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Planetary Resources Confirms Plan To Mine Asteroids
Matching widespread predictions, The Bad Astronomer writes with word that "The private company Planetary Resources has announced that it plans to mine asteroids for water, air, and even precious metals in the next few years. Your initial reaction may be to snicker a bit, but it's headed by Peter Diamandis — who established the X Prize — has several ex-NASA personnel running the engineering, and also has the backing of a half-dozen or so billionaires. So this is no joke — their plan looks solid, and may very well be the first step in establishing a permanent human presence in space."
Hopefully they'll be very careful about bringing asteroids into Earth orbit. But the energy and mining industries are pretty safe and responsible right?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because we're just about running out of problems to solve here on Earth
It sounds ridiculous and I won't be investing in that "enterprise".
when I see it happening.
Does anyone know what the (plausible) ROI for this is?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Mining with human on the asteroids... I dooubt it... machine will do the jobs for less cost...
The last article on asteroid mining said it wouldn't be profitable even if the asteroid was 20% gold. That was based on the ludicrous assumption that the material would be brought back to earth. Going to all the effort of capturing and mining an asteroid in space just to get a bunch of air and water seems silly until you look at just how ungodly expensive air and water are *in space*, after launch and storage costs. Producing life support materials in situ is the holy grail of space exploration.
How ironic that the predicted Asteroid Human-Extinction event would be man made?
Attention Peasants! Your revolution is over. You belong to us. Now behave while we ruin the planet with strip mining, fracking and pollution. We will very shortly be leaving on our miles-long colony cruise ships and leave you to rot in the wreckage of Old Earth.
This telescope will be used both to look for and observe known Near-Earth asteroids, and can also be pointed down to Earth for remote sensing operations.
"Remote sensing operations" being what exactly? /spideysense
Solid as a rock?
IGMC
Oh no... it's the future.
Why not start with "mining" all the spacecraft / satellite debris that is floating around in earth orbit? The debris is full of precious metals and alloys and is much more technologically simple.
Amazing how many things are the "first step in establishing a permanent human presence in space".
You'd think by now we'd actually HAVE one.
We already have a permanent human presence in space. For the last 11 years or so people have been onboard ISS has be continuously. Before that, the MIR space station had a record of 10 years. If (I frankly don't know) the MIR and ISS missions overlapped we have been in space for more than 20 years. I'd say that qualifies as permanent presence.
As long as they are willing to pay fro damages if an asteroids destroys some property, I have no problem and wish them luck.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Everyone wondering how they could possibly make money on this forgets that in 2036 or 2040 there is a decent chance that the fattest multinational government contract ever awarded will go to whomever knows how to capture an Asteroid. AG5 or Apothis or some other yet undiscovered rock will need to be moved sometime in the future, we know this.
It actually is possible that a few billionaires actually do want to keep the human race from going extinct, as far-fetched as that sounds.
I really kind of like this. A group of rich guys with a bent towards science fiction are doing a proof of concept mission that is - quite honestly - to risky for a big organization like NASA.
This is such a phenomenally more interesting use of their money than a huge yacht or a private island or buying a baseball team. I say go for it.
FWIW, I believe the target asteroid size is 500T, which is the same order of magnitude (barely, factor of 7.5) as the one that re-entered and blew up with apparently no ground damage over the US west coast last night.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Let me know when they have the real world "escape via hyperspace" feature working.
Damn all 'where the profit' morons. These people have an idea for a better future, one that they are apparently willing to back with their own considerable wealth. And all you have to say is "the profit margin isn't high enough". That idiotic, selfish, immoral, inhumane attitude is huge factor in why the western world is currently in such a mess. Perhaps you could go lobby for the reintroduction of slavery. I understand that had a really nice ROI.
And not just happening but turning a profit.
Those guys have enough money to throw at something like this and never show a cent profit ... for a while.
I think the fascination on /. with this is more driven by bad science fiction than by an understanding of the science behind it.
From TFA:
Okay, I can agree with that. Mining asteroids is not cheap.
Okay.
I'm seeing scope creep already.
And now we're getting into the "floor wax and dessert topping" area.
And that's where I think they will fail. They're hoping that the rocks that will be valuable are already in the "Near-Earth" and big enough and moving slow enough and ...
Kind of like hoping that a winning scratch lottery ticket is in your local store and in the game you're playing and within X tickets of the edge where the money you'll spend on them is X or greater.
It's their money and more space science won't hurt.
But I'd rather see them accomplish something visible.
