The Next Gold Rush Will Be 5,000 Feet Under the Sea, With Robot Drones (vice.com)

merbs writes: In Papua New Guinea, one well-financed, first-mover company is about to pioneer deep sea mining. And that will mean dispatching a fleet of giant remote-operated robotic miners 5,000 feet below the surface to harvest the riches scattered across ocean floor. These mammoth underwater vehicles look like they've been hauled off the set of a sci-fi film—think Avatar meets The Abyss. And they'll be dredging up copper, gold, and other valuable minerals, far beneath the gaze of human eyes.

Comments

That will go well

[retroworks]

Metal mining is the #1, #2 AND #3 most polluting industry. 14/15 largest superfund sites, etc. Primary barrier to cyanide treatment and tailing ponds is the property value of abutting land. This is what has driven mining out west in the USA, to rain forests, and now to the ocean, where no on can hear you scream.

Re:That will go well

[gurps_npc]

Normal gold mining is known for using vile chemicals (mercury, cyanide) to seperate out small percentages (1%) of gold from non-gold. Deep sea gold mining avoids this problem. They go to hot vents where the gold is much higher percentages. So they don;t use mercury or cyanide.

They do however involve large transportation of materials up from the sea bed, most of which is released to float down.

The risks are radically different than land based mining and relatively unknown.

But I am a firm believer in diversification of risk. I'd rather have some coal and some nuclear, rather than just one, as the risks are different.

Similarly, undersea gold mining is worth a pilot project or two to see how it affects the local ecology.

Re:That will go well

[ls671]

Hmmm... about humans are the most polluting species?

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

If they do this the costs of mining will go up quite a bit.

I wonder if there is info on cost /Oz to mine this stuff.

Re:That will go well

[Applehu Akbar]

Hasn't offshore gold dredging been done for years in Alaska? The environmental effects should be well known by now.

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

"Deep sea gold mining avoids this problem"...Of course, it avoids this problem. It avoids abutting neighbors who would tell if it didn't.

Re:That will go well

[rmdingler]

Very nice... well thought out and posted.

Re:That will go well

[vovin]

Yes, the spot gold price is the cost of production (+/- 20%).
Want mining to stop?
Stop buying gold. Unfortunately you won't get India to cooperate on that.
India has gold integrated into their culture so deeply it may take a several generations to unwind from it.

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

" float down"

Is that like falling up?

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

The politics/ecology of gold and diamonds is why there were no rings involved in my marriage.

Re:That will go well

[jandersen]

This is one of those situations where I would have liked to believe in a god - any god - so I could swear with conviction. I mean, will we ever actually learn from the mistakes of our ever more harmful mistakes? Mining on dry land is bad enough, but it is at least to some extent possible to contain the pollution locally, whereas whatever is released into the open ocean ends up being a global problem, and one that is very, very hard to clean up. We can just about contemplate cleaning the polluted soil around a disused mine, but the entire ocean?

And talking about 'diversification of risk' is just a fluffy sounding lie - what you mean is, you'd prefer to reduce the well known, well understood and therefore manageable risk in your backyard in your rich, industrialised country, and let others take the unknown and very likely unmanageable risk near some impoverished, developing nation. I think that is a disgusting attitude.

Re:That will go well

[aliquis]

But I am a firm believer in diversification of risk. I'd rather have some coal and some nuclear, rather than just one, as the risks are different.

The thing with gold however is that we don't even needs it!

There's no real reason to collect it except it takes resources to do so so that makes it valuable..

Destroy nature and waste work on getting something you'll just store away for no other purpose? Make sense!

Re:That will go well

[TomGreenhaw]

They are probably going to harvest deep sea metal nodules. This was a big thing back in the 70's but I don't think it ever got past the research stage. If all they are doing is harvesting the potato sized nodules from the surface of the sea floor, it may not be that big of an environmental disaster.

This article is incredibly short on details, but it's inconceivable that they would try to smelt the ore on the ocean floor. How they process the ore once on land is another matter, but we're already doing this with ore obtained on land so the environmental impacts are well understood.

Re:That will go well

[geekmux]

... undersea gold mining is worth a pilot project or two to see how it affects the local ecology.

I laugh at your assumption that anyone involved in making money from this venture gives a flying fuck about the local ecology, as if an oil tycoon is suddenly is going to develop a conscience about the environment and stop pumping.

