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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."
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."
And when the mission makes a mistake and an asteroid goes plummiting into a major city it will cause trillions of dollars in damage and massive loss of life and potentially create a cloud of dust that will cause an ice age.
I'm sorry, but no, this isn't a good idea. If you don't even have the technology to completely destroy an asteroid yet, then you can't fully control it and shouldn't be trying to "bring it to orbit". Maybe the first team will succeed because they have the smarts, but then when its shown to be profitable, the morons will get involved with fresh VC, etc.
Do they understand what this would do to the price of gold (not to mention platinum and palladium)? Most of the gold bugs make themselves feel good about their investment with the mantra 'you can't print gold.' It's trading in the stratosphere as it is, and the Wolfram Alpha link in TFS uses the current commodity price of gold.
First, there are other uses for an asteroid in orbit with thrusters on it. Namely, ramming comets or asteroids on a collision course with earth. Second, why bring the resources to earth? They can be used for orbital construction.
the point of the plan is that it is possible.
not that it is profitable right now, but that it is a possible backup plan to get resources(ore) should we need them in the future.
why does that matter? to shut the fuck up people complaining that we will run out of mineral X in 20 years and all civilization will be doomed because of that.
overly right wing? I think my opinion on this is left wing, actually.
another thing is that we wouldn't necessarily want the resources to be dumped back to earth just to shoot them up to space again, but use them in space.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Ross Perot Jr. (son of Ross Perot)
Thanks for explaining that; we would have never figured it out on our own!
If this does nothing else but push the science of rocketry and space travel further then I'm all for it. If they succeed though, I can't wait to see what comes next. Haters be damned, I love that people still want to explore and see what's out there. You can't move the species forward by taking no risk at all.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
You only make a small part of the money involved in capturing an asteroid on commercially-viable minerals/metals like gold.
What people will pay for a space rock is way more important than what people will pay for gold. A 500 ton asteroid could be 500 tons of rock. But that would make millions of lumps of Space Rock that could be sold by The Franklin Mint in a special collectors set.
The study wasn't talking about mining the asteroid to return the material to Earth! The asteroid mass would be used to generate water, hydrogen, and oxygen (primarily) for use IN ORBIT, where it is far more valuable than returning x amount of minerals back to earth. It would also be used as a test bed for advancing mining tech, becoming more efficient, and driving down the cost of the next operation.
However, long term, it could very well end up being economical to return materials to earth. If any initial effort at mining of materials that are useful in orbit succeeds, then there will be an existing industrial base for mining asteroids, and the incremental cost of the next one will be less. As mining methods are refined and become more efficient and the industrial capacity in orbit expands, it becomes possible to create more and more of what you need in orbit instead of launching it from earth (which is where much of the expense comes from). Then, when all you have to do is turn the less valuable parts of an asteroid into shipping containers, load it with the more valuable stuff, add an electric propulsion system, then it might be worth returning stuff to earth.
But the bottom line is that mining asteroids is going to be most useful for getting lots of useful material in orbit (be it lunar or Lagrange points or whatnot) without having to go through the process of getting out of earth's gravity well.
What are they going to find on a rock in space that is not already available on THIS rock in space?
I dunno, maybe........resources that are not on this rock? i.e. in its gravity well?
Why does the bulk of humanity always have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future?
To use lunar resources you have to land and take off in a gravity well. Distance matters much less than delta-V for space operations.
Asteroids are differentiated. Some are mostly pure nickel-iron. Never heard of that being available on the moon.
Great, now we're going to have an asteroid arms race. The U.S. and India will be threatening to crush Germany with a huge rock if it doesn't capitulate to their demands and cease "construction" of its own "weapon of mass destruction" aka their own huge orbiting rock.
Welcome to the brave new world of tomorrow....
Well, you know what they say in real estate: Location, location, LOCATION.