We'll destroy the rest of the planets later.
Does anyone know what the (plausible) ROI for this is?
5 year, 25 year, 100 year?
The real return will not be from delivering things to earth, rather it will be delivering things to orbit and the moon to further orbital and lunar construction and habitation. Lifting metals and waters from the earth to orbit or the moon is very expensive. Getting those resources "locally" (local in terms of gravity well not absolute distance) is the way to go and someone will get very rich doing so. The problem is that a profitable mining enterprise is optimistically many decades in the future, more likely something for the next century at our current pace.
New hotness: taxing asteroids.
Them rich rocks gotta pay their fair share. I heard they're Dick Cheney fans, anyway, so to rubble with 'em.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
A lot could go wrong, but hopefully they're talking about dropping it at L1 and not actually bringing it into LEO/MEO. After all, we already have a rather large chunk of rock in orbit. A fair-sized asteroid at L1 would make a great place for a real space station, especially if it's ice and rock ... water, breathable air, and a place to build, and you don't have to do anything to keep it there. And the moon is a short jump away.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
My question is more along the lines of what is it that we cannot do right now that requires more platinum. Or that is prohibitively expensive based upon the current price of platinum.
Exactly. Bringing down more gold or platinum will initially depress the price of such. What, on Earth, requires more gold than is currently available?
We already know where there is ice on the Moon.
Wouldn't it be easier to just set up on the Moon and process it there and then ship it to NASA if they want to pay for it?
But then you'd have a MOON BASE and the space station would look kind of redundant. Why not move the astronauts to the moon base and use the water there?
These people are attempting to declare ownership. Only a sovereign claim can provide the right of ownership. Sovereign claims are not permitted on objects in space. This enterprise is illegal.
I'm intrigued to see Diamandis involved, a guy who has dedicated a lot of effort to driving technological progress. It got me thinking that perhaps the objective here is less to actually create this technology themselves but perhaps to force the hand of governments and even some companies with large pockets.
The potential ROI for the first group (or country) who successfully builds a fleet of robotic miners could be..err.. astronomical. I imagine there's a number of smart people in government ministries around the world (China and Japan in particular, perhaps the US) who would not like to see this group get a head start on their nation. It could force these government's hand and force them to invest them in this technology, perhaps it might even spark a new space race.
If you were a billionaire interested in space, and unhappy with the cutbacks in funding of exploration, what better way to force governments to reverse course than by threatening to deprive these governments of the massive profits that may be available?
This could be a giant step towards getting humans out in to the universe. You want to solve problems on Earth? Well a whole lot of them will be solved by getting in to space and expanding our resource base.
Science fiction writers had envisioned we would already be at this stage in space commercialization by now. Since reality has been a far cry from fiction (and lags behind), I wondered if space commercialization would ever be realized in my lifetime. Cancellation of the shuttle (with prospects of a replacement uncertain) doesn't help...but, reading this article about asteroid mining brings me renewed hope.
Hmmm... just for brief science fiction, suppose that... ...back in the Pliocene, when dinosaurs roamed the planet, just suppose there was one species that was, say, superintelligent. And suppose that species mined asteroids, and then one megalomaniac crashed an asteroid at a shallow angle, into Africa, right about where the South Sandwich islands are today (but crust-wise, at the location of the Vredefort.)
And, that location, perhaps, was just where there was a uranium-calcium georeactor in the mantle. And it blew.
And, just for argument's sake, suppose the crust completely shattered, and blew out about 1/3 of the moon's mass, and the exposure of the kimberlites in the crust created all those nice diamond mines in a big circle that includes Australia, Northern Italy, central Africa, and Brazil.
Much more recently than people imagine... but those U-U dates were thrown off by all the Uranium from the explosion.
And, just for entertainment's sake, suppose that the shock waves set off another explosion in a georeactor directly under the Hudson Bay, shattering that crust like a bullet shot through a pumpkin, and sending *that* mass into orbit as well, and creating all those kimiberlites that circle the Hudson in a 950-mile radius.
And, just for imagination's sake suppose there was yet *another* explosion, say, underneath a continent located, say, about where Polynesia was today, and that one threw out most of the moon's mass, and created a large enough hole that the continents slid far more quickly than anyone today realizes.
Just supposing... maybe playing with asteroids is a _bad_idea_.
Well, thank goodness that's all sci-fi, and there *aren't* kimberlites all around the Hudson, or in a giant arc that aligns well in Pangea.
Right?
Just suppose...
