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The Best Near-Term Future of Space Exploration?
An anonymous reader writes "Much fanfare has been made about manned missions to moons and planets, but little has been done about travel to the asteroids — until now. NASA is working on plans for a trip to the asteroids by 2025. This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well. Yes, we should go to the planets, but we should master mining the asteroid belt for resources first because it is easiest. What do you think?"
But someone has to play it.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Just tie a rope to them from your spaceship and tow them back to earth.
I am anarch of all I survey.
If your goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies independent of Earth, the asteroid belt is the best place to do it. But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What would the asteroid miners ship back?
if they want a shallow gravity well, the moons of mars would make a good target. http://xkcd.com/681_large/
The concept that space exploration to mine asteroids is easiest is, itself, questionable.
Each asteroid has a larger chance of inter-asteroid impacts.
Perhaps a better choice might be one of the moons of Mars, so that we can build a giant space ladder our robot overlords can climb up on the way to invading us?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
IMO an asteroid mission is far and away the best choice for manned exploration. They have practically nonexistent gravity wells, making exploration relatively cheap, and depending on the target selected, could support making life support volatiles and rocket fuel in-situ. A good-sized nickel-iron NEO, on the other hand, could be an excellent prospecting opportunity -- depending on how big it is, it could supply enough iron to sate Earth's steel demand for a century or more -- or it could be used as a resource cache to bootstrap space-borne manufacturing. Mining space rocks isn't as glamorous as the moon or Mars, but the cost/benefit analysis strongly favors the asteroid.
As the remains of planetary building blocks, the asteroids may contain an incredible wealth of minerals, easily accessible compared to other planetary bodies, and easily evaluated. Picture gold nuggets in space.
Anonymous reader (probably a PR flack for Science) said: "This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well."
Let's see, from TFA: "Hopkins said that a basic six-month human mission to an asteroid could return about 100 kilograms of samples collected from different spots on the space rock." OK, so you fly directly to the solid gold asteroid and pick up 100 KG of that. That's 3527 ounces. At $1230/ounce, that's about $4.3M. And you need to make a profit.
If you can plan, support, launch and recover the mission to the solid gold asteroid for less than $4M, my hat's off to you.
They should visit a number of different types of asteroids and nuke them to see the effect. Its really important knowing what will and won't work in protecting the planet from an asteroid impact. We have zero experience in how effective nuclear weapons are in deflecting or distinguishing asteroids. I don't think we want to be doing this when threatened by a large asteroid collision.
Nasa is going to the asteroid belt? Oh, they're making another video game.
Or you know those dang aliens will stake a claim first and ambush us at the dry gulch.
For some very good science fiction about this, read the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter
We need to automate these functions on Earth, as well as in space. Labor has to be replaced from the bottom up to preserve stability and peace. The mass of our spaceships has to originate in space.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I'm disappointed it's a negative reaction that actually prompted me to log in for the first time in a over a year, but this story is crazy. The whole idea is crazy. Not because of technological limitations, but because we don't have a prayer of paying for it.
A few days ago, copponex wrote:
"America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years."
I want to believe NASA could pull this off -- and by 2025 -- but I think it's tragically unrealistic from a financial perspective.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
Since real manned exploration of Mars is a pipe dream at this point (both technologically and financially), a manned trip to an asteroid is just the ticket if you want to stay in the manned exploration business. The Moon? Been there done that. Mars? Can't do that yet. Asteroids are do-able, and when it comes to manned exploration, fairly cheap. Unless we're going to abandon manned exploration completely, then an asteroid is the next logical "First" for NASA.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
First we have to ask ourselves, how many people can our planet sustain? 10 billion? 15 billion?
Then we have to ask, how long before we reach that many? 100 years? 200 years?
Then we have to ask, what resource is going to run out first? Drinking water? Food? Air?
When we have those answers, we will be able to discuss which is best to spend money and effort on, mining the asteroid field or getting off this damn rock.
I'd say the stuff we can get in the asteroid field will run out long after we've run out of the bare necessities, so we should concentrate on going to a new planet terraforming it.
IF we only have 100--200 years left on this planet, that's "near-term future" enough for me.
Apollo had enough delta-V for a mission to a near earth asteroid, and could have made the duration with a stretched service module for more life support. The design issue is whether to build a big, slow vehicle, or a small, fast vehicle. The slow option gives you more to build on for the future. The fast option has less risk because a quick return to Earth is built in from the start.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not sure if mining the asteroids will have an economical impact down here on earth. But what should be explored there is what we can do. Can we live there? Can we make self-sustained enough stations with materials found there? What about new ships or propulsing fuel? Good part of the cost and ecological impact of space exploration is actually getting into space, leaving planet gravity well. But if most of the needed resources are already out and we can have enough people there in a semi permanent basis, we can start thinking in more advanced space exploration and colonization, maybe getting cheap enough resources (think for what was used the space station in the movie Moon). Of course that are several practical problems, but could we solve them?
An approach to space exploitation (and thus exploration) has been known for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space
Gerard K. O'Neill wrote this book decades ago, and I see no reason to deviate from the basic plan described within.
The rocky asteroids would need to be looked at one by one to see if there is value in them, maybe rare earths? Indoim etc?. The nickel iron asteroids may be valuable for nickel, and platinum group elements.
Obviously a way to get them from outer space to the local foundry would need to use an ablative method to de-orbit them in suitable sizes in suitable locations to allow recovery. The rocky ones tend to fragment. The metal ones can melt and if they are small enough might hitn the ground in such a way thery can be recovered. Big ones will hit at miles per second and splatter.
