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Billionaires and Polymaths Expected To Unveil a Plan To Mine Asteroids
dumuzi writes "A team including Larry Page, Ram Shriram and Eric Schmidt of Google, director James Cameron, Charles Simonyi (Microsoft executive and astronaut), Ross Perot Jr. (son of Ross Perot), Chris Lewicki (NASA Mars mission manager), and Peter Diamandis (X-Prize) have formed a new company called Planetary Resources, and are expected to announce plans on April 24th to mine asteroids. A study by NASA released April 2nd claims a robotic mission could capture a 500 ton asteroid and bring it to orbit the moon for $2.6 billion. The additional cost to mine the asteroid and return the ores to Earth would make profit unlikely even if the asteriod was 20% gold."
We know quite a bit about the moon. It's composition is eerily similar to the earths crust. This discovery lead to a recent theory that the moon is the result of a planetary collision that blasted crust material off the early earth. The moon also is believed to have had a somewhat active core early in it's development. Remember that with a body of significant mass such as the moon, heavy elements are going to be pulled towards the core and be frozen there as the core cools. As for asteroids that have struck the moon, their materials have been reduced by impact. There will not likely be as concentrated of a source do to material being lost/scattered by the intensity of the impact. The moon is not likely a very resource rich rock.
However, a concentrated Nickel-Iron asteroid as one other poster mentioned could be very lucrative.
You're right about the water. But a 500 ton asteroid is about 7 meters in diameter. The linked pdf is really neat - it's got a lot of interesting details. Once you build it into a space station, yeah, then it'll be as big as the ISS.
You are correct about the hydrox fuel also, sort of. The first one has to be Xenon, but they did figure they'd need about 40 tons of LH2/LO2 to bring back 1000 tons of asteroid that is about 40% water. So successive trips can be done with LH2/LO2 once you've got a boat and some fuel, and of course if you can use part of the asteroid itself for fuel.... With LH2/LO2 you can also bring back much larger asteroids. Or you can go down to the moon and get unlimited water from the moon's poles at that point. It becomes an energy problem only, rather than both a materials and energy problem.
I've been thinking about Ceres. That one is entirely covered in ice (more water than all the Earth's oceans). If you're refining water into rocket fuel all you have to do is get your gear out there and Ceres has the fuel for the return trip. The upside is that we don't have to find it. We know where that one is. The DAWN mission is about to go out that way. (am not talking about bringing back the whole minor planet, just some water). Surface gravity is just .03g, so landing and blasting off is no big deal. The downside is that it's not a near-earth asteroid so travel time is a drag. But there's no limit to how much water you can bring back.
Once you have an unlimited fuel depot in orbit around the moon though you can do some really neat things. Manned craft only have to get to LEO, and can be met with the rest of the fuel they need to go anywhere in the Solar system. Things like habitat modules could be lifted to LEO, where they're met by robot rockets that can move them into whatever place we want them. Not having to launch with all the fuel, water and air for the whole trip opens up everything. Maybe some robotic gardens or something could be arranged as well. That would be really cool.
I'm getting very excited about this project. I am told that the project is for real, though the other stuff above is speculation.
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