You've underestimated the power of greed here. A lot.

Re:That will go well

[retroworks]

RE: India - Interestingly, it appears that a nation's demand for gold correlates most strongly to women's ability to inherit land. If you love your daughter, you buy her gold.

Regulation is also driven by land value, EPA enforcement activity is proportional to property value. That has been labelled an "environmental justice" issue which I don't 100% agree with (whoever lives on property with lower appraisal has less vested interest in demanding enforcement, and enforcement is driven primarily by demand for it, not by enforcement agents racism). Again, the gold mining goes to poorer countries, less populated areas, and the ocean.

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

That instance of mining metal nodules on the ocean floor back in the 70's was actually a cover story for the creation and deployment of a special ship to raise a Russian submarine. Once the sub was recovered there was no further need for the cover so the operation was declared uneconomical and shut down. The whole thing was revealed after the required time passed and it was declassified.

That fact that this idea has resurfaced, as it were, makes me wonder if someone is actually trying to recover some particular item from the ocean floor again.

Re:That will go well

[chispito]

Metal mining is the #1, #2 AND #3 most polluting industry.

I'm a conservative Christian (currently) registered Republican and my first thought was this can't possibly be safe for the environment.

Re: That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you love your daughter, give her gold. "

"What could possibly go wrong?" -- Balzac

Re:That will go well

[Thelasko]

Hasn't offshore gold dredging been done for years in Alaska? The environmental effects should be well known by now.

Yes, there is even a TV show about it. However, the miners in Alaska are generally poorly funded and only mine in shallow water. Someone sinking millions on dollars into it would be completely different.

Re:That will go well

[BarbaraHudson]

But I am a firm believer in diversification of risk. I'd rather have some coal and some nuclear, rather than just one, as the risks are different.

The thing with gold however is that we don't even needs it!

There's no real reason to collect it except it takes resources to do so so that makes it valuable..

Destroy nature and waste work on getting something you'll just store away for no other purpose? Make sense!

We use gold in electronics, medicine, etc. See here. Sure, we don't "need" a computer or a smartphone, but ...

Re:That will go well

[BarbaraHudson]

You've underestimated the power of greed here. A lot.

Bring on the pirate drones, matey! Why mine it when you can just steal it?

Re:That will go well

[BarbaraHudson]

Ah yes, Howard Hughes Glomar Explorer.

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Your gesture of not using wedding rings changed absolutely nothing and nobody even knew or cared. It certainly didn't change any of the "politics/ecology" that you're making noise about now.
2. Virtue signalling is pointless when you're an AC.

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT?! How DARE you reveal yourself?! Hurry, everyone! Shun this anti-science dirty redneck racist climate change denier anti-science luddite hate-filled corporatist rich white asshole!

Re:That will go well

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Cynobateria and all their oxygen still hold the record for ecological damage from pollution.

The Antrocene extinction vent has a long way to go before it catches up the the Grate Dying.

Re:That will go well

[bingoUV]

This by far not the "most" strong correlation in Indians buying gold.

Strongest is the historical fiscal deficit and other governmental value theft which caused gold to be the best savings instrument for hundreds of years.

Second strongest is the ability to launder money - an Au atom is indistinguishable from another and solid gold is easy to mould out of shape.

The ritualistic aspects and gifting to daughter follow these strong correlations in importance and strength.

Re:That will go well

[Bengie]

Tungsten. Cheap material, extremely difficult to machine. You pay for the effort, not the materials. And a mirror finish that never tarnishes.

Re:That will go well

[aliquis]

We use gold in electronics, medicine, etc. See here. Sure, we don't "need" a computer or a smartphone, but ...

"Jewelry:
About 78% of gold consumed each year is made into jewelry. Jewelry is the most common way gold reaches consumers, and has been a primary use for the metal in various cultures. Because of its beautiful and durable properties, gold jewelry is an adornment that is both ethereal and revered. Especially in India, adorning the body with gold is a way to attract wealth and blessings."
http://www.sbcgold.com/blog/to...

Also you can recycle gold so there's no reason to mine it multiple km down into the sea and then into the seabed. Lots of gold to go around for your electronics purposes, random webpage:
"There is currently somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 tonnes of gold in the world 'above ground'. To visualise this, imagine a single solid gold bullion"

That's ~18 gram or half an ounce per person living on the planet. Plenty to go around for your electronic needs.