So carefule economic decision will have to be made on each asteroid and each metal contained. Only a few will be worthwhile. As time goes by and we use up easy metals on earth this will shift, but we have 300 years of most metals now, but the rare earths have a smaller reserve
Title says it all....
I kid, I kid. More people in space doing more things to further the quality of life or increase the chances of everyday people traveling in space, please.
news radio episode where the boss is in the tin foil lined room
yeah, nasa, i'll believe anything you say, NOT
If it was, it wouldn't be.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I will boostrap mankinds future in space in several easy steps. Pricetag: $20 billion+ (5% of Iraq war budget). Difficulty: Moderate (Could have been done in 70s/80s).
1) Stop pissing about with remote controlled rovers that get stuck in sand and build on Project Orion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)* with a single-stage-to-deepspace 20,000 ton one shot mission. On the way it drops of a permanent crew on mars and a mining operation to the asteroid belt, along with dozens of probes, space telecopes into various solar orbits and the vehicle then loops through the jovian moons and returns to the earth to be orbital habitat and manurfacturing platform for the inbound materials from the asteroids.
2) Wait, 1 will be enough...
*Screw the greenies, seriously this is a one time thing with endless pay back. Alot could be done to clean up nuclear fallout, at least for the lower stage (cleaner thermonuclear bombs for example, alternative reactions that don't produce dangerous such products).
NASA needs high profile missions that inspire awe. They need to build excitement and inspire awe. They need to thrive on whiz-bang technology and showcase what the human spirit is capable of achieving. Those are the fundamentals the space program is built on. For the last twenty years they've sucked at it.
I don't want to pass too much judgement on landing on hunks of rock a couple of AU's away, but it sure doesn't seem too sexy to me. I think most people get excited about other things. Throw some rovers on a red planet, give them a lifespan of a few months, and then watch everyone be amazed when they last five years. New Horizons should get everyone fairly excited when it gets out there. Heck, even Cassini can still generate some excitement. (The spaceflight electronics I worked on for Huygen's are now sitting on Titan and I find that incredibly cool.) But landing on a rock? Um... yeah... not really too into that. Oh, it has a lot of iron deposits or strangetanium? Be sure to poke me to wake me up when that news comes out.
NASA needs to go big. I know these new probes can be done on a shoestring budget, say $200 million or so. But please go build us a new heavy lift rocket and shoot some guys into space. Most of us haven't seen a man land on the moon in our lifetime, so can we just try that again?
----- obSig
We should master to blow asteroids away from Earths trijectory first.
Excuse the vent, but NASA has become lame as hell nowadays. What happened? From the space race in the 60s forward 50 years to now, isn't anyone else disappointed? I'm 31, and I was so excited growing up in the 80s, I couldn't imagine what I was going to see. Now, it seems to have all slowed to a crawl. Sure, Hubble gave us some amazing photos and scientific data, but where have the grand leaps and bounds in technology and sheer drive to explore been? Now, we have Obama hamstringing the space program as well, cancelling programs left and right. 2025? Ill be nearly 50, and I'd bet yet to see a man on Mars. I guess I assumed it would happen in my lifetime, and much earlier, even by 2010 at the rate things seemed to have been advancing. The idea of this is cool and all, but I really hoped we would push the envelope a bit harder, like the good old days. Sorry, I guess I'm just underwhelmed and disappointed.
Have a listen.
“Peep it, I’ll break it down so you can absorb it (okay)
You need to mind planets’ minerals and do it from orbit (yo)
Some good advice, and you’re too much of a noob to ignore it (ay)
You’ll get stranded with no fuel if you foolishly floor it
I used to rock microphones rhyming in a stadium (okay)
These days i launch probes mining for palladium (no doubt)”
asteroid mining all the way, it is too expensive to launch the raw materials we need from inside our gravity well, in situ resources are key to any real success
hell, I've had crazed thoughts about starting a company to do asteroid mining in about 10 years once commercial space launches come down and vasimir is working better
"There is nothing 'out there' that is worth the cost of going. Forget that motivation. Does that mean we shouldn't go? No, but it means we've passed the Point of No Return on Investment!"
Michael Gavon on 'Rocket Science' ©1990
;-)
For example: Mining the asteroids for Unobtanium. To mine the Unobtanium, you need to lift the mining equipment to the asteroid. Bring or get the energy to mine it. Load it and de-orbit it from the Belt to Earth AND THEN STOP IT. You can work some cool tricks (slingshots, balutes, solar sails, whatnot) but the energy remains the same. The amount of energy to get something there and back is IMMENSE. You will NEVER recoup that money spent on energy and structure by selling what you bring back. Remember the payload of rocks from Apollo.
The only thing up there that MIGHT pay for itself is an energy source, like Dilithium. Nothing else is worth it.
Find another motivation. Today's XKCD might help, or it might explain why it WON'T work.
You decide... and decide you must. If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice
I used to love NASA but these days, I wouldn't bet a nickel that they could make it to the nearest gas station with a GPS, atlas, and police escort to guide them. Honestly, if they were somewhat independent of the political process and could exist as an autonomous institution, they may have a chance. But, there's no way their priorities will remain set for fifteen years when they couldn't even last five years. Hell, I don't think they'll make it the next five years without any public facing launches. The fact that they aren't even selecting a design for a heavy lift vehicle in five years is just insane. Not to mention the slow execution of the Orion capsule. Obama can talk all he wants about revitalizing manned space exploration, but the truth is, he's smothering it with a pillow. I'm guessing if Obama gets elected 2012, he'll either gut the program, or put off this asteroid mission to some nebulous point in the future so another administration might be able to kill it entirely.
