Asteroid Resources Could Make Science Fiction Dreams and Nightmares a Reality

MarkWhittington writes "With two private companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, proposing to set up asteroid mining, the prospect of accessing limitless wealth beyond the Earth has caused a bit of media speculation about what that could mean. The question arises, could asteroid resources be used to create the greatest dreams — and perhaps the worst nightmares — of science fiction?"

Comments

We have no clue

[mbone]

We tend to have a naive feeling that we understand the solar system, that it is really just like Earth, but with craters or whatever. It isn't, and we don't.

Re:We have no clue

[Anonymous Coward]

The solar system is nothing like Earth.
For one thing, it's not a planet.

Re:We have no clue

[khallow]

We tend to have a naive feeling that we understand the solar system, that it is really just like Earth, but with craters or whatever. It isn't, and we don't.

Given that the vast majority of those naive people will never ever have any impact on space activities, I really don't see the point of the observation. Instead, you should be asking what people who actually plan to do anything in space have as their understanding of space.

Their basis is the laws of physics, which so far have shown to work just the same on Earth as in space. And they've done a lot of remarkable stuff in space that requires more than a ignorant human's understanding of space in order to perform.

Re:We have no clue

[JeanCroix]

I'm suddenly reminded of the Terrible Secret of Space.

Re:We have no clue

[0xdeadbeef]

We tend to have a naive feeling that we understand the solar system, that it is really just like Earth, but with craters or whatever. It isn't, and we don't.

"We"?

Why must morons project their own ignorance to everyone? It's like an opposite Dunning-Kruger effect - they find something hard to comprehend, so they assume it is equally hard for everyone, and attribute any expression of knowledge or enthusiasm as naivete.

Re:We have no clue

[interkin3tic]

Well, we do have a clue about some things. From TFA

Noting the successful White House petition to build a Star Wars-style "Death Star," rejected by the administration partly for fiscal reasons, Simberg seeks to prove that the cost of a moon-sized terror weapon, while immense, would not be quite as great as the White House claimed. Then he suggests that a combination of asteroid wealth, space-based manufacturing and construction, advanced technology and perhaps an excess of megalomania on the part of future politicians could make a Death Star possible. Why anyone would want a moon-sized terror weapon capable of destroying entire planets is another question entirely, but given the flow of wealth from asteroid mining, such things are perhaps economically possible.

We do know that won't happen. We also should have a clue that when "We'll be able to afford to build THE DEATH STAR!!!" Is the only "nightmare" raised by asteroid mining that they mention, we should ignore whatever moron wrote it.

Then again, it's "yahoo news," and I could have seen that before I clicked on it, so shame on me for actually looking at it.

Re:We have no clue

[ceoyoyo]

Because they're morons?

The LAST thing you learn is humility, not the first one.

Summary...

[Ashenkase]

Something might happen... or not.

They completely left out the notion of a Dyson Sphere in this horribly written "article".

Re:Summary...

[timholman]

They completely left out the notion of a Dyson Sphere in this horribly written "article".

Not to mention the only "threat" they could think of was for someone to build a Death Star (!?) using asteroid resources. The much simpler idea of steering asteroids into re-entry trajectories over the cities of your enemies (e.g. Footfall) completely eluded the writers of the article.

No

[schneidafunk]

It's just minerals and metals. It'll be humans, not meteorites, creating anything from these resources. Stupid article, move along folks.

Re:No

[magarity]

One of the major concerns that isn't mentioned is what happens to earth-bound mining companies and their markets when these trillions of dollars of minerals arrive?

Yep; Heinlein's Future History already covered this; DeBeers and their lobbying efforts made it illegal to import moon diamonds. The same will happen to gold and platinum from asteroids. Banned for public health reasons because of all the solar radiation that's contaminating them.

Re:No

[bmo]

DeBeers developed some tests to distinguish between "genuine" carbon based diamonds and "fake" synthetic diamonds through the use of analysis of impurities.

They said they could. They haven't proven it. They have "requested" that serial numbers be laser etched on the diamonds and that certain dopants be used deliberately, but chemistry is chemistry, and a synthetic diamond, sans dopant, is just as much a diamond as one dug out of the ground. Same spectral lines. I call bullshit until DeBeers does a peer reviewed paper (they haven't).

