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John S. Lewis On the Space Commodities Market
John S. Lewis -- Deep Space Industries' chief scientist, author, and University of Arizona professor -- speaks in an interview with Air & Space magazine about the practicalities and possibilities of deep-space mining, a topic on which he is unapologetically bullish. He points out, though, that some of the artist's-conception version of space mining skips over some of the economic realities of getting back to Earth metals that are scarce here. From the interview: But—and here’s the big conditional—if we develop an industrial capability in space such that we’re processing large amounts of metals to make solar-powered satellites, for example, then as a byproduct, we would have very substantial quantities of platinum-group metals, which are extremely valuable. So if you have a market for the iron and the nickel in space, that would liberate the precious metals to be brought back to Earth. So the scheme is not based on the idea of retrieving platinum-group metals—that is simply gravy."
The is also platinum in earth's core.
But how do we mine it?
I hit every system looking for platinum and other metals.
I was addicted...
Perhaps someone should come up with a MMORPG for space mining/colonizing.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
One of the reasons metals from the Platinum Group are precious is that they're scarce. If we recover as much of those elements as he's talking about, they won't be scarce any longer, which means that they won't be that precious. Of course, that's not a bad thing because there are lots and lots of other uses for them besides jewelry.
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You buy food at Lave and sell it at Diso.
You buy drugs at Diso and sell them at Lave.
Or was it the other way around?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No idea why you're being down voted. It makes perfect sense. It's capitalism in the purest sense.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Lewis's interview doesn't touch on the primary economic killer of asteroidal resource retrieval:
The time value of capital.
The equipment you need to do all this is a capital investment. You start paying interest (at a high rate due to risk) on that capital the moment you start constructing it. But more importantly, the amount of time it takes to get to the asteroids and back builds up interest payments that raise the quality of ore required to break even. There is some speculation that the quality of ore in some asteroids is high enough to overcome this objection but I've never seen anyone sit down and lay out the business case in a straight forward manner that didn't come to the conclusion that it is capital service that kills asteroid mining of high value metals.
Seastead this.
Here's the thing about space mining. Let's assume they figure out a way to gather and process whatever material they are mining into a commodity. I think it will be very difficult and won't happen within my lifetime most likely but let's just grant that we figure out the engineering. Let's further not worry about inflation or other economic issues for now. There is one HUGE problem with space mining that doesn't get enough attention.
Unless you are able to use that material in space you have to return it to Earth for it to be economically viable and it is very likely the economics of space mining would require at least some of this because Earth is where the money is. Returning materials to earth basically means dropping a rather large amount of mass down a gravity well. Effectively you are engaging in kinetic bombardment of the earth. It would be trivial to drop said mass on a population center and it might not happen by accident. Accident or not it would be catastrophic wherever it hits once the mass gets larger than a few tons. Precious metals could be dropped in smaller quantities and shielded but materials like iron would almost have to be dropped in very large amounts to make any economic sense.
Almost any large scale mining in space that returns large volumes of material to Earth would also mean creating a weapon of mass destruction. THAT is the biggest problem with space mining and I don't really see an easy solution to it.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU SPACE COWS!!
am i the only one thinking this ?
I guess so.
From TFI:
This may be half-true if the vision is mankind going out there and mining and refining, but if it's done the sane way, the way it of course will ultimately be done -- which is by solar-powered robotics with self-repair capabilities along or incorporated -- the initial (and total) cost will be irrelevant due to the profits maintenance-free, zero ongoing-costs, self-repairing operations will continuously produce.
As for "transport costs", really, WTF? What about gravity? Inertia? Orbital mechanics? Ion drives? Sunlight? Did he forget his fundamental physics?