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
n/t
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Fortunately for science, running out of things to do, billionaires have decided to take up things to a new frontier... whether it be space x, blue origin or now this... maybe there is hope for the future of space exploration
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Water is by far the driving material resource. Metals are insignificant compared to water for human utilization. That Planetary Resources wants to track NEOs is also important. They have definitely done their homework.
When this news started to break last week it was unclear if they were just going after PGMs or had a more comprehensive strategy.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Retrieval of Asteroidal Materials [1979]
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790024063_1979024063.pdf
BRIAN O'LEARY, MICHAEL 1. GAFFEY, DAVID 1. ROSS, and ROBERT SALKELD
Earlier scenarios for mass-driver retrieval of asteroidal materials have been tested and refined after new data were considered on mass-driver performance, favorable delta-V opportunities to Earth-approaching asteroids with gravity assists, designs for mining equipment, opportunities for processing volatiles and free metals at the asteroid, mission scenarios, and parametric studies of the most significant variables. We conclude that the asteroid-retrieval option is competitive with the retrieval of lunar materials for space manufacturing, while a carbonaceous object would provide a distinctive advantage over the Earth as a source of consumables and raw materials for biomass in space settlements during the 1990's. We recommend immediate studies on asteroid-retrieval mission opportunities, an increased search and followup program, precursor missions, trade-offs with the Moon and Earth as sources of materials, and supporting technology.
insignia for this program? http://www.flickr.com/photos/45676693@N03/6959137824/in/set-72157629163524738/
mfwright@batnet.com
First, I believe they're talking about mining asteroids for construction materials and then selling those materials to, e.g. NASA, or other agencies, to use *in space*. They're not bringing it back to Earth. Interestingly I don't know if you can own, or even claim, an asteroid. So you go to all the work of moving it, or mining it and moving it to somewhere useful, and someone else comes along and appropriates it... I don't think you have legal recourse. All you can do is defend it by force, so ownership of the material is completely about your ability to defend it. (Barring legal changes here on Earth, of course.) So it would presumably be a better business plan to a) develop the technology for mining raw materials from asteroids and delivering them anywhere, and then b) demonstrating it on a small scale and then c) getting contracts to provide these services. You wouldn't want to be holding on to too much inventory in space, unless you really feel it's secure, or you can charge a premium for fast delivery because you already have it in stock.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Jim Benson's baby, SpaceDev, had the same business plan in the mid-90's. They were players in the X Prize and the NEAR satellite, with custom satellite launches to fund their asteroid mining plan. Sadly, Benson died in the mid-2000's and his dream went too. [But not after I made lots of money trading small fluctuations in SPDV shares for 5 years (paid for my student loans!)]
Of course, he originally claimed there could be cobalt asteroids out there worth a quadrillion dollars. (No citation, but I remember the quadrillion # clearly.)
I really hope this new venture works, I think it is a feasible idea.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Much more profitable just to threaten to destroy the Earth unless everybody pays them. And they can do it again -- and again.
After all, it's not just the price of platinum that may plummet... it could be the platinum itself.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
That obviously was just the warning shot.
The actual business plan is holding the earth ransom for one MILLION dollars!
With oil, once you burn it it is gone.
With water, once you drink it you excrete it. A recycling system should be able to slow any loss to almost nothing.
And while the Moon does have a gravity well, the lunar lander successfully launched from it with humans and life support and a very small drive. Setting up a launch system that relied upon solar energy (lots of it there) should be cheap enough.
IT' is NOT too risky for NASA. IT's too politically risky for congress.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it takes too much energy to bring back anything (e.g. gold or other resources), but it makes sense to mine anything that has 0 mass. Such as software. I think a better route is to put solar panels in orbit around the sun and have our heavy datacenters up there... yeah the seven minute ping is a bitch but sometimes it's all about the TERRAFLOPs (or solaflops)
If flooding the market with a commodity lowers the price too much, then only bring enough to meet the annual industrial demand. Plus tell the Chinese to screw their monopoly on "Rare Earth" materials.
A lot of Gold, Silver and Platinum are sold for industrial users, silver goes into making solder and those hard plastic packages that are a pain to open.
Until recently the gold, silver and copper in electronics mostly went to landfill or was shipped to Africa where the heavy metals and chemicals in them are leaching into the water supply.
If I could mine all the asteroids and just park my inventory in LaGrange Point L1, then these become my reserves just as if I had them underground in a mine. Reserves are usually priced against the market value of the commodity, so my stock options become more valuable based on my reserves if I do not flood the market with more Platinum than industry can absorb.
