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

An easy way to jumpstart space mining

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell Bush there are weapons of mass destruction on Mars.

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: Is Space Mining Feasible?

[ozbird]

Why go shopping for asteroids when they deliver? Sure, the delivery schedule and drop-off point is unpredictable, but hey - free minerals!

Yes

[ErikZ]

But why would you want to? The cost of raw materials on the planet have been getting cheaper and cheaper. The only reason to do space mining is to reduce the costs of getting materials into orbit.

Space mining to get materials for things you want to build in space is fantastic. No more soda can thin walls in your space stations.

Great news!

[Trillan]

As the article says about lawyers, it 'turns out you can't leave Earth without them.'

Unlike Kennedy, no one speaks of "returning [them] safely to the Earth."

new triangle trade

[kippy]

Dr. Robert Zubrin has suggested that there could be a new traingle trade with the astriod belt, Mars and Earth. Since it takes a lot less effort to get to the belt from Mars, a base there makes the most sense.

Earth -> high tech to Mars
Mars -> mining equiptment, low tech goods and food to the belt
Astroid belt -> trillions in materials and H3 to Earth

Yet another good reason to get NASA to make Mars a goal.

Re:new triangle trade

[cpeterso]

how are we supposed to create a trade triangle with Mars and the asteroid belt? NOBODY LIVES THERE! With whom are we going to trade? This is not TraderWars.

Moon mining no, asteroid mining yes

[amightywind]

Mining the moon or Mars makes a lot less sense than mining asteroids for lots of reasons.

• Near earth asteroids have widely varying compositions. Some are entirely metallic with high concentrations of valuable strategic metals. The moon and Mars have relatively metal poor surfaces in comparison.
• Asteroids are accessable. IT requires far less energy to travel to and from Earth and an asteroid that the moon or mars. This should make it less expensive to transport mined materials back to earth.
• Polical reasons. If China unilaterally set up shop on the moon for mining, the rest of the world would be rightly up in arms. If they grabbed an asteroid who would care? (It might even assuage their anger over losing Taiwan!)
• There are lots of asteroids but 1 moon and 1 Mars. You can trash thousands of asteroids and no one would care. Because of the lack of significant erosion on the Moon or Mars any mining activity will quickly and irreversably mar the surface. I would argue that the scientific and aesthetic value of a minimally disturbed planetary surface would be worth more in the long run.

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".

Re:Stability - Do the math!

[clausiam]

Mass of moon: 7.3x10^22 kg
Assume we remove 1/100th of 1% of this which should not matter for system stability.

This would still require us to remove 7,300,000 billion tons of material (that's 7 million billion tons).

So in short: No.

/Claus

Re:wrong question

[Noren]

No, it's much less than 1/6. The moon's surface gravity is about 1/6 of that of the earth, but that doesn't directly translate into escape velocity.

Earth's escape velocity is about 11km/sec, while the velocity required to go from the surface of the moon to the earth is only about 2.3km/sec. Energy is proportional to velocity squared, so it works out to take only about 1/21 of the energy. (leaving the Earth/moon system entirely from the surface of the moon is somewhat more expensive, but still only about 1/16 of the energy cost as that needed from the Earth's surface.)

Re:Is Space Mining Feasible?

[Golias]

Now is as good a time as any for my Grand Unified Theory of Star Wars Physics.

It all boils down to this: The "Galaxy Far, Far Away" is small and dense. Since it was "a long time ago", this seems likely, because we live in an expanding universe.

Evidence: Light speed is a big freakin' deal. Han's ship can just barely pull it off for short bursts, and he routinely outruns top-of-the-line Imperial Cruisers by doing so. Most of the time, the Falcon, like most other ships, coasts along at sub-light speed.

All these people travelling below light speed are going from one star system to another in a matter of hours or days on a fairly regular basis. This means that most of the stars are only a few light-hours apart, and crossing the galaxy from a place as remote as Luke's homeworld all the way to the capital planet near Galactic Central Point is a mere matter of days. Let's be generous and say that the whole galaxy is about a light-year wide.

Now consider that the thickness of our own galaxy, even way out here on the fringes of the unfashionable Eastern Spiral Arm, is about three thousand light years, you get a sense of how tiny their galaxy really was.

In a galaxy where the stars are that close together, it stands to reason that "deep space" is not really that deep. There's still some gasses in high orbits over planets. (Whatever gasses they are, they are not very refractive, because it still looks like deep space... and they are not very dense, because some of the ships, like the B-Wing and the Slave 1, get by without being very aerodynamic.)

This is why you hear R2 beeping, Tie Fighters exploding, weapons firing, etc.

So those of you who are physically incapable of saying to themselves "it's just a movie" can finally sit back, relax, and enjoy the film. Space flight in the Star Wars setting is not the same as space flight in the here and now.

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.

how about convicts?

[BigGerman]

In the great tradition of Western civilization - lets ship felons out!
Surely a lot of enterpreneual people would gladly exchange 10 years in jail for 3 years of back breaking work mining Ceres or whatever for the chance of complete reabilitation and possible fortune.
It is cheaper - less safety precautions needed. So NASA should just provide minimum transports and expertise and private prison management companies will do the rest.
Along the same lines, let those who want to leave Earth. Freaks, sects, religious minorities, music downloaders.
Just like America, Australia, etc. space will be initially populated by the official scam of the Earth.

Former astronaut thinks so.

[mahulth]

I took a class called "Resources From Space" at University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1998. It was taught by, among others, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, who was the only scientist and last man on the moon (Apollo 17 - he was a geologist). He's now a fusion researcher and teaches this class along with other professors from geology, economics, physics, and nuclear engineers from the fusion technology institute at UW.

The final impression left with me from that class was that, back in 1998, if we were to start up an initiative to mine the moon we would have to raise $215 billion and not see any return until the year 2015 (our focus was on He3, but I think this'll apply to most any moon mining operation). That's essentially a 20 year investment with huge risk, so finding either public or private funding to help launch the operation was the biggest obstacle. Technology was also obviouisly an issue, but the mantra "You can always count on technology to catch up to you" was definitely enforced since most of the profs were fusion researchers.

Also, back then there was little competition in the public eye. My professors were aware that China was ahead of us in the push since they had government funding, but the competition existed only within a few small, scientific circles. No public awareness at all. We were looking at long-term energy-crisis solution, and this was a feasible answer. Our hopes may have been lofty, yet the projections realistic, at the time given the current sentiment. Currently there may be more eagerness by potential investors to get involved, but I'm unaware of a project of these proportions of both scale and risk that's been executed in the present day.

BTW, the web site for the class (last offered fall -2001) is a very thorough and exciting read (esp. the Apollo 17 space mission from the second day). It's also a great resource for questions regarding everything involved in mining the moon.

Re:(in space, no air)

[mcmonkey]

Of course there is air in space.

There's an air in space museum.

The UN has laws regarding outer space

[ElGanzoLoco]

Some very interesting stuff on the UN Office for Outer space affairs' website:
here

Interesting blurbs:

1 Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means

The thinking being, "it's everybody's good, so the lunar and martian surface -and all other planets for that matter- can't be anybody's property".
I think they also ban the commercial appropriation (selling / buying) of land on outer space.

The UN body also states:
2 "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind"
Does that mean that if you start mining the moon, you have to redistribute your profit to all the other countries?

but also states:
3 "outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States"
so you *do* have a right to mine the moon...

and (interesting stuff):
4 "States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies."
Which means you're not supposed to pollute the planet you're mining (does that mean bringing back toxic waste on earth, or putting it in orbit?)

Hmm... the countries that signed these treaties are legally bound by them, so things could get messy :p

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)