Mining asteroids sounds good and all, but to make it practical we need a cheaper way of getting things off of this rock. It will be the private companies, the Scaled Composites' and SpaceX's of the world, who make that possible.
Apollo could have reached some of the Near Earth Asteroids. This would have been a good idea in the 1970's, and it would be a good idea now.
This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return... we should master mining the asteroid belt for resources first because it is easiest.
Positive economic return? How much would it cost to go get 1000 tons of, say, bauxite and extract the aluminum? How much would the resulting aluminum cost to produce? Would there be a "positive economic return?" Answer 1) bringing it back to earth, 2) doing it off-planet (you still need to bring back the aluminum, though). Include the cost of building the presumably amortizable off-planet refining facilities. Since you are making that ludicrous claim, it is up to you to substantiate it.
I know this is going to sound like a troll, but what's the point.
nasa has become nothing but a pet poodle that each new administration scraps the work of the previous one and wastes all the funding that went into it for some new vision.
I used to love space and nasa, but now days i just get annoyed.
I'm starting to agree with putting space in the private sector but not for the reasons the current admin' says.
i want space exploration out of the hands of the politicians.
exit soap box.
My view of the initial space race was that it was more of a political statement of "look how advanced we are! we can fly to the moon!" disguised as science. Sure it was exciting, but the real gain was in politics. Today, its just doesnt carry the political "wow" factor. Who cares when the average small country has the bomb. Robots were always better than sending people anyhow. As for mining, there are mines on the earth that are much more profitable to mine. You think we have issues with some miners down in a hole for 2 months, how are we ever going to lift that much into space and then get it back down without it burning up? We cant even mine the ocean floor effectively... Why head to space?
Dude, haven't you heard?
All these worlds
are yours except
Europa
Attempt no
landing there
Use them together
Use them in peace
Frickin' lameness filter...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Go find a big chuck of uranium floating around out there and put the energy debate to bed once and for all.
One advantage to being on, or in "orbit" around an asteroid or other small body (like the moons of mars), is that it is relatively quick and easy to change and hold one's position relative to that body. So if the astronauts see a solar flare coming they just move into the shadow and hang out there for the few hours it takes for it to pass. No expensive delta-v, no digging in the dirt.
Of course Arthur C. Clarke foresaw this in his story about a visit to the asteroid Icarus.
It is entirely possible that there is a solid gold asteroid out there. SOLID. GOLD. How's that for a return on investment?
There are near Earth objects of all types that would far easier to get to than in between Mars and Jupiter. Mining would be simpler. Solar observatories could be landed on L4/L5 Earth Trojans for better stability and longer life (no station keeping necessary). Get some samples from Cruinthe and figure out if it's truly a second body formed from our pre-solar neighborhood or an interloper.
And sooner or later someone is going to have to start practicing moving these things around so we're ready to if an when the time comes. According to the latest SENTRY data the cumulative impact probability of all known and tracked Earth orbit crossing objects with potential intersections is just over 1.5% for the next century, and they figure they've found around 10% of them. Sure, the big ones are too hard to move. The smaller ones aren't. If a bigger one's coming, hitting it with a smaller one (or more) makes more sense than throwing nukes at it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I wrote an article years ago about colonization of the solar system will start in the asteroid belt. Actually, here it is: http://www.philforhumanity.com/How_to_Colonize_the_Solar_System.html
I nominate the post above for the "Yogi Berra is Right" award because he is.
My own preferences are for a return to the moon. But, an asteroid mission will be fine. A Mars mission would be fine. Any of them would be fine, provided one thing.
We actually bloody well do it!
A lot of good ideas have been started and then gone down in flames do to half hearted support, underfunding, and the politics of not being built in the right constituencies, etc, etc, Republican spacecraft, Democrat spacecraft, etc whatnot, cost overrun, technical challenge not risen to, lather rinse, oh crap our engineers all retired.
It doesn't have to be the "best possible" mission. It just has to be done to be a sucess especially when compared to sitting on this rock.
NASA should be investing the majority of their efforts into a Space elevator, and eliminate the gravity well problem altogether.
Not really. The economy of all those elements is predicated on the idea that asteroid metals aren't able to be mined. It's not even considered as part of the potential supply, so the first few asteroids that are mined will be the most valuable, for sure. The economy wouldn't change its valuation of the metals until after the first load is returned successfully. Even later, once it is known to be possible, the market wouldn't change its valuation of a given metal until after plans are announced to mine a given asteroid and the information is put out that the mineral is to be mined offworld.
This mission was proposed as part of President Obama's effort to redirect NASA. However this is completely subject to Congress agreeing with him on that.
Currently their are two different proposals in the Senate for what the new policy will ultimately be. The one in the Senate agrees with his proposal only in part, while the one in the House agrees with it very little. Therefore anything long term regarding NASA is totally up in the air at this point.
That's not really what I was getting at. If individual asteroids contain significant percentages of the total mined gold supply (a couple trillion), any successful asteroid mining is going to have a huge impact on the percieved value of all those metals (and just imagine a couple of capitalists in a friendly competition to bring back 50 times the amount of gold that is currently mined in a year, that would just barely show up over the decades it took to do it...).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Once they're in safe orbit, mine them here, I mean there in our orbit. I guess it's cheaper to tip them a little into our direction than to start the mining there. No, anything else than that would simply be impossible unless we want a net waste.
Ion thrusters should do the trick. The asteroids may even have the propellant themselves and an energy source should be the least of the problems. After a decade or so, the asteroids arrive to be harvested. Da-woop!