Try re-asking your question what happens to Oil prices if they dump all their reserves on the market, and ask yourself why that doesn't happen.
This will be a net positive for the Solar industry if real industrial capacity moves into space.
Ha! You know James Cameron is going to figure out someway to link this project with Avatar 3!
Is any one hearing this crazy Russian/techo music on the live streaming vid?
And asteroids aren't scattered in a lot of different orbits, and don't require a lot of energy to reach? Get back to me when the simple Japanese Space Hotel of 1997 puts a single bolt in orbit before we start hallucinating ever bigger delusions.
Yes, much better no one dare dream big. Let's stay here on this rock with the investment bankers and high frequency traders who demonize teachers, firefighters and policemen for wanting a living wage and the pensions they were promised. Let's all industriously engage in bean-counting while neglecting the growing of more beans.
If nothing more, this Planetary Resources gig is at least a jobs bill for aerospace engineers. Hopefully it will inspire some youngsters to study hard and pursue careers in the sciences instead of non-productive market manipulation. Maybe it will engage some engineers in slowly expanding the human biosphere instead of building weapons to oppress and murder their fellow man.
nah, you're right, random jackass bloviating on the intarwebs, this is all just foolish moonbeams and useless spacenuttery. PHAH!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
of Weyland - Yutani corp?
Well the 10:30AM PDT webcast is coming up so no need to guess.
http://www.planetaryresources.com/
It is a fabulously wonderful thing they are doing and it will profit themselves and the human race.
Maybe only these guys could do it.
I just had another thought for the naysayers of whom there are even some on slashdot.
Can you imagine a safer investment than strategically placed caches of air, water and refined platinum group metals, in a nonreflective wrapping, where only YOU know its exact location? And when YOU are the only people with an advanced swarm of lightweight explorer bots in space? Really any number of disasters, wars, political swings, bank imposions, plagues, tidal waves are as nothing to this. There is literally nothing that could wipe it out, even an asteroid could only bump into one of them. 100 years from now it will still be valuable, diamonds stored in a cold vault in the sky. Anyway its real value is in enabling manne missions and inhabitation of space and they will do that too.
Have they found a use for this terrestrially rare element that would justify such a venture?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
As of now, I am staking claim to all previously unowned, natural celestial bodies within 10 light years of the earth's orbit. Now they will have to pay me for mining rights.
Do garbage dumps first. Everything we need is... well there!
Thank you, NASA, for spending the past thirty-odd years engaging in such banal, unambitious projects and thus setting the bar so low that an endeavor like this is now regarded as some sort of "laughable" pie-in-the-sky effort.
Liberty in your lifetime
Yes let's think of an extremely energy intensive task we can do, like moving billions of tonnes of ore billions of km through space, at a time when the Earth will be running out of cheap portable energy. Methinks the money could be better allocated elsewhere along more realistic goals, but it's their money not mine so they can do whatever they want. I'm just wondering if there exists such a thing as a species-wide denial, wondering if resources are running out at such a fast rate that those who have the wealth to control said resources are actually considering plans like this as an act of desperation or not, and wondering how billionaires can forget to count. When we're all dead from starvation/disease due to exceeding our resources in 100 years or so, how can they imagine there will be a huge demand for raw materials?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's not the price of the platinum on current (or even future) market that is at issue here.
It's the price of mining that same amount of platinum, strapping it onto a rocket and shooting it up into space at escape velocity.
Getting stuff up there is what is expensive (ergo, profitable) at the moment.
Heck, they could be turning a hefty profit just by getting the step 2 working.
A water/oxygen/nitrogen supply depot means that every single spaceflight capable nation could simply refuel its satellites whenever it needs to.
Spy satellites which you can move around for cheap.
And that's just the orbital stuff.
Those depots would come in really handy for anyone building a base on the Moon or manning a mission to Mars and back.
No need to haul propellent - most of it is already up there. Get the rest from Mars.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The idea stands to reason: Asteroids being large bodies of rock, asteroids can be mined for their mineralogical contents. I expect that there could be a viable process for that made with a fully automated, robotic mining production line (with at least one manned repair station, perhaps in orbit around the earth.) I think it may be not so much a question of whether it's possible, then, but rather, a question of how it would be achieved (with economic viability, moreover).
