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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
when I see it happening.
Does anyone know what the (plausible) ROI for this is?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wise choice. From TFA:
I asked Lewicki specifically about how this will make money. Some asteroids may be rich in precious metals — some may hold tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars in platinum-group metals — but it will cost billions and take many years, most likely, to mine them before any samples can be returned. Why not just do it here on Earth? In other words, what’s the incentive for profit for the investors? This is probably the idea over which most people are skeptical, including several people I know active in the asteroid science community.
I have to admit, Lewicki’s answer surprised me. “The investors aren’t making decisions based on a business plan or a return on investment,” he told me. “They’re basing their decisions on our vision.”
These guys aren't even making excuses, they're throwing money down a hole for the lulz. And if this is one of Elon's "playing the long game" ideas he's going to be really disappointed that this will never be profitable as long as spaceships are being pushed from A to B. The only material that could possibly be profitable to bring back to Earth would be He3 from the Moon for use in fusion power.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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?
Solid as a rock?
IGMC
Oh no... it's the future.
Actually, I think this is worth doing on a "because it's there" basis. If you've got the money and want to spend it that way.
For my values, it beats buying a football team or a casino.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
These guys aren't even making excuses, they're throwing money down a hole for the lulz.
The money put forth into space endeavors is NOT packaged up and shot into space. It's spent right here on earth. It employs people here on earth. It uses infrastructure and resources here on earth. It's not being thrown down a hole. Even if they are doing it for lulz, it employs people.
Yeah, throwing money down a hole for the lulz. Just like space travel always was!
Seriously, are you so short-sighted that you cannot see how useful mining asteroids for water, air, and eventually precious minerals is? I'll give you a hint: absolutely, 100% vital to the continued development of the human race. This has nothing to do with doing something "for the lulz." It is all about advancing the state of the human race. Not for profit, but because humanity can and should expand. Asteroid mining is one step forwards in our expansion towards other planets, and if we intend to not go extinct, we need to do that. We may not need to now. We may not need to in a hundred years, but we will in a thousand, or a million, and we are only going to get there if we start at some point. Might as well do it now.
To quote from the article: "[Planetary Resources] want to make sure there are available resources in place to ensure a permanent future in space." Our future, eventually, is in space. Whether from global warming, resource exhaustion, or nuclear war, Earth will eventually not be enough. When that day comes, we will be glad some billionaires chose to spend their money on space expansion, instead of building/buying shiny new toys, or hookers and blow.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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?
Men, flying through the air!? Ridiculous! I won't be investing in that "enterprise".
As if you had the means or the opportunity.
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.
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
That actually improves their chances of success in my eyes. They're not getting money from duped investors (who tend to figure out what is going on eventually). They know this is likely to be a huge money pit with little short or even medium term return, but they know someone has to do it first to make it feasible for everybody else to follow in their footsteps.
Besides, if you're going to be filthy stinking rich, you might as well spend your money on projects like this instead of gaming the commodities market or buying outrageously expensive yachts or whatnot.
I read the internet for the articles.
While money is fairly unlimited, resources are not. In particular, the fuel used to send a rocketship into space isn't ever coming back.
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
"If they're not doing it for profit it's strange that they set it up as a business."
There is the concept of limited liability as a business. i.e. if they screw up chances are people will sue the business, not them. the business goes under sure, but unless it is proved they themselves were incompetant they should get away with it.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
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
Look what the did to Europe!
I drank what? -- Socrates
And that, BTW, is the awesomest thing ever. Fuck markets and fuck government subsidies: people want to do things. This is how progress really happens. Sometimes.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Aaaah! Outland revenue.
Interesting question, how long after the first permanent space residents appear that we start to have governments on Earth demanding that taxes are paid?
I can imagine a phase where the old Earth governments are chasing the miners through space, not for being pirates but for not paying their taxes on what they owe Earth for their work.
After all, what have the Earthlings ever done for us?
The water purifiers
Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true
And the sanitation!
Oh yes... sanitation, , you remember what the space station used to be like.
All right, I'll grant you that the purifiers and the sanitation are two things that the Earthlings have done...
And the rockets
(sharply) Well yes obviously the rockets... the rockets go without saying. But apart from the purifiers, the sanitation and the rockets...
Hydroponics... Medicine... Education... Health...
Yes... all right, fair enough...
And the wine...
Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if we broke away from earth
Sorry I got carried away there...
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Hard to say, but imagine your car chassis was platinum rather than steel - lighter, stronger more corrosion resistant.
With its high temperature stability there's dozens of places that would welcome a strong corrosion resistant material that is comparatively light.
Platinum is NOT lighter than steel. It is much, much, heavier. It is more dense than lead. More dense than gold. Only iridium and osmium are (slightly) more dense.
There are many good uses for platinum if it was cheaper, but car frames are not one of them.
Vision has a way of making huge financial windfalls. If you can get to the point where you've got robot miners mining, smelting and manufacturing (more robots among other things) in space, using abundant solar power and the asteroids as raw materials... Well, lets just say that opens up some horizons.Robotics are improving, as are computer vision, environment modelling and AI, or at least the processing power to run it is getting cheaper. There's still a ways to go, but these guys are capturing the first mover advantage. They're doing the first step towards what I described above. It may be that in taking the first step, the next step will present itself to them. At the very least, you probably want to consider that the value of the metal they mine will be more competitive with the prices of metals found on earth if you include the delivery fee to earth orbit or the moon for space ship/space station/moon base construction. It's probably cheaper to ship bulk quantities from the asteroid belt than it is from Houston, If you can build an asteroid belt branch office.
While money is fairly unlimited, resources are not. In particular, the fuel used to send a rocketship into space isn't ever coming back.
The alternative is to burn up all that earth-bound fuel moving people and resources around on the earth for just a little longer until it's all gone anyway - and you have no way to get off the earth for more supplies. Because those resources are only limited ON EARTH.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Well, actually I am a physicist, I studied high energy physics and now I develop medical equipment - so excuse me when I don't give a fuck about how smart you think I am - in any event I have lots of use for good engineers - I am sure someone good a designing a space probe would be useful at doing a lot of things, we hire people with all kinds of backgrounds from nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, engineering etc... - do you have any idea how may different disciplines are needed to develop large pieces of medical infrastructure? tasks can vary from thermal calculations to antenna design, to developing structures to withstand high g forces - the point is good engineers are rare and will not end up working at costco - so wasting them on trying to reduce the price of platinum through an unworkable scheme seems stupid when compared to some of the other things they could be doing, akin to wasting math talent on derivatives trading or mortgage backed securities - this whole venture sounds like a few rich guys looking to fulfill their fantasies while trying to excuse the continued over-exploitation of the earth's resources
Problem is that we keep on doing those "irst step in establishing a permanent human presence in space" things and never get around to the "second step...".
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
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.
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".
The top my all time stupidest sci-fi movie has to be Earth's Final Hours (2011), where the Earth's rotation is stopped by a few dozen golf-ball sized meteorites hitting the planet in a mid-western farm field. Luckily for us, there was an abandoned cold-war satellite with a laser beam thingy that was activated at the last minute to restart the Earth's rotation. Phew!