Yes, but the worth of the asteroid's metals isn't measured in "future potential price". It's measured in "How valuable is it right now".
I think the mining idea misses the point. This NASA plan is all about gaining experience surviving outside of low earth orbit.
1: Surviving without the massive radiation shield that earth's magnetosphere provides.
2: Surviving without an option for quick Earth return.
3: Surviving without near instantaneous communication with ground control, Major Tom.
4: Surviving extended exposure to zero-g (muscle and bone loss)
Well #4 has already been worked out a lot at ISS though the amount of exercise needed is significant (less mission time) and not perfect (still need to get strong again when back on earth).
Shall we start debating the need for artificial G via rotation?
Also #2 has been somewhat worked over with ISS, specifically the need for lot's of spare parts, redundant systems, and design for easy repair. What's not so well covered is, wetware repair. MedBay anyone? Is there a doctor in the house?
That's $0.
Or do you know of some viable technology for delivering such metals to the surface of the Earth?
Or perhaps some market for them in space?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
we could build industrial manufacturing systems and a launching point on the moon. industry would be pollution-less on the moon, and the lesser gravity couldn't hurt. launching missions from the moon would remove a lot of the problems and costs inherent in launching missions from earth. Building some infrastructure could make space exploration a lot more feasable.
You can say that there's billions of gallons of oil deposits, worth trillions of dollars, that are currently inaccessible due to technological limitations. That doesn't mean that it's worthless, it just means it's inaccessible.
A very long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (MIT, mid 1970's, when I was an undergraduate and a member of MIT"s Planetary Astronomy Laboratory of that era), I remember having conversations with Mike Gaffey about asteroid mining. I see a reference to Technology Review on asteroid mining from Mike in 1977, so I think this got all published; I don't have any TR's of that era around to refresh my memory.
I remember one interesting scheme, where you might take a m-type metallic asteroid (which is mostly iron, nickel, and other useful metals) to earth orbit, by any of a number of propulsion schemes (solar sail, ion engine, or the like). It would probably take a number of years to move it from the asteroid belt to earth orbit. Then foam the asteroid (use solar mirrors to make it molten, and inject gas), and shape it into a lifting body. Then you would fly it into the earth's atmosphere, and land it in the ocean outside any port you would care to deliver it to. The point of foaming it was to reduce its density so that it would reenter the earth's atmosphere without much heating and ablation (we don't want to dump lots of metal into the earth's upper atmosphere), and float when you landed it.
Then you take a tug boat and pull it to a dock, and you have however many kilotons of metal you like. And without the huge energy cost of mining and environmental problems on earth.
As I remember, all the physics work (without having to invent fundamental new technologies), and there are lots of metallic asteroids. Now we just have to figure out how to actually do it. And it is way, way easier to deal with getting to and from the asteroids than the moon or any planet.
- Jim
You can say there's unicorns, it doesn't mean very much.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This type of mission has great potential for positive economic return based on the fact that no effort has to be spent on getting in and out of a distant planet's gravity well.
Someone is forgetting that one has to get in/out of EARTH's gravity well which is the biggest one outside of the gas giants. Then you have to actually mine whatever it is (which we lack the technology to do) in deep space and safely bring it back intact. What are you going to mine in any serious quantity that you can safely return to earth without the item either burning up in the atmosphere or turning the item being returned into a weapon. (Remember that any significant fraction of an asteroid makes a heck of a divot when it hits the earth at high speed.) I can't imaging there are a lot of asteroids composed of precious metals floating around. Maybe there is an asteroid filled with inkjet refills or human blood?
Seriously, even ignoring the technical issues (which are huge) I haven't heard anything relating to mining asteroids that remotely makes economic sense. What could we possibly mine on an asteroid that could be worth the enormous cost of retrieving it from the asteroid belt? We only have a vague idea of what many of these things are composed of and what we do know isn't anything terribly rare here on Earth. The idea of mining asteroids is a romantic and cool idea but we would have to be SERIOUSLY in desperate need of something to make the economics of asteroid mining make any kind of sense.
Scientific research? Hell yeah. Economic return? Not likely in this century.
I think that NASA should offer a major prize to do something... major. Say, $ 100 million to return 1 kilo of lunar soil, or 1 kg of an asteroid, or $ 500 million to return 1 kg of Phobos.
You can say that the deposits found recently in Afghanistan are currently worth nothing, since they're not being mined.
Unfortunately, again, the price of the material, as estimated today, isn't relative to the accessibility of the material.
A private mission funded by kooky venture capitalists might be more fun...
NASA missions are always fraught with that stifled, sexless Star Trek: TNG atmosphere.
Like if some eccentric Richard Branson/Larry Ellison ego-maniac funded a tricked out Stanley Kubrick-esque spinning-torus space station with cute stewardesses dressed in the height of mod fashion, serving white russians at quitting time. I mean all the work'd be done by robots anyway.
You'd have to pray that it was profitable and wouldn't be sold off and descend into some kind of half liquidated Paul Verhoven Total Recall nightmare with Steven Ballmer lobotomizing you as you try to unravel the mysteries of cheap domes and mutants named Lenny. ...and no, I really can't manage to conceptualize a space culture beyond what all those late 20th century sci-fi movies have pre-programmed me to believe in.
THERE'S UNICORNS!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
It is basically a 100% untapped market. If you are the only supplier you can charge w/e the fuck you want. Of course there is a cap on how much demand the market has but you could probably sell a few billion dollars of these precious metals each year. Which makes it worth the effort. It is huge investment with monumental payoffs but fairly high risks.