Hmmm... just for brief science fiction, suppose that... ...back in the X=(Triassic|Jurassic|Cretaceous), when dinosaurs roamed the planet
There. Fixed that for you. In the name of humanity, please refrain from writing science-fiction. Otherwise, you'll get hired by Hollywood, bestowing upon us horrors like "A Sound of Thunder" or "2012".
No short term or medium term ROI for sure. And until commodity prices skyrocket on earth, not enough ROI to ship down to earth under any circumstances.
But the cost of shipping large masses from earth to moon is huge, so they can probably compete in the lunar market vs. resources shipped up from earth. Same for anything further out like Mars, etc. Of course, right now, there is no lunar market to speak of.
Another ROI could be acquisition of mineral rights in the asteroid belt. Buy them now and sell them high once there actually is a viable market. But to acquire the mineral rights they probably have to demonstrate at least a rudimentary capability to actually extract something from the minerals.
So bottom line is that an ROI is not impossible, but this is about as speculative as it gets. It's not just about a technological breakthrough revolutionizing an existing market, it's about multiple technological breakthroughs required to create a market that doesn't even exist yet.
We are the 198 proof..
IT' is NOT too risky for NASA. IT's too politically risky for congress.
Its not politically risky, its just simply not possible. The timespans are out too long to fit into a single term of office. The moon happened for one reason, and one reason only -- a pissing match with the USSR. The space shuttle and ISS only survived 30 years for one reason -- it was strategically important to the US to keep a broad set of aerospace contractors in business and developing new technology, even if the waning years of the cold war wouldn't support them on their own.
The government has *never* been about space exploration for exploration's sake. Why do you think large-scale robotic exploration missions keep getting cut? If you take too much longer than a single term in office, you risk being cut, especially if you can't burn enough money fast enough to make it appear cheaper to finish than to stop. The missions that "work" these days are strategic to someone's congressional district, cheap, and fast to implement, so they avoid the congressional axe when their original supporter leaves office. (And even some, like the Webb, barely sustain on life support...)
Same reason we couldn't finish the SSC, why fusion research is faltering, and a hundred other examples.
A few folks have alluded to Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" reg. lobbing asteroids at earth.
I think a more interesting/pertinent reference is to Delos Harriman in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"
We are the 198 proof..
... to see Mike Row's weightless expressions, when he does this Dirty Jobs episode.
Collector's Edition
Liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen were burned by the shuttle engines and can be recycled over and over again by introducing sunlight into the perpetual motion device.
No need for precious hydrocarbons to be wasted on space.
if after we created the first asteroid mine tailings, that we notice the belt is already full of them.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The first thing I thought:
"That is all, Material Defender. Prepare for descent."
This is why you're just a poor physicist. Perhaps if you became a billionaire you could pursue projects you deem worthy. Titans of industry are the best group of individuals to pursue such a long term vision as space colonization. It's in their blood.
Aluminum was very expensive a hundred years ago. Only the most wealthy could afford an Aluminum tea set. Now, a hundred years later, Aluminum cans cost pennies and are infinitely recyclable.
I see two problems that have yet to be surmounted to get government exploration/exploitation of space.
First off, it's easier to defund programs like NASA and use the cash for other 'more important' things, like buying votes in the next election. And there's always an election. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
Second, there's that damned treaty that says everything outside the atmosphere can't be 'owned', and must be used for the 'betterment of mankind', which means, if some pygmie on the outskirts of the Congo doesn't directly benefit from it, it ain't allowed. Get rid of this treaty. Allow direct ownership of non-Terran objects. Keep it reasonable, say, only what you have direct control of. None of that nonsense of the Pope carving up the New World between Spain and Portugal.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I'm beginning to wonder if cancellation of the shuttle is turning out to be a good thing. How many bright minds came from NASA and are now involved in these ambitious projects? How many of them would still be at NASA for the job security if NASA still had a major orbital program?
I hereby claim ownership of all naturally occurring celestial bodies within 10 light years of earth! I have never heard of another human laying claim to said objects, so that means they now belong to me. Now they will have to pay me for drilling rights or keep their damn dirty paws off!
That's the lottery part. You buy the probe and hope that you find something.
And that the something you find is worth MORE than the cost of the probe AND the cost of mining it.
It's different because the investment to mine the asteroid is so HUGE in the first place.
So what is required is:
1. Near Earth
2. Moving slow enough to mine
3. Valuable enough to pay for the mining operation
4. Small enough to be maneuverable by weak engines
Hitting all four of those requirements seems pretty unlikely.
If you're planning on converting water into transportation fuel on the Moon then you're wasting a lot of resources.