Re:That will go well

[BarbaraHudson]

Not really - the amount of gold in a cell phone is too little to recycle, but a billion phones adds up to a significant amount that, unlike jewelry, is permanently taken out of circulation.

Time to short Manganese ?

[Crashmarik]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[Harlequin80]

Not even slightly. Have a look at the production cost of the pilbara mines in NW Australia. Those mines have existing port infrastructure and rail infrastructure allowing them to export to China and Japan. PNG would have to compete against the Australian cost base and it stands zero chance of doing that with existing tech. Doing it with this tech is completely impossible.

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[Tim the Gecko]

When I was a kid I read about manganese nodule mining on the sea floor. It later turned out that it was Project Azorian, where the nodules were a cover story for a CIA-funded attempt to lift a Soviet sub from the sea floor.

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[turbidostato]

My first think too.

Well, is it another soviet sub or an alien base this time?

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[thebigmacd]

Not only that, the Titanic discovery was also a cover for the Navy investigating their own submarines.
http://news.nationalgeographic...

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[rahvin112]

I remember it too, and read the national geographic expose on the both the fake story and the real one.

The thing is, it was a great cover story because it was possible. The only reason it didn't really happen was the cost to extract wasn't worth it. Drones change that, it might be possible to pull all those minerals off the bottom if we have drones, the cost thing that killed the original was all the manpower and special submarines that would be needed.

If you have drones doing the mining and only need surface ships to sort and pull the minerals to port your manpower costs are significantly lower.

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[wonkey_monkey]

Sounds more like it was a fortuitous by-product than a cover.

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[k2backhoe]

Yes, I immediately thought of the Glomar Explorer and Howard Hughes when I read the title.

Re:Time to short Manganese ?

[RockDoctor]

That the CIA sub-recovering cover story is real doesn't actually mean that "abyssal plain nodules" are unreal. The first discoveries of them happened back in the 1880s (from the British research vessel "Challenger" which gave it's name to the "Challenger Deep", and possibly some spaceships, and essentially invented the whole subject of oceanography ; in fact, it's "five year mission to explore ..." sounds familiar too), and the results - more like lists of questions - were published mostly over a century ago.

The research projects that the CIA set up did yield results - most research does, even if it's a cover story - and since then there has remained a significant degree of interest in the subject, because they do represent a considerable potential metal resource. Whether they can be exploited at acceptable economic and environmental costs remains a question requiring further research and potentially technological development.

Probably the biggest problem with this technology is that the process of raking up the whole of the seabed, separating out the nodules (easy - keep anything larger than a couple of mm) and dumping the mud, results in the disturbance of the seabed, probably de-oxygenation of the deep water column, and potentially large effects on the survivability of the seabed community. What effects that would have up towards the surface is an open question. (Note that the mud itself may - or may not, or it may be variable on a km-by-km basis - contain significant amounts of adsorbed metals, which may or may not be toxic if disturbed. For this, you need samples and analyses by the 100s of thousands.)

Impressive Monsters

[no-body]

Indeed:

http://www.animals-zone.com/7-...

No concept what hit them, when it does.

Yeah right.

[Harlequin80]

This has to compete against mines on land operating with excellent infrastructure and somehow do it for less money.

I'm sorry but it just isn't going to happen any time soon. Olympic Dam in South Australia has absolutely massive gold, copper and uranium deposits but the economics of that mine couldn't be made to stack up in the current market. There is no way that untested, experimental mining in an incredibly hostile environment stands a chance.

Re:Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way that untested, experimental mining in an incredibly hostile environment stands a chance.

Next thing you know some idiot will suggest mining gold in space.

Re:Yeah right.

[ls671]

Gold mining is a matter of cost. Who knows? If they manage to find earth down there which contain 40 times more gold by cubic meter then, it might be profitable.

Then again, what kind of robots are they planning to use? Maybe they are looking for solid gold, Atlantis and the like ;-)

Re:Yeah right.

[ColdWetDog]

According to TFA, just the dredger / cutter robots cost $30 million a piece. Plus a purpose built mothership. They are going to have to haul up a whole shitload of high grade ore to pay for those toys.

Re:Yeah right.

