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."

Comments

Another shot in the arm?

[Coyote67]

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.

Re:Another shot in the arm?

[kippy]

NASA needs direction not funding change. They were able to get us to the moon since we set a clear atainable but chalenging goal. The budget was only about 10% more in todays dollars to do that. If we redirected NASA's efforts to establishing a Mars exploration and setelment program, we could easily do it. we are in a better position today to go to Mars then we were in the 60's to go to the Moon.

The payoff isn't just Mars or access to the astroid belt. It's a generation of people inspired to persue careers in science and technology that will advance the human race to new levels of existance.

Re:No

[Carnildo]

Once you get off the Earth, space travel is much cheaper than flying. Getting off the Earth takes high-power, politically-correct, inefficient engines firing over short periods of time. Shipping a million tons of iron from an asteroid to the Moon or to Earth orbit can use a slow, energy-efficient engine such as a solar sail, ion drive, or VASIMR engine. Moving personnel from place to place can be done using a politically-inexpedient, high-power method such as a nuclear-thermal engine -- since it's "not in my backyard", there'll be far fewer people blindly reacting to the word "nuclear".

Space mining

[RayBender]

The moon could be made out of cocaine and it wouldn't make economic sense to go get it. At current prices, it's $20,000 to get a kilogram of mass into Earth orbit. You're talking hundreds of billions in investment to get a mining colony in the astroid belt. Taking the Apollo missions as a starting point, and saying you could be 100 times more efficient, it's still $100,000/kg material returned.

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.

Re:Space mining

[RayBender]

Who said anything about current prices? If/when a space elevator is built, which isn't to far off, launch prices will plummet, fuel requirements to reach other parts of the solar system will be greatly reduced, bringing cargo/people down from orbit will be infinitly safer, and the technologies that will be developed once space access is cheap will only improve all of these factors.

I wish I still had my youthful enthusiasm, but having seen Mir re-enter, the Concorde retired, the Shuttle explode twice, and the level of apathy in the American public, I just don't see it happening. Sorry.

A space elevator ("beanstalk") is very far off, regardless of the hype. Even if they could make carbon nanotube strands longer than 10 microns, and even if they could braid them in a fashion where they wouldn't slip, they'd still have to launch a few thousand tons worth of stuff into geosynch orbit. And then they'd have to figure out how to avoid getting the tether cut by space debris... If I see it in my lifetime I'll die a happy man.

Look, space mining and space development in general is a great idea. It just won't happen - there is too much of a chicken-and-egg problem. Someday maybe, when we need He3 and we've figured out how to make a good tether, and we've found a high specific-impulse engine, then perhaps it'll happen. But like I said, don't hold your breath.

Minerals are heavy, people

[popo]

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)