--
BMO

Hello, economics

[hsmith]

Now, I still think the idea of mining an asteroid is - well a long time off.

But, the reason for doing so would be that the incentive to mine an asteroid is insanely high - for instance, supplies on earth run low and the price is through the roof, many factors of what it is today.

Then you have the economic incentive to build a space ship and dig for that substance on another planet.

Much like deep sea drilling for oil. If oil is $5 a barrel, there isn't much incentive to build massive platforms to drill. At $100 a barrel, the incentive is there. Investment seeks the highest rates of returns.

If you found an asteroid that could provide every human 1000 pounds of platinum and could easily mine it - platinum isn't going to stick to $1000+ an oz, it would be insanely cheap.

Re: Hello, economics

[Urza9814]

It's not just about the price of minerals increasing...the cost of retrieval is decreasing at the same time.

The ship that collects these will be unmanned and probably fairly cheap...speed isn't a major concern either...really is worth it if the value of materials returned is less than the value of the fuel to get your thing in orbit. We're probably not there yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if we could come close to breaking even if we could snag a fairly large asteroid with a good composition. But of course that still means large scale use of this is quite a ways off...nobody's going to launch a commercial venture with such a high startup cost for just the promise of breaking even....I doubt this will be commercially viable until we've got a better way of getting crap into space. Could potentially use some kind of small, high power rail launcher for this though since there's no humans that need to survive the acceleration.

Re:Hello, economics

[History's Coming To]

Pick something cheap - really cheap, as cheap as you like. Mud, rainwater, leaves, whatever you fancy. Now put a kilo of it into Earth orbit. Doesn't matter how cheap the thing is, it still costs around $10k per kilo to get it into orbit. The point here is that whatever you mine is already out of the Earth's gravity well, so you save the best part of $10k per kilo once you've accounted for the initial missions (which pay for the following ones).

Building a large space station (say, 100x bigger than the ISS) would cost a silly amount of money if everything was lifted from Earth into orbit, but if you can get the raw materials into place from another source then some of the basics, like water and metals, become far, far cheaper, regardless of the Earthbound costs of these materials.

Re:Hello, economics

[Anonymous Coward]

The piece that everyone forgets about this is that while the raw mineral resources themselves have some value, they have another feature that is extremely valuable, which is that they are outside of a deep gravity well. Current cost to LEO is ~$15k depending on launch system. If you can combine resource extraction, refining, and zero-G 3D printing (which is exactly the secret sauce that DSI claims to have), then every new strut for the ISS or successor research platforms becomes very low-cost to produce. Whoever got there first could just undercut the lowest reliable cost-to-orbit and make mad bank.

Re:Hello, economics

[grep_rocks]

I think a better business model would be: 1) nudge near earth astroid into collision course with earth 2) submit ransom note 3) profit!

Re:Hello, economics

[TubeSteak]

Building a large space station (say, 100x bigger than the ISS) would cost a silly amount of money if everything was lifted from Earth into orbit, but if you can get the raw materials into place from another source then some of the basics, like water and metals, become far, far cheaper, regardless of the Earthbound costs of these materials.

The space shuttle threw away every single external tank (the big rust colored one) even though they were brought to the point we more or less consider 'outer space'.
Each main tank weighed from 55,000 to 77,000 (the oldest version) and was destined to splash down somewhere unrecoverable, in the ocean.

We could have built something 100x bigger than the ISS.
What a waste.

Re:Hello, economics

[Americano]

How do you propose we smelt, process, cast, and mold all that ore into useful forms to build a space station? I suspect the price of lifting a space station module into orbit is not the majority component of its total cost, which would include the engineering & manufacturing costs (and cost of building that manufacturing infrastructure in orbit) associated with building all those components here on earth.

Saving the lift costs is probably not going to reduce the costs that much, because you'd have to design, test, and build all that infrastructure to operate in zero gravity, then lift it into orbit, or come up with some way of boot-strapping it somehow from raw materials.