[Dereck1701]

If the yields were the same you would no doubt be correct, but the article suggested that the deposits around these hydro-thermal vents are 10 times the density of modern land based deposits and they don't have to remove massive amounts of stone/dirt covering them in order to start mining, they're sitting right on the sea floor. That of course still doesn't make it a sure thing, but it definitely helps.

Re:Yeah right.

[CanadianMacFan]

Of course they don't have those pesky environmental regulations to stick to. There's nobody down at the ocean floor to complain about them dredging up tons of sediment. Just like the damage from fishing trawlers. Out of sight out of mind. Not that I'm for this because each of these vents is a unique ecosystem that is almost unknown to us.

Re:Yeah right.

[Harlequin80]

Even if that was the case for gold they would have to move a huge amount of ore. Fire Creek in the US is the highest grade gold mine in the world, by a huge margin, at 44gm per tonne. Even if that was at 10 times that amount they would have to shift huge tonnage of material to make it economic. One dredger is $30 million, assuming no maintenance or running cost they are going to have to bring 60,000 tonnes of ore to the surface just to cover the cost of the machine....

Re:Yeah right.

[Harlequin80]

Actually I think environmental regulation will probably stamp on this real hard. If they start creating the kind of silt plumes I envisage this would (they need to bring hundreds of thousands of tonnes of material to the surface) this will be affecting surrounding nations. Australia would get especially pissy if the silt was hitting the great barrier reef for example, and I doubt Indonesia would sit idly by while their fishing grounds are annihilated.

Re:Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be idiotic.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...

Re:Yeah right.

[R3d M3rcury]

Maybe my math is off, but at $34,409/kg (which is the current price), they'll need 871kg or 1922 pounds to pay for a dredger/cutter robot.

Keep in mind, also, that once they figure out how to do the mining and can show that it works, other people will probably buy their equipment to exploit other finds. If you will, they'll make money from every underwater mine.

Re:Yeah right.

[Harlequin80]

That is of gold not ore. The highest grade mine in the world is 44g per tonne of ore. 871,000g of gold = 19795 tonnes of ore.

Re:Yeah right.

[Rei]

Olympic Dam has 1,6% copper and 600ppb gold under 350m (a third of a kilometer) of overburden. These deposits are 7% copper and 6000 ppb gold under zero overburn - just the ocean. I think it's fully understandable why they want to give mining this a go, it's an amazing deposit.

Re:Yeah right.

[Ocker3]

It's idiotic to ship it down to planet-side, but what if you wanted to build things in space, using materials you found there?

Re:Yeah right.

[Rei]

It's in the ballpark of an order of magntiude more concentrated than what a good gold mine on dry land gets. But it's under no overburden (except the ocean itself) where as mines on land are generally under dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of meters of earth.

There's three types of robots. One is a "can operate anywhere" crusher with low throughput. Another crusher requires relatively flat ground to operate on but has much higher throughput - so it operates on areas prepared by the first type. And the third collects the crushed material so it can be pumped to surface ships in a slurry.

Re:Yeah right.

[Rei]

The deposit in question is 6g per tonne - which is still 5x better than your average gold mine on land. So the gold from 20k tonnes actually only pays for about 15% of a robot. But it also gives you 1400 tonnes of copper worth a quarter of another robot, plus nickel, silver, cobalt, and zinc.. altogether, yeah, 20k tonnes of ore, refined and sold at typical market prices, probably buys about one robot.

However, it's worth adding that there's no overburden. On your average surface mine, you have to remove an awful lot of rock before you get to anything that's actually worth something.

Re:Yeah right.

[r0kk3rz]

The problem with the OD expansion is that you have to do some serious digging through some rather hard stuff before you even get to the ore body. This means that prices need to be high enough and be expected to remain high for a good decade for that mine to make any financial sense.

Re:Yeah right.

[Rei]

On the other hand, each of the robots clocks in at 310 tonnes; they're going to be crushing ore and pumping slurry at a pretty prodigious rate. The production ship to handle it 227 meters long staffed by up to 180 people - think "oil rig"-sized. It's supposed to be capable of filling up a transfer ship to haul the ore to China once every 5-7 days. We're not talking some backyard-scale mining operation, this is an operation designed to move serious tonnage.

Re:Yeah right.

[Rei]

I really have no firm grasp of how vertically mobile the silt would be.