I'm thinking they don't want to bring 'Mineral X' down to Earth unless it's in ton lots. What they want is, the materials right where they are, in space, where they will provide materials to work with in space. Yes, it could take $2.6 billion to bring a random 500 ton asteroid to lunar orbit. It would cost over 10 billion to launch that 500 tons into orbit at the current guestimated going rate of $10,000 per pound. What can you do with 500 tons of materials in orbit? Lots of things. 500 tons of very high grade iron ore, the purity of which we haven't seen on Earth in almost a millenium, would make the basis for the frame of a decent sized space station. For comparison, the ISS at full buildout is about 37 billion plus overruns and weighs in approximately 450 tons plus about 13 billion so far in supplies etc to date. Grabbing a carbonaceous asteroid could offset some of that 13 billion on the 'next-gen' space stations, when we learn to 'convert' that carbon into foodstuffs in space.
Sure, we'd need to put a smelter assembly in orbit to refine the metals & scavange the carbon/etc from any asteroid, but add a machine shop as well, adn we can duplicate the factory complex and build out from there, at ZERO boost from Earth costs. Again, why would we want to send asteroidal material to Earth when we need it so badly in space?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Raw materials that aren't at the bottom of a gravity well.
A committee has asked Michael Bay to make a film depicting the worst case scenario of this project.
Even under the most strict (and asinine) interpretation of international property claim laws, this would fall under salvage rights. The rocks are unowned and set adrift, and nobody can make a decent claim to ownership. Therefore any person who reaches them first is entitled to collect whatever salvageable goods they wish.
The real question will be whether they're allowed to make a claim to the asteroid to keep someone ELSE from mining it once they do the gruntwork of getting it in orbit. That could become a real barrier to growth in this area, given that current international laws prohibit any nation from laying claim to an astral body.
I suspect without a change in laws we'll start seeing wild-west style ownership take place in space, in the form of jammers and guns. "It's ours, because if you send a spacecraft here to take it we will shoot you down or disable your probe."
Actually that is completely incorrect. Many asteroids in the solar system have been shown to contain as much iron ore as has been mined in the history of human industrialization as well as many other exotic and precious metals that are very rare on earth. There are many reasons to consider mining asteroids. It is actually a very important step in the progress of our society. When we stop stripping the earth of resources and move both extraction and manufacturing off our own planet we have a huge opportunity to sustain the quality of our environment, develop lower cost means of transporting materials on and off this planet because there is a financial incentive, and access exotic materials that are increasingly part of electronics.
Remember, most the metal in this planet is below the crust. The metals we do have in the crust is from the lower levels of the earth squirting little bits out every now and then. An asteroid does not have that problem.
This is to prevent a new ice age. We simply mine big chunks of ice off of Halley's comet and drop it into the ocean every 75.3 years. That should keep us going until 3003.
Exactly.
First, on the marketing side... let's say that gold from an asteroid has a slightly different chemical composition than gold from planet Earth. IANA geologist, but you can tell (chemically) where a diamond came from, so wouldn't you be able to tell whether gold came from an Asteroid or from Terra Firma? Either way (chemical signature or not), they can bring down a few hundred tons of "Space Gold" and Debeers can tell husbands that only the men who really love their women will buy space gold at a 500% markup.
Secondly, what if they can pull in materials that are a bitch to find here? It is possible that it might be easier to dump something from orbit rather than try to hunt it down and dig it up on Earth.
Lastly, this is necessary prep for the future. As the parent post said, it's kind of necessary for eventually working in space. It'd be way easier to mine and refine metals out in space for a moon base or space station than it would to bring everything up from Earth.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I cordially invite you to do the math on transporting raw materials in space versus boosting said raw materials from Earth. Two of the people most interested in investing in this venture each have probably more smarts than the two of us together, and they think it's a good idea, or they would have blown it off,
The 'We Only Need Earth' religion DEMANDS we do everything from Earth, that there are no exploitable resources offworld. They would have had each and every settler from Europe to San Francisco to pack every single gram they needed in supplies and tools plus the entire vehicle used to get across the ocean, all the way from Europe to San Francisco. At those kind of costs, nobody would have ever left, which suits the 'We Only Need Earth' crowd just fine, thank you.
I've been told a famous man once said 'The meek shall inherit the Earth'. That man was spot on. The rest of us are going to figure out a way to go to space and make it pay.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
We fear change. It's a survival characteristic.
It's also a survival instinct to move on to new territory when your tribe has grown too large and you cannot distinguish yourself from the other males as a suitable mating partner.