Mine it, refine it, and kick it - not very hard, either - (using an Ion tug/pusher that just starts it on its journey-to-wherever and then returns to the operation) towards where you want it to go, past whatever you want to use to give it more or less oomph, and it'll (eventually) get there. And once the first such package arrives after the initial latency caused by transport time, the others will follow at reasonably similar intervals to the kick-out intervals, assuming only that where they are being sent to isn't moving under its own power, in which case, every "kick" would have to be towards somewhere else (and you'd have to know where the target was going to be on receipt, too, or there wouldn't be any receipt.) Still, that's not going to be the critical use-case -- this is going to be almost entirely about sending materials mined from nearly zero-g environments to planetary and moon orbit, to the surface of the moon, to earth, to mars, etc.
If we're talking about delivery through an atmosphere, then a re-entry container, perhaps even a lifting body, will be required from some things. So an operation has to be set up to build those as required and send them to the mining sites in that case. Unless we just want meteoric delivery, which might actually be practical for some things, particularly high-temperature-tolerant things. Aim them towards a sufficiently deep part of the ocean or man-made body of water built for the purpose, rake them up at set intervals (during which none would be incoming, obviously) and there you have it. Any such containers or lifting bodies should (again, obviously) be built out of something we can re-purpose, as they are also nothing but materials mined for free in space, albeit not exactly raw materials. Heck, you could probably just make hydrogen balloons that come in slowly and let them float down to a reasonable altitude and then puncture themselves when they drift over a designated receiving area -- no massive influx of reentry heat there. Have to be some damn strong balloons to tolerate being inflated in a vacuum, but our materials science is working on that already. Not to mention other mechanisms that may be possible. :) We'd probably end up with too much hydrogen, lol. Still.
Sure, the initial startup will be much harder if they push into it as a manned operation that needs constant support and staffing. But the endgame here, indubitably based entirely on zero-ongoing cost-robotics, is almost unimaginably profitable in terms of both money and materials gleaned from these operations.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The thing is, to do anything in space you need propellant. Launching it from the ground is a mugs game; it costs ~$1000 per kg to get it even to LEO, even more to higher orbits.
No, if you can mine propellant, then you can get ROI on any propellant you can return to LEO (or higher orbits).
The thing is, we know for pretty high probability that (for example) Ceres has huge deposits of water.
You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and use that for propellant. Once you have propellant you can set up cyclers that take about 15 months to deliver a load to LEO, and then go back and get some more. The amount you return each time can potentially grow exponentially each time, because you're using propellant to deliver propellant/"mining" equipment.
The thing about Ceres, it looks like there's ice volcanos there, so "mining" water may be as simple as putting a funnel over the stream coming off Ceres, and bring it to a halt and pumping it into a tank. You can then use some of the water to send the rest of the water back towards Earth.
And water in LEO is TREMENDOUSLY useful. Want to go to the moon? You need propellant to go there. Want to go to Mars? You need propellant and radiation shielding. Guess what- what is brilliant radiation shield as well.
I'm not against other types of mining; but propellant mining is the one that all the other things rely on- it's the equivalent of oil in space.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"> The thing is, we know for pretty high probability that (for example) Ceres has huge deposits of water.
The Carbonaceous Chondrite type asteroids contain up to 20% carbon compounds and water, which can be converted to hydrocarbons and oxygen, which is high-thrust rocket fuel. There are 13,000 known "Near Earth Asteroids", and we are finding 1500 more a year. NEA's are a lot easier and faster to return to Earth orbit, since we can use a Lunar gravity assist in both directions for our mining tug. Yeah, sure, mine Ceres eventually, but for starters the NEA's are the easiest to get to.
It makes perfect sense. It's capitalism in the purest sense.
Cartels are not "capitalism" and certainly are not pure. They are considered illegal restraint of trade in many capitalist countries, including the United States, where DeBeers has been banned and fined. DeBeers was only able to maintain the cartel with the support of governments, including apartheid South Africa, and the USSR, to ban or restrict competition.
The diamond cartel works because diamonds are only found in a few geographic regions. The diamonds vary by region in impurities and isotopes, so it is easy to detect if someone is "cheating". There are plenty of asteroids, and anyone can mine them.