The only reason this hasn't been done is because there are only a handful of people that could possibly attempt this. And they aren't exactly visionaries (re us/russian government). Once some group leads the way with a proof of concept (which significantly lowers the risk) expect others to follow. Hopefully SpaceX and the renewed interest in space will make something like this happen.
You forge the gold into a landing module and use a mass-accelerate to bring it back to earth.
Forge the imaginary gold using technology we don't have and somehow accelerate that back to earth without burning it up in the atmosphere or turning it into a bomb in the process. Riiiight...
You leave your mining equipment out there to get more precious materials...
What precious materials? What are we so hard up for that it is cheaper to spend billions to try to retrieve tiny quantities of unknown materials from asteroids of unknown composition millions of kilometers out in space using technology we haven't developed yet? I support space exploration as much as anyone but the idea of an economic return from asteroid mining is absurd to anyone who has ever seen an actual balance sheet.
Ever heard of Self-replicating machines ?
How about magic pixie dust and unicorn farts while you're talking about things that don't exist in the real world.
The value of a given deposit is entirely relative to the accessibility of that deposit.
And my entire point was that if you are dumping hundreds of billions of current day dollars of material into the tiny little rare-earth and precious metals markets, you are most certainly going to have an enormous impact on prices. If you aren't dumping hundreds of billions of dollars (or perhaps dozens of billions) of materials into the market, then it is a little tenuous to claim that your deposit is worth trillions.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The problem isn't exactly "running out of money"; banks are generally happy to conjure up more. The problem is that Federal Reserve Notes are history's greatest Ponzi scheme, and the gig is just about up.
Soldiers as well as defense contractors like to be paid in something of worth, preferably that can be carried without a wheelbarrow. And without them, who is going to loot whom?
Actually that's more than a bit simplistic. Anticipated valuation and effects on the price system will appear first in the futures market, and related/dependent (manufacturing mostly) derivatives. This will, as the day of delivery (FOB) approaches have an effect on the markets (stock and bond valuations). Eventually, your condition would become reality but it would be a wild and crazy ride in the beginning. Personally speaking as, among other things, an econometrician, I would love to watch how the markets behave over that period.
BTW, the Japanese have had as the goal of their space program going out and bringing back at least some of the Earth-Mars asteroids. I'd be willing to bet that the asteroids are their eventual goal
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Ok, the real deal here is manufacturing facilities, not mining per se. There are TONS of asteroids all over the moon, that could be used for early mining to support manufacturing on the moon.
And really the best way to "mine" the asteroid belt as one said in reference to hauling stuff, would be fishing for stones, and then hauling them back to the moon. Thrown down where it would be safe enough, but far enough from the manufacturing facility, and then hauled mined and manufactured back there.
THis would of course be multiphase and requires just tons of energy. Nuclear batteries are not likely to create enough energy, and other forms of nuclear energy require ALOT of water. So we have a basic problem in creating MINING and MANUFACTURING levels of energy. Energy to create steel for instance. Without water or internal combustion engines, it becomes tough to make that amount of energy.
Yes, but the worth of the asteroid's metals isn't measured in "future potential price". It's measured in "How valuable is it right now".
Not a finance geek are you? Go read about net present value and try that again. The value of any investment is measured as the (say it with me) the "present value of all FUTURE free cash flows". Welcome to Finance 101.
It all depends what we're doing with the minerals. Are we using it to built more cars on Earth? Or build more spaceships to mine more so one day we can fly to Mars? What think?
If you are the only supplier you can charge w/e the fuck you want.
Not even monopolies can or would do this. A monopoly that is trying to maximize profit actually will charge predictable rates based on consumer demand.
Furthermore, I think you'll be hard pressed to come up with an example of anything we could retrieve from space for which there is not already a market here on Earth. Go ahead and mine copper from space. Better be able to sell it cheaper than the copper mines here on Earth.
Not entirely. If one company were to get access to as many asteroids as they want they would completely dominate the market for the raw material they had access to in the asteroids. It seems not to be feasible right now but that doesn't mean we shouldnt try. Virtually unlimited resources sound pretty awesome to me and will be necessary to continue existing on this planet in the longer term (thousand years or so), however getting off world is absolutely necessary if humanity is to survive longer term than that.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Diamonds OTOH have a mass value in excess of $340,000/kg
Diamonds can be manufactured synthetically in a laboratory using little more than carbon and pressure, both of which are easily available without going into space. This of course ignores the fact that diamonds require immense pressure to be created so I'm curious why you think a tiny asteroid in a VACUUM would be a likely place to find diamonds.
Afaka is Amerika!
This is Obama Administration's Statement!
Given this, NASA is toast! All senior employees at NASA centers will be executed given the Executive Order from President Mr. Barak Hussain Obama..
Remember when Mr. Sadam Hussain executed all of his government ministers! NASA is next. President Mr. Barak Hussain Obama is a student of Mr. Sadam Hussain.
By by!
Or perhaps some market for them in space?
I think you've nailed it right there. The ISS weighs something on the order of one million pounds, and provides cramped living quarters for a handful of people. If we can get around having to move the whole mass of our space stations out of a substantial gravity well, then society will start playing a totally different game.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
ahem
Leave it to the Chinese, NASA couldnt organize a piss-up in a brewery for $10M
Build infrastructure in Earth orbit. Go back to the Moon - learn to live there. Moonbases, mining. Expand from there.
The original (from the novel) did not have the last two lines!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Long way to go for dirt and rock.
Keep Doing Good.
