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New Asteroid Mining Company Emerges
coondoggie writes "A new company intends by 2015 to send a fleet of tiny satellites to mine passing asteroids for high-value metals. Deep Space Industries Inc.'s asteroid mining proposal begins in 2015, when the company plans to send out a squadron of 55lb cubesats, called Fireflies, that will explore near-Earth space for two to six months looking for target asteroids. The company's CEO said, 'Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development. More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year. They can be like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century — a key resource located near where it was needed. In this case, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century. That is our strategy.'"
if after they made their own mine tailings, they noticed that there were already mine tailings there.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I bet you a hundred dollarpounds they get bought out by the Jupiter Mining Corporation
Worst. Signature. Ever.
How much do you know about Asteroid Mining? Not much. And neither do these guys, because nobody has tried it before and there are still more unknowns than knowns. What I do know is that 2015, two years from now, is a totally and completely unrealistic goal. They would have to have surveys of potential candidates already done, launch windows nailed down, hardware completed and ready to go, support staff trained and ready, mineral recovery solution built, etc... You would be hard pressed to open a mine on Earth in just two years time, and Earth mining doesn't have astronomical launch costs. A 2015 timeline tells me that these guys are either insane or a scam.
I read the internet for the articles.
Fireflies (the exploratory satellites), but then I remembered if there were any danger of a collision, they could simply make the jump to hyperspace. Seems to work consistently well if I remember right...
The cubesats are to explore, not mine. First you need to find likely targets. If you bothered reading the article you'd see they will be using slightly larger vehicles to bring back small payloads.
Nothing. If you read the article (I know, this is Slashdot), then you will discover that the first satelites are scouts. In 2016, they want to launch larger satellites to retrieve small samples. Ultimately, they want to build a 3-D printer in space, as well as create rocket fuel for space gas stations. As far as I could tell, the funding for this endeavor is a bit of a question mark.
Then in 2016, Deep Space said it will begin launching 70-lb DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back samples. The DragonFly expeditions will take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return 60 to 150 lbs of asteroid materiel.
This is a violation of International treaties and amounts to conspiracy to commit theft.
This is a federal crime under US law.
They're a corporation. You must not live in the U.S. or you'd know that laws don't apply to corporations unless they fail to pay their brib^H^H^H^H Freedom & Democracy Support Fees.
> the funding for this endeavor is a bit of a question mark
Unless and until they discover an asteroid, in a favorable orbit, that has large deposits of rhodium, or palladium, or platinum, or gold. (Or even copper.)
That will bring in the speculative investors.
Once they demonstrate that they can bring these minerals back to earth at a profit, then they will have screaming investors climbing over one another to put up money for it.
I was arguing years ago that we ought to be doing this. I'm TIRED of the whiny, "only one Earth and we're running out of resources" bullcrap. If they can make this work -- and I give them an even 50/50 chance -- it'll be as revolutionary as the invention of the wheel.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Also cool was this blurb near the end of the article on zero-g 3D Printing
Deep Space's construction activities will be aided by a patent-pending 3D printer called the MicroGravity Foundry, officials said. "The MicroGravity Foundry is the first 3D printer that creates high-density, high-strength metal components even in zero gravity," company co-founder and MicroGravity Foundry inventor Stephen Covey said in a statement. "Other metal 3D printers sinter powdered metal, which requires a gravity field and leaves a porous structure, or they use low-melting point metals with less strength."
I'm fairly certain that, in microgravity, with my feet strapped down, I could take a 5000 kilogram dumbell sitting at my feet with my hands and lift it up over my head. I couldn't do it very quickly, due to inertia, and I would have to start working against my initial movements at about the halfway mark to stop it from yanking itself out of my hands (or yanking off my hands) at full extension.
Tragedy has a much better grasp of "strength" than you seem to have. You must overcome inertia in space, but not gravity or friction. Hence, much less strength is required to move an object. Picking up a quarter ton on the moon is about as easy as lifting a hundred pounds on earth. With even smaller microgravities, you might pick up two or three tons. But, inertia might get you killed, unless you're experienced in those microgravities. Pick up a ton, without planning how you're going to stop that mass moving, and it may very well crash through your sunroof, inducing explosive decompression in all the occupants of your habitat.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
50/50 chance? You're talking about the original investors and original staff, I take it.