This isn't just "launch something, leave it up for a while, bring it back down," we're talking about industrializing zero-gravity.

Re: Hello, economics

[CreatureComfort]

And have you PRICED Evian lately?

Now if we could just find printer ink on an asteroid...

Re:Hello, economics

[Bucc5062]

I would hope your thought is modded up. I had similar thoughts over the many years of both the Shuttle program and ISS. My goodness, those tanks could have been lifted that last leg and been retro-fitted as living or cargo space. Even if they did one out of ten the station would be far more robust.

Logistics would be an issue in the beginning, but imagine just one tank turned into a hydroponics farm, another manufacturing. Somewhere along the line We stopped thinking big.

Re:Hello, economics

[Anonymous Coward]

That was actually considered in quite a bit of detail by NASA and found that the effort needed to modify, clean, get those things positioned and filled with useful equipment to not come out ahead of just hauling stuff up there.

Re:Hello, economics

[sam_nead]

"The piece that everyone forgets about this is that while the raw mineral resources themselves have some value, they have another feature that is extremely valuable, which is that they are outside of a deep gravity well."

And so we deduce that the resources, outside of the deep gravity well, are only valuable to communities living outside the deep gravity well. Ie, nobody. There is nothing up there worth something to people _down_here_.

I believe that this is a highly non-trivial bootstrapping problem. You need unimaginable technologies in orbit (power satellites? nano-materials that can only be built in zero-gravity?) to make it worthwhile to go up there and start the process. However, nobody will come up with those technologies until there is a huge industrial base in orbit... So it is impossible to get started.

Sorry to be a downer. (No pun intended.)

Re:Hello, economics

[CreatureComfort]

OMG, you're absolutely correct! We don't have any experience at all in keeping mirrors in very precise, stationary configurations in space!

As for handling molten steel in a micro-g environment, the best I can say for your level of comprehension is Magnets, How Do They Work?

As for the printing process, we've pretty much solved that problem here on earth, and micro-g just makes it even easier.

There are large challenges, no doubt, to making it all work and getting into production, but the key is that there are no un-developed technologies necessary. Everything we need we already know how to do.

Re:Hello, economics

[DerekLyons]

I would hope your thought is modded up. I had similar thoughts over the many years of both the Shuttle program and ISS. My goodness, those tanks could have been lifted that last leg and been retro-fitted as living or cargo space.

No, both of your "thoughts" should be modded down into oblivion - because they're fantasies borne of sheer ignorance.
 
To take a tank to orbit would require the Shuttle flying essentially empty of all other cargo. And once you've got the tanks in orbit, your problems have just begun... The ET's insulation isn't specced to survive on orbit, and it would take three to four flights (tossing away their tanks) just to put on a barrier to stop it from flaking off and becoming orbital debris. (And really, you want to remove and replace it, because it breaks down over time... so, yet more flights). Then you need some kind of robust debris protection, and thus another three to four flights (at least, and tossing their tanks away too). Now you need power, and environmental controls (five to eight flights, tossing their tanks)... And we haven't even started to consider attitude control and reboost, let alone installing anything useful inside the tank... (Oh, did I mention there's no airlock or other access? That will have to be provided too.)
 

Even if they did one out of ten the station would be far more robust.

Only if somehow, magically, it didn't require a dozen or more flights just to begin to turn the tank into something useful.
 

Logistics would be an issue in the beginning, but imagine just one tank turned into a hydroponics farm, another manufacturing.

Logistics never stops being an issue. A hydroponic farm would need steady inputs of various supplies to remain in operation. A manufacturing plant is pretty useless without raw materials, and pointless without a market...
 

Somewhere along the line We stopped thinking big.

No, using the tanks was examined several times in the early days... and the whole idea was eventually shelved when it became abundantly clear that it was much cheaper and easier to boost completed modules than it was to try and refit a tank on orbit.

In a word: no

[jeffmeden]

Wealth based on what? Real estate, or other things that are both durable and widely used? Nope. Precious metals. But, what good is gold or platinum if everyone has a brick or two of it lying around? Some things will become more affordable (meaning the wealth of everyone will go up) because once-precious metals will find their way into products in ways that actually improve them, but overall not much will change even if we manage to start bringing home tons and tons of some metal that is only valued because it's rare.