If we could get that skyhook/space elevator thing worked out, it would be a perfect way to bring raw materials down. Or set up the refining/manufacturing facilities in orbit and get all the pollution and waste products off-planet. Cheap power from solar collectors up there, to.
WARNING: I cannot be help responsible for the above, as apparently my cats have learned how to type.
I mean this in complete sincerity and curiosity. I'm all for space exploration and habitation, I don't think we're doing 1% of what we should be doing in both manned and unmanned efforts, but for the life of me I just cannot think of how you mine an asteroid. In a microgravity environment, with no water to cloy particles together, wouldn't any kind of impact or grinding action just create a spray of dust and pebbles? The entire work site would become an opaque fog, and you'd be losing more mass than you could catch and process.
Maybe if you wrapped a dome around the section you're working on, that would prevent things from drifting away... but you still wouldn't be able to collect the dust in any meaningful way.
nothing. What have we done since Apollo? Fly around in circles in aging, dangerous jalopies. Big deal. We don't have a space program, we have a low earth orbital grocery delivery and appliance repair service. Whoop-de-friggin-do.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
... because we won't be making any more long distance human space flight before then. I've just returned form a 3 week class/conference on "human spaceflight and exploration" at the IRF in Sweden and the near unanimous conclusion is that the global space industry needs to sort itself out. At the moment we have at least 3 major space agencies worldwide (NASA, ESA and the RKA), all using different standards on simple things like docking hatch sizes, let alone things like objectives and policy. As there is no big enemy that needs to be shown up anymore so there is no reason to assume that any single agency will complete the next milestone, be it mars or an asteroid or even "just" a lagrange point station. ESA and NASA are both currently involved in massive restructuring programs including standardising interfaces and looking to contract out to private industry rather than build things themselves. Whilst sad from a pure science point of view it does make sense; as specialised industry develops more and more private, non governmental agents get involved, there comes the money. The development of new systems is becoming more of an international affair and the "next generation" of internationally compatible spacecraft should (supposedly) take 10 years... then 10 to build. As far as choosing a destination goes the elements required to get there and back and do something useful when there are the same; you need people able to hand long periods in a small place together, more efficient life support and propulsion, new "planetary" suits, and money, lots of money. The current thinking is that NASA, RKA and ESA will have to work together on any future large scale mission. Possibly with JAXA and ISRO and CNSA support, and each would supply parts or money or whatever. One of the key speakers at the IRF said he expected that people would go to mars first and that it would happen in the next 20-25 years. He was an astronaut for ESA and most of the other experts agreed with him (including fairly high up members of ESA and the SSC). So i'm gonna go with that point of veiw. Plus, from a purley simplistic and personal point of veiw; a man on mars would be WAY better than a man on an asteroid or floating around at L2. Why? Because its MARS! its the second most logical place for a first base on another body... its just exciting.
What was cancelled to make room for the asteroid mission was the Mars mission. Why? Well, the administration says that the asteroids are closer. I Am Not a Scientist (IANAS), but through careful and methodical research I've determined that the moon is still closer. And it likely has minerals, has some gravity to help with biological issues like muscle atrophy, etc. Oh, and we've already gone there with 1960's technology, so it's a pretty close bet we could do it again.
The current big problem is getting mass to (or out of) orbit. If you want to pretend the government's best role is things like infrastructure, they should fund private companies to develop heavy rockets for lift, space factories for building space-launched rockets, or a space habitat that isn't in low Earth orbit.
My suspicion is the asteroid mission was selected because failure (or future cancellation) will be hardly noticed. However, everyone would certainly notice a habitat on Mars or the moon that we no longer use. The saying goes "If we can send a man to the moon" not "If we can rendezvous with an asteroid!"
Finally, there are no intermediate goals in the strategy. Just "get there." What we don't need is NASA to wander about for years developing "stuff" with no progress. We've already seen that for too many decades.
Manned space flight was a government program that has been determined to be
too expensive and too limited in returns to be continued at its former funding
levels. We have serious problems now that we didn't have then, and few people
believe that throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into space will solve
them. Grown-up people who were elected to make hard and realistic decisions
about our public funds have decided this. NASA and all its Tom Swift-space
cadets are having a hard time accepting it. But sorry, guys... it's time to get real.
Sure, politicians will continue to announce great new projects like manned Mars
missions. But then they will quietly de-fund them to nearly nothing a few years
later. They don't have any choice. Money that would have been spent on these
projects has already been spent; and it's gone.
People born into 20th-century America are prone to economic fantasy because
they have lived their whole lives inside one. What they don't realize is there is
no trillion dollars available for space exploration. There is no trillion dollars
for anything left in the USA, least of all for technological stunts done primarily
for national prestige.
There won't be hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Space in the coming
years because there was already a trillion dollars spent on a Iraq-Afghanistan
war that accomplished nothing. There was a trillion dollars spent on
maintaining the fantasy that some Wall Street banks and investment firms are too
big to fail. There was a trillion dollars spent giving $650,000 mortgages to
$10/hr janitors.
All these fiscal misadventures created huge federal government budget
deficits that have sucked away the possibility of giant government projects
in the future; projects like Mars Missions. There simply aren't going to be
these giant projects in the future. America is broke. Its economy is dissolving
like a sugar cube in a cup of hot tea. It is the new reality: it is your new reality.
Space-cadets love to talk about the need to venture beyond the moon in order
to save humanity from a soon-to-be dying Earth. But this is not science
talking, it's a personality disorder. These guys assume that because their
scientific prowess has created tools and techniques that can destroy the Earth,
then it will inevitable happen. And that they have a right, and even a destiny,
to make it happen.