While overall the effects will probably be quite negative, if the silt does reach the surface and is carried into the deep ocean, there's a chance ironically of some positive effects. Most of the worlds' oceans are near dead-zones because they're mineral deficient (mainly iron). Iron seeding has been demonstrated in test projects by Pacific Northwest natives to vastly increase fish populations, and there are test projects working on using it to sequester carbon dioxide.

Re:Yeah right.

[jabuzz]

You are assuming they don't pump the "tails" back down to the ocean floor. Near bottom plumes as they are known are however still likely to have environmental impacts.

DeBeers have been doing sea floor mining for quite a while now for diamonds of the coast of Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Yeah right.

[david_bonn]

So you're going to build things made of gold in space? Good luck with that.

Seriously, mining for gold in space is probably going to be a lot less cost-effective than mining for gold in your front yard. Asteroids and the moon are too small to have the geological processes that formed ores on Earth and Mars. While mining asteroids or the moon for water and possibly iron and silicon might well make sense, it doesn't seem likely that it would ever be a particularly efficient way to acquire precious metals or rare earth elements.

Re:Yeah right.

[Dereck1701]

Gold mines don't run on a couple million dollars of equipment either. They have conga lines of multi-million dollar dump trucks hauling material out of the mine (T 282Bs are $4-5 Million each). While there are far fewer of them in a standard mine excavators are also far more expensive, they often cost tens of millions of dollars each. I'd bet that your average precious metal mine requires at least $150 Million dollars of equipment just to get material out of the mine, some much more. When Goldcorp established a new mine in Canada it cost them $2 Billion.

Re:Yeah right.

[Harlequin80]

Absolutely agree. The difference here is that these machines wont have a market for them if the process doesn't work where as surface machinery has a reliable second hand market. I'm not saying it is technically impossible, or that it won't happen in the future but the risk profile is crazy and the chances of it succeeding financially are close to zero.

Re:Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's the "experimental" part, results are a bit of an unknown. Could be a dud? Yes obviously, but you don't know until you try and sum up the pros and cons from the results. I say let them have a go and cheer them on if they hit pay dirt, if not maybe they have better luck with next great idea.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold isn't that reactive or useful. It really doesn't serve much of a purpose, which makes it pretty illogical to look for it at a mile under the sea surface. If we're going to mine for something under the sea and go through all that difficulty, it had better be something useful like oil.

Re:Who cares?

[Harlequin80]

Uh-huh. Gold is useful BECAUSE it isn't reactive. It is highly ductile, doesn't corrode quickly and it conducts electricity well.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make a lot of sense, actually. It makes a lot more sense to use silver for this purpose. Silver is almost 20 times as abundant on Earth as gold. It's also very resistant to corrosion. Silver also conducts electricity better than gold. Because of all these advantages, it isn't especially logical to use gold for those purposes.

Re:Who cares?

[tsotha]

It's both highly malleable and dense, so you can hammer it into really thin sheets for (relatively) lightweight radiation shielding.

Re:Who cares?

[mark-t]

Silver oxidizes far more easily than Gold does. It also isn't anywhere nearly as ductile.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make a lot of sense, actually. It makes a lot more sense to use silver for this purpose. Silver is almost 20 times as abundant on Earth as gold. It's also very resistant to corrosion. Silver also conducts electricity better than gold. Because of all these advantages, it isn't especially logical to use gold for those purposes.

I can tell you don't own any real silver silverware...

Re:Who cares?

[ls671]

Exactly, people like to pile it up exactly for that reason.

Re:Who cares?

[Applehu Akbar]

But silver is the best conductor.

Re:Who cares?

[mark-t]

I'm not going to argue with that one, but oxidized silver doesn't conduct anywhere nearly as well.... Gold may not be quite as good at conduction at room temperature as silver, but the other tradeoffs make gold worthwhile, even though it costs much more.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even. Graphene. It also doesn't tarnish.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Gold isn't that reactive or useful. It really doesn't serve much of a purpose

You can get girls in-laid with it in your bed. Many men consider that useful, because their rod aches if unutilized for more than a few days. But be warned that combining gold with diamond is dangerous, it catalyses the girls' transformation into wives, with a significant loss of liberty for men.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

carbon capture

Re:Who cares?

[Rei]

Which is why all of your electronics use silver interconnects, right?