Go with a rail gun (the Navy has one) and use cheap solar energy to power it.
Or use a laser to beam the energy to a remote vehicle and use cheap solar energy to power the laser.
There are lots of other ways.
Wish I had mod points. I hear people talk about how we are wasting money on the ISS instead of spending that money on going to Mars. They should realize that if we really wanted to go to Mars, we'd need to be doing all sorts of research developing the tech we'd need to do so, which would require probably an order of magnitude larger budget going into the ISS or something similar first.
You are under the false impression, apparently, that engineers and scientists run NASA. NASA projects are managed by engineers and scientists, but it is run by bureaucrats which, like their brothers in the business world, must show measurable progress on a time scale which is shorter than is necessary for the public good. Without progress, there is no funding; without funding, there is no project. And failures are utterly forbidden.
I believe it was Golden who said that NASA needed to take more risks to advance science. We (the engineers) completed his sentence by adding, "but failure is still not acceptable." How many failures are you allowed in an eight-nines organization? Answer: not enough.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This, or something like it, is the only way that weâ(TM)ll ever have a chance of establishing a permanent presence in our Planetary vicinity. Itâ(TM)s not about getting the material back to Earth, itâ(TM)s about making it available on Orbit. And I get the point that you made about NASA being good at certain things with the logical next step of Private Industry picking up where they left off. As a long-range plan this has all the hallmarks of being do-able. Imagine. Larry Nivenâ(TM)s Belters for real.. Technical College degrees in Orbital Mechanics and Micro Gravity Mining Techniques. Very cool. Now all they need to do is pool the cash and buy the ISS, boost it into high orbit and Orbital Base One is born. Too bad Iâ(TM)ll be dead long before this all becomes reality, but at least it gives me hope for my Kids.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
I'm actually curious as to how big of a speck an asteroid at L1 would be and how many people would complain it upset their view of the moon. ;)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I've seen many, many companies in software development and in other fields whose main reason for existing is to get as much investment money for as long as possible to pad the pockets of the company execs and this company has all of the signs of being yet another one of them.
If you've been around a while and have a talent for recognizing patterns in human behavior you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're young or don't have a talent for seeing repeating patterns in human behavior you'll likely tell me I'm full of crap. Just give it time.
It's a shame because when I first read the announcement I had high hopes they might actually be legit.
We'll all have some decisions to make once they find the first Marker.
I think a more interesting/pertinent reference is to Delos Harriman in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"
This. They're cash-flow positive already. I like their odds.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Provided you're a billionaire at the start...
I approve of this message only so long as they name their consortium "Weyland-Yutani Corporation"...
It's a pain in the ass when they come out of nowhere while you're mining.
sudo eat my shorts
Thought not. How did I know that? How did YOU ALL know that?
Your country, and your children's future, is being destroyed by mass immigration of non-whites. It is the most important issue in YOUR world, and will be for the rest of your (probably shortened) life, unless you do something about it.
how long will it take to load 16 tons in microgravity?
Oh great! Like maneuvering through an asteroid field wasn't hard enough! They have to go and lay mines in it as well. Great! Thanks a bunch laser brain! - Han
That's the lottery part. What if there aren't any asteroids that fit all four requirements?
That plan depends upon there being at least one (and that one having a payoff that funds the entire project) or more (with a total payoff that funds the entire project).
Kind of like hoping to find a winning lottery ticket at the shop you just drove to so you can pay off the car you just bought to drive to that shop.
Skip that.
If you can mine an asteroid then you can mine the Moon.
I expect that that they'd want to keep the full production process and the market, too, in space, for those volatile materials as much as for the ores and minerals.
Of course, there'd have to be a market in space for those raw materials, in order for it to be a profitable enterprise.
It would seem to introduce many questions and opportunities for new technology and new business development, overall. I suspect that the NewSpace industry - if supported in the endeavor, popularly/culturally as well as economically - may undergo some growth, in response to and in the wake of such proposals as that noted, above, from Planetary Resources.
"Your country, and your children's future, is being destroyed by mass immigration of non-whites."
No. I'm not from Tibet.
Regardless of HOW they go about doing things the basics of the world situation is this; the sooner we get a cheap source of heavy lift capability, the more people survive when the resources here on this rock are gone. Let 'em go for it! Better than being stuck here when things run out! Then our whole race dies.
I think you missed the parts where they have several other lines of business beyond precious metals. Namely marketing the hardware they are developing (the telescopes for example) and volatiles harvested from asteroids (which are a lot easier to process then ore). Go back and look, they are not idiots, there is a plan for medium term ROI.
