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First Survey of Commercially Viable Asteroids Estimates Only 10 Are Worth Mining
KentuckyFC writes "In 2012, Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt announced the launch of Planetary Resources, an ambitious start up with the goal of mining nearby asteroids for natural resources. Now an academic survey of ore-bearing asteroids estimates that only about 10 are likely to have resources worth mining. The new approach is to create a Drake-like equation that starts with the total number of asteroids and determines the percentage that are close enough to Earth, the percentage of these that contain valuable resources, the percentage of these large enough to pay for a space mining mission and so on. Each of these factors is filled with uncertainty but the bottom line is that when it comes to platinum group metals such as platinum, palladium, and iridium there are likely to be very few worth exploiting. That has significant implications for the future of space exploration. With so few commercially-viable space rocks out there, knowing which ones to pursue will be hugely valuable information, concludes the study. And that means the prospecting of asteroids is likely to become a highly secretive commercial endeavor in the not-too-distant future."
...someday we'll have the technology to shotgun baseball sized probes at the hunks of rock and figure it out. [Citation needed.]
That said, the real question is what is the intersection of the availability of asteroid mining technology with the obsolescence of the need to mine these asteroids.
This kind of estimating may have an order of magnitude error. So it could easily be only 1 asteroid worth mining. Let the asteroid war begin!
And much like the Drake equation if even one of the inputs is a WAG the final result is meaningless.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
As anyone in mining can tell you, 'ore' is defined as mineral resources that can be mined at a profit. Binghman Canyon mine, for example, ran out of ore a few years ago, but then regained ore after they build a conveyer belt that let them move material more efficiently.
The number of asteroids that are 'ore' depends on the cost of mining and the price of metal, both of which are subject to change. The cost of mining, especially, is basically unknown at this point, given that we've never done it.
What we need for this to work is essentially the Star Wars economy. Wonder how they built the Death Star and all those massive ships? Droids. If we can launch something up there that can harvest enough materials and build what it needs up there to keep going, then it just takes one launch. It sends robots to the right asteroid. They extract metals, build more robots, build space ships, go to other asteroids, and keep repeating the process. Occasionally they send shipments back home.
We're a long ways away from that level of technology, but I don't think there's anything preventing us from getting there.
For energy, the robots could either build nuclear or solar power systems.
For manufacturing, 3-D printing is likely an enabling technology. It needs to advance way beyond where it is now, such as making full computers.
Refining the raw materials found on the asteroids is another obstacle.
I would guess it's 50 to 100 years out.
These numbers are highly speculative and reflect bad assumptions.
The main bad assumption: That one would mine an asteroid for any one resource. Platinum/water etc.
Much more likely is mining whatever is there and refining it into things useful in space, at least at first. Particularly obvious is making fuel from water, but any asteroid with ice will likely also have useful metal.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
... most rocks have little commercial value.
Just because they have yet to get trapped by the earth's gravity well doesn't mean that most asteroids (especially the ones with the right orbits to mine) are fundamentally different in composition from what we find in the earth's crust.
With what energy? Short of fission or fusion, how exactly do you plan on smelting ore in space (let alone forge it)?! Perhaps fusion in zero-G might make it easier, but who knows at this point. It's not being done now.
Life is not for the lazy.
The 10 asteroids idea is based upon the premise that the resources are going intended for consumption on Earth. For the first iteration of things this only makes sense. There's no benefit to Earth based investors in resources with delta-v requirements effectively locking them to the vicinity of the Jovian system. Nor is there any ROI on resources even from NEOs that isn't in the Platinum group. Even in iteration 2 we'll still be looking at NEOs as the resources will be required for Earth orbiting projects.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Gold created a short term spike of activity and created all kinds of damage for which we are still paying. California is all tech, agriculture, and movies now. None of that stuff runs on gold, but gold ran on mercury which still contaminates many of our bodies of water. Fish from Clear Lake (terrible misnomer) are almost inedible because of Hg contamination.
Mining sucks in the long run. Sustainable forestry, fishery, and agriculture are the true key to prosperity. That's not just California greenie hippie bullshit. It's the dogone truth.
In many ways, these equations are almost worse than useless. For years, the Drake Eq. gave everyone the impression there were 1 or 2 other planets in the whole universe that could support life, and reinforced the whole contingent for which space exploration is never a "cost effective" endeavor. Then we found out "oh, wait, all our guesses were wildly pessemistic." They get filled with extrapolated numbers about a place we've only begun to tip-toe into and then make dire predictions.
Some are also just wrong. For example, he uses 4.5 km/s delta-V but that doesn't even cover the maxima for Liquid Fuel Rockets (7 to 9 km/s). If you start to approach tech like Electrostatic or Hall Effect (Ion) Thrusters you get up into numbers more like 50-100 km/s, which would probably multiply his 10 number by a bit (most of the Oort Cloud becomes available over time).
There's just so much fuzziness here its hard to find the use in it.
Why waste time with that? For smelting, pretty much all you need is a good fresnel lens.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
The kind of investment needed to mine a single asteroid put a limit of what is viable and what is not, at least in the most straightforward way (launch a rocket to that asteroid, mine it, send the materials to earth, game over). But can that limit be lowered changing the goal? What instead of searching for a platinum rich asteroid the goal is iron or needed materials (fuel?) ones to build/resuply ships already in the asteroid belt, would that initial investment raise the bar in what is profitable and what not? One of the biggest costs should be the initial launch of the ships from Earth, where every pound matters.
I dare say that creating a rocket and fuel to launch tones of stuff far enough into space to reach an asteroid is going to be pretty rough on the local environment.
Don't forget that after a handful of mission to metal-rich asteroids and water-rich asteroids, you have all the materials needed to assemble further missions in orbit. Much cheaper than lofting all that stuff out of Earth's gravity well.