Given that they are almost as likely to fail as they are to succeed, what happens when they go under? Someone buys up their assets, right? They will have left some valuable tools up there, and someone will want to claim them, maybe for pennies on the dollar. That someone will have a somewhat different plant, and succeed where the first team failed. Or, something like that.
Bottom line, for me, is that they are accumulating experience and knowledge in the attempt. We, mankind, will build on that, and eventually succeed.
Everything needed for exploration and colonization is already out there. All we need do is figure out how to use them. Success depends only on our initiative.
Two thumbs up for initiative!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Now, there is one advantage to space mining : no one has legal claims that can be enforced on any of those celestial bodies.
Actually, there is another advantage to space mining: It is IN SPACE.
Value of a kg of aluminum on Earth's surface: $3.
Value of a kg of aluminum in NEO: $10000.
I mean if it's not actively mining an asteroid, is it still an asteroid mining satellite?
Is a car door really a car door if it has no involvement in the drive train? Mining is more than extraction.
An asteroid may have precious substances, but we could spend more resources by far trying to tap them. Does that seem right to you?
Yep. Because like most technological developments, it's an initial investment. Getting the first kilo of iron ore from a satellite will cost billions of dollars. Getting the next 5 million tonnes down will cost a fraction.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
> the funding for this endeavor is a bit of a question mark
Unless and until they discover an asteroid, in a favorable orbit, that has large deposits of rhodium, or palladium, or platinum, or gold. (Or even copper.)
That will bring in the speculative investors.
Once they demonstrate that they can bring these minerals back to earth at a profit, then they will have screaming investors climbing over one another to put up money for it.
I was arguing years ago that we ought to be doing this. I'm TIRED of the whiny, "only one Earth and we're running out of resources" bullcrap. If they can make this work -- and I give them an even 50/50 chance -- it'll be as revolutionary as the invention of the wheel.
If it was gold the 'speculators' would be paying you a fuckton of cash just to forget you ever saw it and destroy all record of it. Or, failing that, pay very expensive hit men to get rid of the asteroid prospectors.
There could be enough gold come from asteroid mining to completely destroy its value. That would be hilarious and I'd love to see it happen, but the wealth of the gold cartels is, well, astronomical and they'd like to keep it that way.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
1) Ion drives consume very little fuel and even current low-thrust versions are suitable for moving non-perishable resources where transit time isn't terribly important. And I'm betting even chemical thrusters deliver a very impressive kg fuel/kg payload ratio when all you have to do is nudge the orbit of a big block of gold/whatever so that it drifts out of its Lagrangian orbit and collides with Earth in a year or two.
2) *Re-entry* is the high-energy concern here, the return trip doesn't care about escape velocity, that's just excess energy it'll need to burn on reentry. Yes, if you're not producing fuel in space then you'll have to send it up and it will be considerably more expensive, but even getting it delivered at a few $1,000/kg will be cost-effective if you're sending back gold (currently ~$50,000/kg) and other high-value minerals, and assume you don't need considerably more fuel than mass (see 1).
3) Many asteroids *are* in fact made of rocket fuel - aka water ice*. With energy from a solar array/nuclear planet you can easily separate that into hydrogen and oxygen, which makes perfectly serviceable two-part rocket fuel. In fact assuming a suitable icy asteroid is found I would suspect the structural components of a fuel refinery would probably be one of the first things built with the 3D printer - why launch a second project when the first one can build most of the second in-place?
Yes, they'd be lucky to break even on the first batch of asteroids, but with good planning and not too much bad luck they could rapidly become extremely profitable - you don't measure the viability of building a new car factory on whether or not the first run of cars will pay back the investment.
*okay, this is actually somewhat questionable for our purposes - certainly icy asteroids appears quite common in the asteroid belt, whether they are similarly common in Earth's L4 and L5 asteroid fields we don't yet know, the angles are all wrong so we can't really see much from here. Even if it proves that there isn't though, we do know there's plenty of ice on the Moon, where it would be *much* cheaper to get into space than from Earth, while also providing the opportunity for someone to establish a potentially profitable moon base, which would have numerous other potential long-term payoffs (though we'd need to update an international treaties first, or perhaps just formally base operations out of a country that never signed on to the "no claiming the moon" deal)
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