I'm just going to go with the idea that the people involved didn't come to be some of the most successful people on Earth through being crazy or stupid.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Don't forget about real-estate. A 500 ton asteroid would have nearly as much interior space as the ISS, so all you have to do is hollow the thing out (selling the resulting materials of course) then seal it, brace it, and bolt on some air tanks and maneuvering thrusters. You've constructed the world's roomiest space station!
Also, the water content of those meteors is worth a fortune in and of itself. Ice chunks + solar powered electrolysis = rocket fuel worth a minimum of $10,000 per pound by virtue of not needing to be launched with the ship.
What do you want to bet this asteroid retrieval system will be configured to use a hydrogen/oxygen engine of some kind? They could refill and relaunch it off the first asteroid for a fraction of the original launch costs!
Large, impractical, grandiose, ridiculously expensive symbolic gestures?
It's a better idea than invading other countries for resources. Probably less expensive too.
Your "future" seems to be somewhere around 1970. Today's challenge is not how to find and use ever more resources, it is how to use and re-use the existing ones without making the planet unliveable. Given the current context of impending climatic and ecosystem breakdown, mining asteroids is nothing but an outrageous red herring.
I continue to be astounded by the number of "technologists" in this forum who appear stuck in an almost Soviet mindset of science, where the future is all mining and flying cars and space exploration. It's as if you haven't noticed the last 30 years of scientific advance and all the new constraints that humanity must now work within.
Haven't you seen the movie where we mine the moon and it ends up breaking apart and crashing down on our heads?
This is an impoverished view which will lead to nothing but stagnation, decline, and ultimately extinction.
that lead to stagnation, decline and extinction if humans don't get sufficiently wise and active about mitigating them.
_Wish upon A Star_ works in Disney movies. Mother Nature is unimpressed.
Well, I see that I'm outvoted by incurable, irrational techno-utopians.
I too am optimistic, as it happens. But only cautiously so – not recklessly, like you people are. Given humanity's past, there is no reason to believe that we can't rise to the current environmental challenge. But we're taking our time seeing the problem, as evidenced by this frivolous chat about mining asteroids. Right now the world a half-century hence is looking a scary place, and even in the best-case scenario a lot of permanent damage is going to be done to the biosphere. If and when we solve this problem – mitigating the effects of consumption rather than finding resources for more of it – then we can perhaps start thinking about mining asteroids. Until that point, you are putting the cart before the horse.
I have a strange feeling you don't even know what I'm talking about, that we're not even on the same page here. That's sad, because I'm talking hard science, and the solutions will come largely from hard science too. They include energy tech, biotech and all kinds of innovation in farming, town-planning and architecture. They don't include mining asteroids.
Also, the water content of those meteors is worth a fortune in and of itself. Ice chunks + solar powered electrolysis = rocket fuel worth a minimum of $10,000 per pound by virtue of not needing to be launched with the ship.
The economics are nowhere near that simple. Let's say you have a big store of rocket fuel up there and ignore (for a moment) the cost of obtaining it. Then what? You still need payload which mostly has to come from Earth and the key processing equipment which also has to come from Earth. You haven't escaped the cost of the launch, you've simply added to the complexity and thus the cost.
Then there is the problem of actually developing the technology to mine and process these resources. We don't have industrial scale factories that are space worthy. Even if we did, they still have to be launched into space. We don't even have anyone working on them because there is no reasonable prospect of a return on investment. To get financing you have to have a product you can sell back here on earth and there is very little prospect of an economic return in the reasonably near future. Most of the economic benefits to the private sector are indirect ones (spinoff technologies, etc) for the foreseeable future.
It looks like US science education has jumped the shark. Notice he didn't write isotope so there's no excuse there, and there's nothing wrong with his written English which indicates at least a high school graduate if not more. Maybe we need to get bands to wear those periodic table t-shirts on MTV or something.
The problem with the Earth and moon is that yes, they're big and there are lots of resources in them, but all the ones we're really interested in are heavy and thus concentrated at their cores. It's tough to get down there.
Asteroids, on the other hand, are small and their cores are readily accessible, not that you need to do that because they're not differentiated like planets and big moons are. Although if you do mine one from the inside out, when you're done you have an awesome space castle.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Stupid.
