership, sure -- by homesteaders taking possession, with a limit on acres per homesteader. Yes, I know that Earth will be ill-equipped to handle any land disputes between folks on Mars...on the other hand, the homesteaders will be ill-equipped to defend any large areas, as well. All the more reason not to have the Full Faith, Credit and Arsenal of any or all countries committed to their defense.
Hmmm...which probably means that the ownership issue, isn't: Anyone that's not on Earth can basically say "You want to stop us taking posession, come up and take it back." Although it does still make financing a problem, unless investors can be convinced that profits can be generated even if the "estate" isn't "real."
TSG
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
The materials (iron, rare earths, iridium, nickel) that you could bring back simply do not command prices high enough to make it worthwhile - they're in the few dollars to few hundred dollars/kg range.
This might change IF someone invented fusion that worked, and required He3. Then it might be worth it. Don't call me until that happens... and don't hold your breath, either.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Sound can pass through solids. R2D2 is fixed to the space ship, and any noise he makes would go through the metal of the ship and into the cockpit. Since humans can whistle and be heard 2 miles away, it's pretty simple for R2D2's clicking to be heard 4 feet away through metal.
Once again use common sense.
um, look at the exponents in this sentence: You could move 1 million metric TONS (10^9 kg) of material from the moon (7.3 x 10^22 kg) to the earth (6 x 10^24 kg).....and nothing would change. About 60,000 tons (6 x 10^7 kg) of material fall to the earth from space each year anyway.
I don't want to burst your bubble here but what the government giveth, it can take away. How much effort does it really take to change their minds and declare the band regulated? And since there is yet any commercial space travel, why would we need a governing agency? Don't you think that creating an agency to regulate an industry that doesn't exist would create a more bloat than already exists? Where do you think all the regulators would come from? Seems to me, all those goverment workers in nasa! Btw, I work as a contractor for nasa, and they do some really great things in materials science, atmospheric sciences though remote satellite sensors, and propulsion technologies. The shuttle and ISS are extreme examples of bloat. But a large portion of what nasa does it does extremely well.
Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?
Seastead this.
Actually, lawyers are are only licenced to practice within their jurisdiction. AFAIK, there is no law society or equivalent for space. Lawyers cannot practice law in space (unless the place they happen to be is deemed to be someone's national territory, in which the laws of judicial "standing" for that jurisdiction would apply). It seems that the article is referring to the property issues arising from mining in places where there is no property law. Since space doesn't even have the equivalent of high-seas maritime law, lawyers won't have much to do in space. Except fly out of airlocks, if slashdotters ae crewing the spacecraft...
Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
It would only seem reasonable to mine extraterrestrial sources when we "need" them. In other words, if we have a shortage of iron on our planet then it would make sense to go and mine the closest extraterrestrial sources. Even in that situation, only if our recovery techniques on terrestrial iron wouldn't yield enough supply for the demand. The only other reason to mine an extraterrestrial sources would be to supply/resupply a space exploration journey. In that vein, it would be cheaper to supply a mission that was launched from the moon with material mined from the moon, than it would be to supply from Earth.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
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The value-per-pound of minerals (even gold) exceeds the cost-of-launch-transport-and-reentry-per-pound.
Or in formulaic terms (V/W) > (CLTR/W)
(where W is weight)
Thus we have the inherent problem of space mining.
Basically the problem is that 'gold' is either too heavy, or not valuable enough -- depending on how you look at it.
However... if we were talking about 'spice' from Arrakis, or 'gold pressed latinum'... or 'Droids' even... then the whole space trading would totally make sense.
(of course)
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UN? Legally Bound? Give me a break. The only "binds" on those treaties is peer pressure from other countries. Treaties are pieces of paper with flowery words on them unless someone is willing to enforce them. Trust me, as soon as a country figures out how to make a significant amount of money by owning space resources, those words will go right out the window. International Law is a nice phrase that makes people feel good, and it is useful for settling things that people are willing to fight over, but if push came to shove, someone will force private property rights on space objects no matter how much the UN kicked and screamed.
In the 1960s, it was a young, brash agency with a mandate. Now it's just another government bureaucracy.
As you say, the cost of extracting the item on earth would need to be greater than the cost of extracting from space. However, the "value" of the mineral extracted (from earth or space) shouldn't ever be less than a certain percentage above the cost of extracting that mineral, and definitely not lower than that cost. An abundance of some object doesn't ever reduce the "value" of said object to zero. Especially, when that object is a "raw material" for other objects (which means it will be in demand) as is the case with most minerals. The abundance of a desired object will keep the cost of the object "down", but will never cause the object's value to reach zero. People pay for dirt, for air, and for other "abundant" objects when they have a demand for said object.
This is a gross simplification of certain aspects of economic theory. However, it is useful for conceptualizing "value" as related to "cost" for the purposes of this post.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Oddly enough, it's those two nations who have announced new and aggressive space programs.
What do they know that you don't?
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