The economy down here is in a downturn because raw materials are so cheap. No one is going to spend trillions to make millions just because it's in space. (We can't do it anyways, trillions or not: there's no such technology. Anywhere.)
It's beyond insane, and it's time these Space Nutters get the counseling they need.
*anyone who can fly drilling equipment to an asteroid & have the ore come back.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Because as others have noted, if he gets platinum in quantity, dumping it on the earth would drive the price through the floor unless his group can carefully control the rate of insertion into the marketplace, or find industries that could use platinum but don't because the current price is too high.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
...but propellant mining is the one that all the other things rely on- it's the equivalent of oil in space.
Oh, NO!
Why!?!?
Why, oh *why* did you have to say *that*!?
Good grief man, did you *have* to use the "O"-word!?
You *know* what's coming now, right?
Right!?
"Ehrrmahgerhdd!! Ehrmahgehrdd!!
Now Big Space Oil is gunna cause Orbital-Warming CO2 Terrorists In Spaaaace!!"
Way to go, man. Way to go.
j/k
Strat :P
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The first I read was The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe but at the time that was considered to be the one that should first be read. I know that some people prefer to read them in publication order, but I now like to read them in chronological order (i.e. with The Magician's Nephew first)
NEOs can have much lower deltav but have much worse Synodic periods. That's because the orbital periods are similar, and they take longer to line up each time. And for a near Hohmann transfer which most travel is likely to use, they have to line up.
So opportunities to travel there or back are few and far between. This makes them surprisingly useless as a propellant source, because unless the mining operation is unreasonably quick to perform, for orbital mechanics reasons you have to wait for multiple synodic periods before you return anything, and another one again before you can do it again. For example, if the synodic period is 5 years it could take 15-20 years to get your first shipment.
Ceres is further out, but its synodic period is only 466 days; so you end up with a propellant shipment every 466 days.
Getting to Ceres initially with mining gear is harder but a penalty that you only have to pay once, and you can use ion drives which can have high exhaust and deltav for that, but once you're returning propellant, you have the propellant you need to send further stuff to Ceres from Earth, and Earth to Ceres, so, although the deltav is the same each time, the effects of the delta-v penalty aren't quite so severe and you can set up cyclers to make the trip repeatedly at lower delta-v, and use aerobraking at Earth for the propellant.
The other thing is that Ceres is outside the snow line; most NEOs have probably been baked out of volatiles on their surface, so mining them is much harder. Ceres is further out, so ice evaporates very slowly.
All in all, Ceres looks like a much better bet all round.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"If you've been downvoted too many times, your comments automatically get -1. So basically Slashdot has you categorized as a troll.
A space elevator would solve that problem pretty quickly:
So would a star trek transporter. Care to keep the discussion to technology that isn't science fiction?
Really great arguments for mining from Ceres. Another thing is that with a small gravity well mining is probably a lot easier than doing everything in true zero gee.
A great method I remember for mining water /ice on large scales is to use giant bags. The bags are filled with lumps of ice (up to 100,000 tons, ~50m diameter). Then a nuclear rocket platform is strapped to each bag to push the material into an Earth return orbit and to decelerate it at the other end. The rocket system gets its reaction mass by melting then super-heating the ice it is already carrying, and depending on use is probably reusable a number of times. (A base for such engines is that a 10 ton unit can produce about 500 megawatts / 100 KN of thrust for a total of about 10 hours, with an ISP of up to about 1100..)
Using bags to move large amounts of ice from Ceres with its 0.29 m/s^2 surface gravity would be difficult, the bag(s) could be kept in orbit and filled in sections, maybe by dedicated shuttles. - The one thing they would have plenty of there would be fuel..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Yes, steam rockets, delta-v is a bit marginal though, ion drives might be better for the return to earth burn for the propellant.
And actually, space elevators are extremely easy on Ceres, you can even build looped elevators that can lift stuff up into orbit. You don't need anything special, just some pulleys, long rope or metal cables, no carbon anything is needed.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"