Re:In a word: no

[trout007]

The value of everything is purely subjective not just precious metals. The specific value (Price/weight) is what is high compared to other things because of many factors rarity being one of them. But you are right if tons are brought back it will lower the price. This happened many times in history during gold and silver rushes. Pretty soon the market adjusts to the new supply.

Re:In a word: no

[schneidafunk]

Gold and platinum have real world uses, besides just being a scarce metal used in jewelry.

Re:In a word: no

[jeffmeden]

The value of everything is purely subjective not just precious metals. The specific value (Price/weight) is what is high compared to other things because of many factors rarity being one of them. But you are right if tons are brought back it will lower the price. This happened many times in history during gold and silver rushes. Pretty soon the market adjusts to the new supply.

Salt is an even more interesting story. For a large part of human history, it was more valued than gold or any other metal. Now, we sprinkle it on our roads because we don't want our hunks of iron and plastic to slide around.

Re:In a word: no

[Anonymous Coward]

Using it to get laid is a real world use...

Re:In a word: no

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea is to find these resources and 'claim' them before someone else does, so you can keep them "in reserve" (and underport the size of the reserve) and manipulate the prices, with only some staged gradual releasees to ensure your profits.

Re:In a word: no

[trout007]

Arggh! To each his own I say. I prefer me women salty.

Re:In a word: no

[surd1618]

The platinum-group metals can do amazing stuff. Fuel cells, new types of hydride batteries, and some really fancy alloys like iridium titanium all come to mind. Lots of really cool stuff can be done with these metals that we don't get to do because they all sank through the crust when it was molten. I don't know offhand what would be the single greatest boon, but lots of stuff is possible.

No, because it's still laughably expensive

[crazyjj]

I seriously doubt even a solid gold asteroid would justify the costs to go into space, mine it, and return said gold to earth--even if it were a relatively close solid gold asteroid. And since we don't even have the technology to move an asteroid yet (just some "Well it's possible" bullshit speculation), there is no point in even considering that.

In short, anyone investing in these asteroid mining companies is basically either trying to grab some patents or just throwing their money into the equivalent of buying swampland in Florida. You'd probably be better off investing with Bernie Madoff.

Re:No, because it's still laughably expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Find an ice asteroid.
Mine ice, separate into oxygen and hydrogen using solar.
Sell to space-faring nations as water, air and fuel.

Re:No, because it's still laughably expensive

[bill_mcgonigle]

I seriously doubt even a solid gold asteroid would justify the costs to go into space, mine it, and return said gold to earth

Nobody is talking about returning products to Earth - the whole problem is that it's too expensive to get stuff off of Earth. DSI is currently pursuing the model of 1) recovering water from asteroids and using that to refuel satellites that are already in orbit (revenue stream) and 2) mining nickel from asteroids to use in an 3D printer in space to build space infrastructure.

And since we don't even have the technology to move an asteroid yet (just some "Well it's possible" bullshit speculation)

We understand Newtonian physics, and we have ion engines deployed in space on deep space probes and on satellites for station keeping. There's 15 years of on-mission experience with these things.

If we need to move an asteroid quite a distance over a long period of time, that will be done with a gravitational mass that is held in the desired orbit with ion engines and gravity between the two bodies drags the asteroid towards that mass. The expense will be in doing the first one, as we'd probably have to lift something very heavy off the Earth to bootstrap that process. But once the first asteroid is in Earth orbit for mining operations (you'd want to attach new ion engines from Earth in the near term) then the process can be done much more cheaply.

For small objects near to us we could just attach ion engines directly. NASA has already landed a craft on an asteroid, so the rest is just a matter of working out the system to fire the right engine at the right time. This doesn't scale very well, but for first efforts it might be worthwhile. Heck, if it were very very close and in a very similar orbit, we could even use chemical rockets.

We do have the technology - certainly not much experience or engineering best practices yet - but that's why it's a nascent industry, not an established one. Just because it hasn't been done yet, it doesn't follow that we can't do it yet.