Gold is used where corrosion is most important. Copper is used where conductivity and price are most important. Silver's marginally better conductivity over copper doesn't justify it's usage for bulk electronics purposes, and it's too corrosive-prone for use in interconnects. It sees some electronics usage, but generally gold and copper are more important.

Point of note: all of these measures are conductivity *per unit cross section*. However there are better metals than silver on a mass basis - sodium, for example, is 3x better. Then comes lithium, calcium, potassium, beryllium, aluminum, magnesium, copper, then silver, then gold. But of course most of those metals are extremely corrosion-prone/flammable and beryllium is absurdly expensive. Aluminum is widely used in wiring (including most transmission lines) due to its better mass conductivity and lower cost, but its mechanical properties make it not as "forgiving" as copper and more prone to shorts - hence the issues with aluminum home wiring over the years.

Re:Who cares?

[Applehu Akbar]

Silver conducts a little better than gold, but interconnects need to be corrosion-free.

Re:Who cares?

[avandesande]

resistance in a conductor is easy to engineer around but resistance due to corrosion isn't

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if he's thinking of "white gold", a silver-colored alloy of silver and gold, that is very corrosion resistant.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that gold has very few industrial uses, right? The big markets for gold are jewellery and as a value store (coins, bars, etc.). Gold is used on some electrical contacts but it's too expensive to be used widely, and it's too soft for most industrial applications.

As a general rule engineers use metals for their strength, heat resistance, and light weight compared to concrete and brick. Gold simply isn't strong enough for most industrial purposes, and that's before you hit the expense problem.

The corrosion resistance is a great attribute, but look at any industrial product. The designers would rather make it out of base metals and give it a coating than attempt to use gold. Corrosion resistance isn't enough to overcome gold's disadvantages.

Hmmm

[tsotha]

Did a Russian sub go down around PNG?

Not if, when

[Dereck1701]

Deep sea mining is GOING to happen, whether it is good for the environment or not. If environmentalists/scientists are afraid of its effects they need to work with companies/governments to ensure that it is done with as little damage as is feasible. Attempts to sabotage it with claims of doom and gloom or wrapping it up in untenable amounts of red tape will only succeed in creating another "us vs them" mentality where each side is constantly trying to screw over the other with lies and propaganda campaigns resulting in more damage to the economy & environment.

Re:Not if, when

[Harlequin80]

I'm not so sure. I suspect that mineral extraction from sea water would come before mining the sea bed. While the concentration of gold in sea water is ridiculously low, it is still present and could be collected as a by product of desalination. The tech doesn't exist for that to be economically viable in the current market but it probably compares well against sea bed mining.

Re:Not if, when

[Anonymous Coward]

Something about your post seems odd. Why are you so sure it's going to happen regardless? You just say it like you expect people to just roll over and take it. Someone could have said the same about a Deepwater Horizon catastrophe eventually happening, so maybe you meant it this way.

But yes, there are heavy and expensive regulations, and hefty fines that come with negligence, when it comes to offshore oil drilling. It should be the same for mining underwater. The $24 billion fine BP had to pay for damages was appropriate, and wow, they found another 15 guys to replace the ones that died on the oil rig without too much problem.

Nope.avi

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole thing about each gold rush is that for the most part anybody who could scrounge together some very basic equipment could strike out and attempt to make their fortune. We are talking shovels, and sifters not multi-million dollar underwater robots the size of a tank. Heck most people aren't even qualified to land jobs working on the ship.

It might have some great prospects and if you are already have a boatload of money and or a large corporation, it might make you a boatload more but a gold rush this is not.

Re:Nope.avi

[turbidostato]

"The whole thing about each gold rush is that for the most part anybody who could scrounge together some very basic equipment could strike out and attempt to make their fortune."

Not exactly. The whole thing about each gold rush is that the ones selling the equipment to the crazy-at-heart everyothers were the ones solidly making a fortune.

Now, humm... where did I leave my hefty stock of multimillion dollar tank-sized underwater robots? These naives are going to learn a lesson or two MWAHAHAHA!

Good thing the "anti-everything" bunch

[p51d007]

Wasn't around when America, and the rest of "modern" civilization wasn't coming up with such things as electricity, airplanes, automobiles, the wheels etc...

It's about damn time!