These guys are not clear-eyed, sober-minded engineers: they are death-worshiping
fascists. They are left-over Cold-War psychopaths from mid-20th century.
They're pissed now because 'little-minded people' wouldn't let them burn the Earth
and rule the ashes. These men are transparently insane, and you shouldn't pay
serious attention to them. Fortunately, their time has gone and they don't have
the political power that they did fifty years ago.
We live in a different age now. This is the era of limits. Understand this
and we will all prosper in new and unexpected ways. We need to differentiate
fact from fantasy and leave the fantasies to Hollywood. Space Exploration is
a used-up quasi-religion that has begun to manifest itself as a mental disease
among those people who continue to believe in it too strongly. Don't let that
happen to you.
So are we just going to lie back and let the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians boldly
go where no one has gone before? Are we just going to let them hop-scotch
over the path that we have so steadfastly blazed into space? Not really, because
they too are subject to the same economic reality. Underneath all the trash talk
and hype, Japan is as broke as we are. And they don't have the cultural
tradition of compulsively blasting out beyond their homeland that the
Westerners do. There is nothing in space that the Japanese desperately need.
China and India are basically overpopulated third-world countries that have
real limits on the number of expensive national-prestige pro
Park it there.
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There are a lot of near-Earth asteroid, like Toutitis a few years ago. Send a mission to one, and alter its orbit so that it enters near-Earth orbit, say at geosync. Then we'd have a *real* space station, once we dug into it, and used it for raw materials, one that would have real protection against solar flares, and that could be used to base true deep-space ships (that only go from orbit to orbit) to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This would make interplanetary travel for humans far cheaper.
For that matter, we could use nuclear (steam) rockets from there, which would make trips a lot faster.
mark
There's an xkcd comic for that: http://www.xkcd.com/786/
But Mr. Munroe wrote this for this particular news, so I think I just created a circular reference...
Back to the topic at hand, I think this is the next logical step in our space program. It can definitely help to develop the technologies necessary to make travel to other planets more simplified and possibly even safer later on. I say let's make it happen.
I'll bring the cookies.
My blood hurts...
Agreed. Only not a near-Earth, but a body just beyond the "snow-line, say 3 to 7 AU away. An object about to be discovered by WISE. Piggy back a methane/LOX rocket onto a Stirling ion drive, say the ASRG, get to a frozen methane/water ice body under Ion drive power and make in situ fuel in inflatable or sub surface tanks. Blast back to Earth L5 with a JAXA solar sail-like shade deployed towards the Sun to prevent sublimation. In less than a decade we will have a gas station in space, with the reasonable "price at the pump" to fund access to fresh water for our fellow human beings on Earth. Spin and centre of gravity issues will be dealt with by our greatest minds and a lot of processing power. Note that most components are off the shelf, the cost of such a mission can easily be under 2.3B with two launches a year for a few years to replenish the methane and water supply at L5 and improve the initial design. Refuelling capacity at the top of our gravity well is the Holy Grail of future space exploration. This post marks the publication of my intent to make this happen. End Rant. Contact me if you have similar intent.
Here's an idea: lets bring some asteroids back and place them at L1 and L2, then build stuff on them.
Maybe someone with actual physics knowledge can comment on whether this is more efficient than just lifting the equivalent mass or volume out of Earths gravity well?
Is there any reason we can't start with 1 - 2 ton asteroid chunks?
We have already been able to land delicate equipment on Mars (a planet with significantly less atmosphere) using some parachutes and ballons.
I'm sure that should be able to provide a cheap option for precious mineral recovery.
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
Yes, if you're trying to steer an asteroid that may be made out of wimpy material away from hitting Earth, they could be useful, and if they're not, you turn them around and push the asteroid the old-fashioned way. But the two problems we're trying to solve here are
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, before we do much large-scale exploration or exploitation of other planets, the asteroid belts are probably a much more useful place to go first. There's less problem with gravity wells, some possibility of mining materials that are useful on Earth, and more possibility of mining materials that are useful for space exploration and may be more practical to mine there than hauling them up Earth's gravity well.
But the real job that we have is protecting life on Earth. Near-Earth satellites are useful for that, because we can get a lot of information about what's going on on our planet, and about things going on in our neighborhood that could adversely affect us, like killer asteroids or whatever. By the time the next dinosaur-killer shows up, it'd be nice if we've got some fraction of our civilization moved off the planet, and before the Sun burns out, it'd be nice if we've moved somewhere else, but realistically those are problems for the next million years, not the next 20 years.
The real risks to human life are environmental damage and war. Before 2001, it looked like we were starting to get a handle on war, but oh, well, situation normal, and at least we're starting to make some progress on preventing Global Thermonuclear War. We're not going to be able to get enough of humanity off the planet to avoid stifling ourselves environmentally any time in the near future, so we're going to have to use science, economics, and politics to protect this place the hard way. Any scientist who's doing stuff in outer space is a scientist who's not working on more efficient cars and trucks, and probably isn't working on more efficient solar power systems or large-scale nuclear power systems, and NASA needs to justify diverting their attention. (On the other hand, any scientist or engineer working on robots is making NASA's future jobs easier.)