Re:No, because it's still laughably expensive

[dpilot]

> And since we don't even have the technology to move an asteroid yet

Yet it's essential that we develop that technology. The Earth has been hit before - and odds are that it is going to be hit again, it's just a matter of time. It's a simple matter of long-term self-preservation that we need to be able to adjust asteroid orbits. Asteroid mining is an excellent idea, because it lets us learn those techniques - and it may defray some of the costs.

It doesn't stop at precious metals, either. Even if SpaceX hits its target launch costs of $150/lb, that means that a ton of anything we bring back to Earth orbit has a starting value of $300,000. (Today the numbers are closer to 10X that.) Even if it's "worthless rock", others could call it "radiation shielding" or "thermal mass" and it becomes valuable. Given an adequate supply of focused solar energy, I suspect just about anything can be refined, in orbit.

Re:No, because it's still laughably expensive

[Gilmoure]

D'oh! Just reached Old Fart stage by referencing something I thought everyone knew about.

*sigh*

I'll hang up my 'puters, head home, put in a lawn and start yelling.

Re:getting them down here is risky

[Magada]

Get them down where? Why would you not leave them in orbit, build stuff there?

Re:getting them down here is risky

[jeffmeden]

Sure there are lots of resources just floating around out there.

Please explain a safe way to get them down here in any sort of quantity and usable form.

**footfall**

Right idea, wrong question. Getting material back down to the Earth's surface might not be the foremost goal, but getting it close enough to manipulate IS. The thing we need to be wary of is an asteroid mining operation that tries to adjust the orbit of the prospect, with the intent of bringing it close enough to mine for specific materials.

Doesn't lose suction

[tepples]

They completely left out the notion of a Dyson Sphere

I wonder if that's because the target audience might confuse it with a brand of vacuum cleaner.

Re:Doesn't lose suction

[tmosley]

Man, what CAN'T that guy invent? Awesome vacuum cleaners, crazy fans, terminators, and giant machines powered by stars.

I have no idea...

[tippe]

... but I've duly made a mental note to never accept a mission to fix the communication gear on one of their mining ships after it suddenly stops all transmissions with Earth... I've already got enough "training" on that subject to know that things never turn out well.

Re:getting them down here is risky

[gmuslera]

Going up and down is pretty expensive, usually more of what it cost down here those minerals. But in the other hand, there are a lot of uses for them up there for them, bringing down processed goods that only can be built in orbit should be the profitable way to bring down something.

And yes, it could make some science fiction dreams reality, like space habitats, or deeper space exploration. Regarding nightmares, we are getting fast into dystopias to worry about improbable mistakes done in space.

Worst article in a long while

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA manages to miss reality with almost every sentence, but somehow has just enough truth behind it to provoke useful conversation.

NO we are not going to mine asteroids with the intention of bringing resources back down here in significant quantities. Not anytime soon anyway.
ALTHOUGH if an asteroid really is worth 20trillion as stated in TFA (doubtful) then maybe it would be worth it.
YES, asteroid resources could and probably will be used to build spacecraft and maybe habitats but
NO, NASA are not working on warp drive and interstellar travel is not just around the corner.
NO, nobody is going to build a moon-sized planet-killing Death Star. That's fucking stupid in more ways that I care to enumerate but
YES, once asteroid-moving becomes established tech in the realm of private companies / individuals then the chances of somebody accidentally or deliberately dropping a big rock on a city goes up. That is something to be concerned about.

TFA fail.

Re:getting them down here is risky

[Dexter Herbivore]

Get them down where? Why would you not leave them in orbit, build stuff there?

You sell where demand is highest, if you have the choice. It will take time for orbit demand to become a significant percentage of what's available up there if we bring an asteroid into orbit.

what a load of crap

[slashmydots]

NASA's Near Earth Object Program's website, quoting the 1990s-era book "Mining the Sky," suggests that there is in the asteroid belt alone enough wealth to provide everyone on Earth $100 billion.