Ask the 1% what they would do with $2.6 billion and they'd say "invest in some hedge funds, HFT companies, etc." These guys want to do something that a) generates more actual wealth and b) advances our capabilities as a species.
sjbe sneered:
No, instead you have to lift all the (non-existent) processing equipment instead. Are you under the impression that a steel mill is somehow not very heavy? Of course none of this technology is being developed because even if you did get it into orbit, you need a product to return to earth to make the financing possible.
Man, do you think small.
First off, judging from the composition of meteors found here on Earth, iron asteroids should mostly be composed of nickel-iron alloys. The percentage of nickel in the two most common components, kamacite and taenite, is MUCH higher than that found in most steel manufactured on Earth. Meteoric iron is highly corrosion-resistant and extremely durable, and it needs NO smelting to turn it into construction materials - it's pure enough to build stuff with straight from the sky.
It WILL need to be MELTED, so that it can be formed into girders, sheets, pipes, and so on, but that's actually trivial. The Earth/Moon orbit receives more than enough sunlight to use as a heat source. Simple parabolic mirrors made out of aluminized Mylar will do the trick. Yes, presses, rolling mills, stampers, and crucibles designed to work in microgravity environments will be necessary, but the hardest part of the task is the Bessemer process - and that's a skippable step.
As for needing to deliver a product to Earth to make a profit - nonsense! Why send it to Earth, which already has lots and lots of iron, when you can use it in space to construct stuff like an orbital shipyard and drydock facility, true SPACE ships (i.e. - ships designed to operate only in space, and never to touch down on a planetary surface at all), orbital habitats, factories, and labs, and so on? How much do you think Planetary Resources can charge for building a spacecraft capable of reaching Mars?
Finally, everyone in this discussion seems to have fastened onto NASA's 500-ton asteroid thought experiment as the size of the rock PR will attempt to lasso. I think you're all thinking too small, again. If they can capture a 500-ton asteroid, why can't they grab a 5,000-ton asteroid? It'd take a little longer to coax it into a useful orbit, but the same technology that would allow capture of a 500-tonner should be scalable to one 10X that size - and that would provide a helluva lot more raw material for in-space construction purposes.
PR is a MAJOR braintrust with some extremely big bucks behind it. I suspect they've thought this through a lot better than you or I have.
Regardless, we'll find out exactly what they're proposing to do on Tuesday.
Check out my novel.
Or we could, you know, do both. Radical idea, I know.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Just 6 years ago, many 'experts' claimed that SpaceX would never get off the ground. Likewise, if they DID get off the ground, they would have higher launch costs than all of the other subsidized nation's launch systems.
Yet, here we are.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Less government regulation on mine safety and pollution? Probably going to be a problem once they start trying to deliver tons of rock from orbit, although possibly people trying to deliver tons of rock from orbit are in a strong negotiating position...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Or, to put it another way, if there had originally been a quantity of plutonium equal to the mass of jupiter formed, then there would now be somewhere around double the mass of the great pyramid in Giza left, scattered all over the solar system. That amount is a pretty optimistic estimate, especially if you exclude any that ended up in the Sun as irrelevant.
In fact, if you assume that all of the matter in the solar system except the Sun was originally plutonium, then that still only gives you three times the mass of the great pyramid in Giza (about 1.8x10^7 metric tons) of plutonium left, scattered all over the solar system. Imagine if you took the great pyramid, ground it up, and scattered it just over the Earth's surface - even if it had the energy density of antimatter it probably wouldn't be worthwhile to find and collect it. If it's scattered all over the solar system (meaning most of it will be inside large masses, and most of it inside Jupiter), it's not going to be even remotely energy positive to find it.
Or, for the TLDR version, even assuming that there is vastly more plutonium around than there is actually likely to be, it's still not even remotely worth harvesting.
In future, please try not to assume that just because people have an understanding of the workings of science and the limitations of (current) technology, and don't treat it as a magical solution to all possible problems, that they're anti-technology.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
then you do not have a grasp of how far away the asteroids are.
If you: a) Think that all asteroids are in the belt between Mars & Jupiter. And b) think of space in terms of distance, not fuel/velocity/energy. Then you don't understand enough to comment.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.