One of the really hard problems we have to solve if humans are going to spend any significant time in outer space is understanding closed ecosystems for spaceships and asteroid/planetary colonies. Near-Earth Orbit systems like the ISS can get by with occasional resupply packages from home, but until recently they weren't even recycling their drinking water, and they've got weird mold problems they don't know how to solve. Anything past the Moon is going to need to be really self-sufficient. Empty space is the hardest problem (except that you don't have a gravity well keeping you from turning around and going home); asteroids give you some resources (if you can find carbon and water), and Mars or some moon like Titan may be the other possibilities. But so far, we've only tried working on one major ecosystem, and we're botching the job badly - we need to get good at keeping it running before we're likely to know enough to keep others running. So far we've not only been messing up the planet, we haven't even been able to get little terrariums like Biosphere to be stable.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
--certain types of medicine can only be made in zero G
Name one. Just one.
--special semiconductors that are extremely difficulty to build on earth due to gravity
Such as? Frankly if this were true we'd probably see Intel sponsoring experiments on the international space station.
--carbon nanotubes (you will need carbonaceous asteroids for this)
Carbon is carbon. Doesn't matter the source and there is plenty here on earth. Carbon nanotubes have been produced here on earth.
--molecular perfect glass sheets(that are as strong as steel)
Glass is already that strong. The problem with glass is that it is fragile, not that it is weak. What is your evidence that gravity is what is preventing this?
--guilt free minerals (not having to rape the biosphere is nice)
You think there is no environmental consequence to getting into space or using materials once they are brought back? There is no free lunch.
--aerogels (a form of insulation that makes fiberglass look pathetic)
Which are regularly made here on earth. No need for space to make aerogels.
--nuclear fuels (nuclear processing is alot easier when you don't have to worry about security, worker health, or gravity mucking up the process)
??? Exactly how are you going to USE the nuclear fuels without bringing them in proximity to humans? And exactly where do you think you will find a rich vein of uranium? Do you have the foggiest idea how much equipment and energy it takes to process nuclear fuel?
get an asteroid parked in a stable near earth orbit, and you won't be able to beat the companies off with a stick
Even if that were true (which you haven't proven) bringing an asteroid into earth orbit carries ENORMOUS risk. Screw up and you've just nuked a population center.
From a pure economic perspective there is ENORMOUS cost to getting into orbit/beyond. Having an asteroid up there doesn't save you the cost of getting all the equipment to mine it into space. Nor does it save you the cost of returning the finished goods safely. Nor does it save you the costs of the exploration equipment, transport equipment, fuel, R&D, insurance, staff, or the cost of capital. The only group that would or could conceivably finance such a speculative and risky venture given the current state of technology is the government. All for a bunch of products we can already get on earth produced by a bunch of technology that doesn't exist yet.
In other words, you don't have the foggiest idea what you are talking about.
Ah, here's where it goes wrong - you don't bring it back to Earth, you park it in orbit.
Unless we are in the process of colonizing another planet or moon you still have to bring the products home to have production in space be economically useful. If you just leave everything in space there is no means of economic payback to those who finance the venture. At the end of the day you have to have something to sell or else you are quite literally blasting money into space never to be seen again. It would be no different than sending a bunch of robots to a remote island in the pacific and having them build but never sending anything back. There is no economic return possible.
Anything where it's cheaper to do that than to lift it from Earth.
I note that you have provided no specific example of any such product.
So, the OP's answer is probably "figure out how to process asteroids in space". Aluminum might be a good place to start.
Think so? Aluminum is the most common metallic element in the earth's crust though much of it cannot be processed economically even here. Have you ever seen aluminum processed? I have. Doing it entirely via robots in outer space is well beyond our current technology even presuming we can find a good source of ore. Have you examined the power requirements? It takes 46 megajoules per kilogram to process bauxite. You also need other materials like carbon and oxygen and you have to process it at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Possible in space? Maybe but not anytime soon and certainly not by anyone seeking a return on their investment.
Ok, not a true new market but close enough.
Copper is copper. Doesn't matter if it comes from an asteroid or a mine on earth. The chemical composition is the same. Furthermore you have to consider the cost of substitutes. There is no "new market". Mining an asteroid is no different economically speaking than discovering a new vein of ore here on earth. The only question (which isn't actually much of a debate) is which is more economical to access. For the foreseeable future, asteroid mining is an economic fantasy. It CANNOT be done profitably and that is not likely to change in our lifetimes.
People were talking about asteroids being worth many many many billions of dollars given current markets. That would make them so competitive that they are effectively in a separate market.
No it wouldn't because you are assuming there is no cost to retrieving whatever is in the asteroid. Even if it is technologically possible, mining an asteroid will be EXTREMELY expensive. There is trillions of dollars of hydrogen in the ocean but that doesn't mean we have an economic way of processing it into useful products. We can do it but we can't make a profit with current technology. It's just too expensive right now.
Mines here on earth are worth many many many billions of dollars and they are much easier to reach. BHP Billiton has revenues of nearly $50billion per year and it's just a single company.
The ability to get a mineral at 1/50th the cost means that your competition does not exist.
Only true if it can actually be done. There is ZERO evidence that asteroids can be mined for any commodity cheaper than here on Earth. The technology to do it doesn't exist and will cost billions if not trillions of dollars to develop. That doesn't include the costs of exploration, insurance, transport, operation, or even the cost of capital which would be incredibly high on such a risky venture.
NASA could coordinate a global effort towards designing and deploying self-Replicating Space Habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore; ideas towards that here by me:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=5821178
and others who inspired me:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
From the last, written in the 1920s by J.D. Bernal: "Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred years or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant."
Anyway, I work towards that dream on-and-off as I can...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
indeed some already started thinking about it in Nasa and ESA: http://www.space.com/news/international-space-station-room-recycled-asteroid-mission-100811.html
(... but it is a very small part of the ISS)
Herve S.