Except that, you know, if gold were as abundent as steel it would also be $0.06/pound scrap value so that's not actually true. So you go bring back a bunch of iridium, it's not worth thousands of dollars per pound anymore either. One asteroid alone could hold enough of a rare material to up the worlwide supply by 10x or 100x or who knows. That would single handedly crash the market before the company could even get a chance to sell it. So then they'd have to be a big, evil monopoly and artificially slow down the flow of supply like oil or Nintnedo Wiis so the price stays high and everyone hates that.

Re:getting them down here is risky

[archer, the]

That's what I was thinking. Folks will need to be damn sure of the security and stability of the orbit adjusting mechanism. Otherwise, someone could use the asteroid as a weapon. Who needs an airliner when you could have an N metric ton rock hit a target at M km/s? (Not sure what the typical weight or impact velocity would be...)

another wanker promoting his blog

[1u3hr]

Don't bother to RTFA. I did it for you. Complete waste of time. Some no-name blogger, who just rambles on for a few paragraphs about making trillions of dollars from asteroid mining, to get hits on his ads. He's had other equally useless articles linked here.

mega lolz

[slashmydots]

So guess who invested in one of the major companies. Microsoft and Google high ranking billionaire personnelle, James Cameron, and Ross Perot Jr. That's quite the mix, lol. All they need is a rapper and Bonno and they've basically got the justice league of weird billionaires investing in crazy stuff.

Alloy Research

[Polybius]

I always wondered if there are alloys that could be made in microgravity that simply are not feasable to produce on earth due to the weight and density differences of the source metals.

Maybe that should be the first focus, what materials can be made in space that cannot be made on Earth, which asteroid supplies the most of said materials.

More of the same?

[Evtim]

The space mining buzzing is increasing lately. "Everyone on Earth would be a billionaire if we use the resources in the asteroid belt" claims R. Branson.

Well Richard, are you going to tell me that if we assimilate the resources the result won't be a handful of gazzilionares that will order planets at Magratea and the rest of us would slave it "Blade runner style". You wanna tell me that magically, incredibly our socioeconomic system will disappear overnight? Provided that by definition the people who can change the system are the greatest benefactors of it, so why will they want to change it?

A billion dollars will be pocket change? How much of it will "trickle down" to my "middle class, ever decreasing buying power because of financial frauds by greedy people" pocket, Richard? It does not matter at all how much resources we can lay our hands on. We will grow, expand, waste them even more recklessly as we do now and eventually finish them off....while all the evils of the socioeconomic system will be with us all the time. Don't fool yourself Richard. Don't try to fool me too!!

But you know, Richard, actually your lie is the way to go from purely egoistic, survival point of view. If we want to make it to the Star Trek era [in one piece] we have to change and I don't mean Obama's change here. I mean paradigm change. I mean the simplest idea of all time - limited growth in an practically infinite Universe. Everyone has their human needs fulfilled. That's just the starting point.

All the above is why I stopped being excited about technology news whatsoever. We made an engine that uses half the fuel? Well, we will just buy twice as many engines because they will be cheaper and besides the whole fraking world including politics, business and religion (but not art and science mind you) constantly, relentlessly screams "more people, more money, only infinite growth is possible, if we stop wasting ever more the economy will collapse, the world would burn and we will be back to the caves, we need more growth, more children or our pensions will be gone, we need more believers in the true faith, we need more, more, more, more, more.....).

Our civilization has no redundancy, no back-up, no long-term planning at all. It is the sloppiest piece of engineering of all time.....no decent geek would ever dream of putting his/her signature on such a piece of crap! And we all live by it, die by it, are run by it! It's horrifying that we first waste the most accessible and the least replaceable resources. That is the way of our system; nothing in it that contradicts this behavior survives. We are re-active not pro-active. Our leaders never lead, they follow, adapt and mimicry.

I will finish this rant by respectfully altering the last sentence from Richard Feinman's "addendum" to the NASA report about the Challenger disaster:

"For a successful civilization reality must take precedence over politics, business and religion *, for Nature cannot be fooled"

* politics, business and religion all operate without any regard of reality [they are all ideologies] and are therefore in the form they are, highly dangerous for the survival of Homo Sapiens