I'm pretty certain that 2 of those can be mined fairly easily down here on Earth, lol. By the way, I would find a self sustaining, non-connected to the surface, geothermal powered drilling robot that would retrieve basketball-sized diamonds from miles below the Earth's crust if they're doing this for a profit. That seems a lot safer and easier.
I understand your complaint. You and others, versed far more in orbital mechanics, assure the rest of us fools that, based on your admittedly superior knowledge and training, that what you propose is safe.
However, human history in the technological age has proven, time and time again, that reassurances of safety and no ill effects from domain experts is fraught with danger. Let's just run down through the list of things proclaimed to be safe, that we the luddites were wrong...
a) Coal / Heavy Metals - 1850s - .. everyone said coal was great.. built out a huge national infrastructure based on the use of coal and heavy metals, and woops, it turns out, that coal is not so cool, and heavy metals are good for you.
b) Ships / Tranes / Airplanes - Titanic - "practically unsinkable", sunk, Ford Trimotors all the way to the 747, all have crashed. A recent Airbus crash, with foolproof avionics, was partially caused by the pilot and copilot not having feedback to each other on their control yokes, like the way a Boeing plane does. Am waiting for the "superbly tested" wings of the 787 to fail in some unusual condition, am waiting for an A380 to go down in flames with a Titanic sized fatality list, has already watched two shuttles fail. It's gonna happen.
c) The Power of the Atom - I'm pro nuclear power, but pronouncements of public safety and "we've thought of everything"... are just the proof that, well, when self proclaimed smart people say they thought of everything, they missed something. There will be another accident.
d) Amphetimines - hey, doctors of the 1950s... let's dole these out.. perfectly safe. what could go wrong. Bonus points for Thalidomide.
e) DDT. perfectly safe, great against mosquitos and pests. Sorry about the birds, guess we didn't think of that.
f) Fossil Fuels. Global warming... no really, we didn't think of that.
g) Windmills. Perfectly safe. What could go wrong. Sorry about all the dead birds? God knows what other ill effects from land use.
h) FDA diet recommendations circa 1970s. Hey everybody, you should eat lots of bread and cheese. Four food groups! Oh wait, we were wrong. Sorry, cholesterol, who would have thought of that.
i) Cell phones, em radiation, birth control, psychiatric drugs, cholesterol drugs... all of which are too relatively new to know the effects of...except, cell phones cause as many car accidents as duis in some states, birth control might alter women's biochemistry to change their preferences in men and might have ripple environmental effects, cholesterol drugs might not be so great after all... and god knows what else will go wrong with other technologies.
The bottom line is, there's never been a roll out of some new thing in the last 150 years that has not been screwed up in some unforseen way. Mathematically, anyone with a degree of computer science, and this is a computer people kinda board, knows that complexity problems with loads of variables are essentially unsolvable, and yet there people who say "they have thought of everything"... when we already know just based on how information works, that no one can.
So yes, its not anti-technology at all, its anti-let's take a big frigging risk and abolish any common sense that says pushing a dinosaur killer closer to earth might be a bad fricking idea by deluding ourselves into pretending we know all the variables involved, when we can't. If we are going to do asteroid mining, why not mine and process the ore on site, and bring the concentrated stuff back to earth.
This is my sig.
Rough approximation, everything leaning towards higher visibility: Say L1 is halfway to the moon, and that the asteroid is all ice. A sphere weighing 1000 tons is 20 m in diameter, so would obscure half a football field's worth of the moon's surface. At 10 000 tons, 40-something m in diameter, it still obscures less than a whole football field. AT 1 M tons, 200m in diameter, it hides a dragstrip on the moon. (Which is probably just as well; low gravity - low friction - low acceleration, and the spectators can't hear the engines anyway...) So you would need a serious telescope.
So mining takes stuff out, changes mass, changes orbit, meaning we now have a new unknown trajectory to worry about
Or just too pissed off to read carefully?
RE: " but so far you have not given any convincing evidence of how technology properly used is necessarily dangerous."
I would say his point is simple - so far in history it is clear that given time and human nature there is no evidence that dangerous technology will consistently be used properly. In fact the opposite is true.
Mistakes, corrruption and greed guarantee disasters. As technology becomes more powerful the disasters become worse, and more difficult to recover from. Eventually they will rise to the level of extinction events.