[fustakrakich]

We should be using tunnel boring machines for all our mining needs, gold, coal, whatever. Make them nuclear powered, and include a built in smelter.

Re:It's about damn time!

[ColdWetDog]

Been reading those old Tom Swift novels again, have we?

Re:It's about damn time!

[fustakrakich]

Not a bad idea. Blast the rock in front of the machine first. It would save a lot a wear and tear on the bit, or replace it entirely.

Re:It's about damn time!

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be fabulous. However, TBMs are not at all fast, where as a continuous wall miner is amazing.

The 15th

[amightywind]

Would the 15th superfund site be the one the EPA made this summer on the Animas River?

Re:The 15th

[Coren22]

Unlikely, as that is the result of a mine and so is likely one of the other 14.

"5 years in future" since 1960s

[peter303]

I read this article all the time. They were not called drones then.

Deepwater Horizon in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Has everyone already forgotten the BP disaster of 2010? Last thing we need is millions of barrels of gold spilling up from the depths of the ocean, polluting our beaches and choking our marine life.

Re:Deepwater Horizon in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Has everyone already forgotten the BP disaster of 2010? Last thing we need is millions of barrels of gold spilling up from the depths of the ocean, polluting our beaches and choking our marine life.

The article is about gold, not "black gold."

Still can't separate fact from fiction

[Solandri]

In 1968, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine sank in the Pacific ocean. In the 1970s, the CIA built a ship, the Glomar Explorer, to attempt to recover this submarine. The CIA got Howard Hughes to provide a public front for the ship's construction. Its cover story was that it was going to mine manganese nodules off the ocean floor. As part of this cover, there was a massive disinformation campaign regarding the amount of valuable materials which could be mined (or vacuumed as some of the news stories described it) off the ocean floor. Newspaper and magazine articles proclaimed how by the turn of the century, we would be mining most of our metals from the ocean. Growing up in the 1970s as a kid extremely interested in ocean sciences, I read a huge number of these stories with fascination.

The cover for the operation was blown in 1975. But because of the disinformation campaign, it's still difficult to tell if these proposed mining operations have in fact accurately analyzed the financial viability of mining materials from the ocean floor. Or if they've been taken in by the hype generated as a cover story decades ago, and are assuming that if there were so many stories in major publications about the financial viability of ocean floor mining, that someone must've done their due diligence and concluded it was in fact financially viable. (As for the submarine, it broke while it was being hauled up to the surface, and the CIA only managed to recover about the front third of it. The more valuable conning tower section and propeller were lost. The recovered bow contained a couple nuclear torpedoes tough, so the CIA considered the operation one of their greatest successes of the Cold War.)

Re:Still can't separate fact from fiction

[Llamalarity]

That was my first thought when I saw the headline. Remember reading the story about mining magnesium nodules when in grade school. Not the internal school newspaper but one distributed to multiple schools. Weekly Reader comes to mind but dang that was a long time ago.

Personally, I'd go for bio-engineering.

[allaunjsilverfox2]

It might not be possible, but I'd go for using the sea creatures themselves. A interesting project would be to develop coral that accumulates heavy metals from the water. And then harvest the corals and "replant" them. It would be useful on two different sides. One would be removing toxic materials that might be accumulating because of illegal dumping. And the other is it would be more sustainable while providing jobs for people.

Re:horrible

[ColdWetDog]

what a disaster this will be for the ocean life for hundreds or thousands of miles around the site surely, not to mention any coral and deep sealife in the direct area, and whales and other migratory sea animals will be affected too

Hyperbolic much? Hundreds or thousands of miles around the site? They're dredges, not hydrogen bombs. Yes, they will create a mess - as does mining everywhere. It will be fairly localized. And likely remain a rounding error in the grand scheme of horrible things we do to the ocean floor (e.g. trawler fishing).

waiting for the reality show

[binarstu]

I assume this means that a new Discovery Channel/Animal Planet "reality" show is just around the corner. "Underwater Gold", "Robot Miners", or something like that. It will be a nice complement to "Bering Sea Gold", "Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice", "Ice Cold Gold", "Prospectors", "The Gold Rush", "Jungle Gold", "Yukon Gold", etc. (Yes, those are all real television shows. And yes, that is how stupid Discovery Channel and Animal Planet have gotten.)