New Orleans/Katrina. Exxon Valdez. BP/Gulf. Shuttle disaster and Feynman's investigation/explanations (showing the weakness of even our best technical/management teams) Fukushima. Nuclear weapons + idealogues (We have been very close to severe nuclear catastrophe, and it has only been about 70 years, and they continue to proliferate.)
Global Warming/Climate Change. (The last, If reasonably pessimistic extrapolations are true, will show that all human technology and advancement will quite possibly be for naught. In other words, ultimately worthless.)
Human nature is such that we continue to cut corners, ignore and misunderstand the statistics of risk, overestimate our own intelligence and skills, and, most importantly, misunderestimate the extraordinarily powerful effect of externalities on every business plan, regulation, and system we put in place.
The first step to mitigating and solving this problem is recognizing that it exists. It is this recognition that most "Cheerleaders" (ie business and political "visionaries".) ignore or try to suppress. (Again - the shuttle disasters provide a simple yet evocative example.)
Severe skepticism and "paranoia" evolved for a reason - they are necessary and they work to help ensure survival. We need more of these, not less.
Especially recent history.
When something is proposed for business reasons (ie to make a profit.), skepticism and paranoia are in fact the only appropriate first responses. Especially when the risk will be socialized and the profit privatized.
The burden is (that is should be) on the businessmen and profit seekers to prove their proposal is sound and all risks are identified and addressed using science and engineering.
That is one of the main reasons that privatizing cutting-edge technology on this scale is problematic. Business will always corrupt and ignore/hide risks and externalties that might hurt profits.
First rule: trust NO ONE.
STEP 1. Grab asteroid.
STEP 2. Reel to Earth.
STEP 3. Crash into inhabited area.
STEP 4. Extract all resources from crash site.
Voila! No more problems with over-crowded cities. Go-go recycling!
It is just more profit and/or glory-seeker misdirection.
I see nothing in these discussions that is reassuring, just the opposite.
We know that those in charge and guided exclusively by profit/glory will push the envelope until disaster strikes. We know this, because they always do.
Here is one simple example. You think the Chinese or Russians will calmly accept that the meteor that hit them was an "oopsie"?
Over and over we will hear the refrain.
"Who could possibly have imagined things would go so wrong?"
Re: Giving democracy a bad name... Having lived in Taiwan for 20 years, believe me, I have my problems with China. But I have to admit, they are going balls-out on the clean-tech front, putting my home country (USA) to shame. They subsidize their solar PV industry so much that they have raised the bar worldwide on price (this is the real reason Solyndra went under, their business model depended on PV cells costing $4/w, but China drove the price down to $1.25/w). They are actively working on molten-salt Thorium fuel nuclear power. They are moving aggressively on electric vehicle adoption. Etc., etc....
By comparison, the US gov't is deadlocked over transferring $4B/yr in subsidies from oil companies (who manifestly don't need them anymore) to R&D in clean energy. But unfortunately our "democracy" has devolved into a sham, with legislation sold to the highest bidder. As just one example, during the healthcare debate a couple of years ago, an overwhelming majority (70-plus percent) favored a "public option" (including 80% of Democrats and around 55% of Republicans), but it was never seriously considered.
Democracy is fantastic when it works, but not so much when it's broken.
Meanwhile, the Chinese gov't is run by technocrats. Our gov't is probably 3/4's lawyers and poli-sci grads; theirs is 3/4's engineers. Obviously they have their share of corruption too, but somehow they have crept ahead of us in some important areas.
Ironically, the USA is boosted by the fruits of its excess... allowing a handful of people to get filthy rich has produced some truly forward-thinking do-gooders like these Planetary Resources guys, Elon Musk, etc.. OTOH, we also have the likes of David Koch to deal with... you win some, you lose some...
Personally, I think the most important thing for the USA right now is to end corporate personhood.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
"My name is Kimball Kinneson
I lead the Lensman band
Although we're few in number
Our abilities are grand
We play with stars and planets,
Catch comets in a net
And use a supernova
To light a cigarette.
- Poul Anderson
I used to support this sort of thing wholeheartedly, but then one niggling detail stuck its head up and now I'm not so sure.
What happens to the dust?
It's one thing to shatter a rock to bits out in the asteroid belt and leave a million microscopic orbiting bodies in the plane of the ecliptic. We could always just bank shot around the asteroid belt to avoid the worst. It's another to have a million microscopic orbiting bodies around earth. People are already biting their nails about the number of satellite fragments we already have.
Have they figured out how to avoid this, or will this be another industry that pollutes first and apologizes later (if at all)?
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.