Re:horrible

[CanadianMacFan]

While I agree that the area impacted will be very small, the damage will be quite great because each of these vents has a unique ecosystem around it. While I think they are originally going to concentrate at vents that are no longer active and not supporting life it won't be long until they move onto active vents.

Mile-High Tidal waves from Aliens as punishment...

[Zymergy]

Mile-High Tidal waves from the water Aliens as punishment... Where is Ed Harris to dive down and save us all??

Stupid

[RubberDogBone]

Mining for gold like this is a fool's errand, as much as stocking up in warehouses in case the world ends.

Countries who do not have US (read US and other "free" nations) interests at heart control vast amounts of gold and other minerals which they CHOOSE to keep off the market for their own reasons. There is nothing stopping them from dumping their stock and making the bottom fall out of the markets at which point gold won't be worth mining or hoarding.

Everyone has to judge their own finances, but I find it absurd to considering investing in something like Gold where the value is set in large part by countries and peoples who would be happy if my country and people got vaporized. Now, everyone ELSE can invest in it if they want. I don't trust them and I won't invest in things I can't trust.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?
http://www.mineweb.com/archive...
http://www.wealthdaily.com/art...

Re:horrible

[Harlequin80]

I wonder if it would end up being localised. Rough calculations based on their resource claims sees them having to bring thousands of tonnes of ore to the surface (each machine is worth about 60,000 tonne of gold ore). I wouldn't be surprised if the silt plumes were 100s of kms long as once the dredgers collect the ore it needs to be raised to the surface dropping silt the whole way.

Next gold rush

[Anonymous Coward]

...will be stealing the drones carrying gold....

gigatonnes of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Five percent of all energy produced on earth is used to grind rock to get at its minerals. If you grind rock that has 10 times as much minerals then you only have to grind 10 percent as much rock, saving you from having to produce ninety percent of the energy you presently require for grinding. So this kind of mining will reduce the total need for energy by 4.5 %.

I, for one

[jfdavis668]

Welcome our new robot overlords.

Robot wars

[Tony Isaac]

We've finally found a practical application for all of the robot fighting technology you see on those TV shows! It won't take long until those underwater robots have to be armed to defend against wildcatters.

I hope they find a lot of gold

[hcs_$reboot]

So much gold that the price of gold worldwide decreases so much that their undersea operation becomes loss-making.

Deep ones won't like it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the last time BP violated the Benthic Treaty?

Re:That will go well - For a little while

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the good deposits are gone, then deep-sea mining will move right on to the crap that land mining did.

AC

Don't believe a word of this lame cover story.

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been only two cases of ocean bottom nodules mining and both turned out to be faux cover stories. The first was the infamous 1970's Hughes Glomar Explorer case, where CIA stole the wreckage of a sunken soviet submarine wholesale, to get the codebooks and nukes onboard. But the GRU found out about Project Azorean and the russkies changed the codes. The second attempt was a recent copycat, where the japanese tried to steal the wreckage of the soviet battle space-station Polyus from the Southern Pacific ocean's bottom. GRU found out and the giantic lift rig ship had to be re-purposed as a scientific research vessel.

And is used in such a small quantity...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that we have reserve for industry for millenia.

Robot Drones?

[Anonymous Coward]

"With Robot Drones"

Google -> define robot
Google -> define drone

Robot drone...? Let's just stack fancy words together :-)

Re:horrible

[Rei]

Let's not kid ourselves, they are talking about a massive operation. They're supposed to fill up an ore carrier to China every 5 to 7 days. So that means they're ripping up the size of the ore carrier's cargo holds at least once weekly. The surface support vessel is designed to house up to 180 people. This isn't some tiny pilot operation, they're going full force on trying to demonstrate economic viability in the large scale.

Re:Use drone technology

[Rei]

Actually, this company is Canadian. And they're selling the ore to the Chinese ;)

Who Lost a Sub there?

[dave1791]

Somehow, I recall the deep ocean manganese fad in the 70's was a cover for snatching a sunken soviet sub from the Pacific floor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Backhoes of the Ocean?

[mysidia]

Just wait 'til they start accidentally hitting the undersea cables and partitioning the internet......

Coren22's "greatest hits" fails #1/5... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

Where'd I say it? Show us. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007 http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there on OpenDNS free (I use it) + AD in my security guide.

+ Migrate hosts across a LAN (admin/scripts not GPO)-> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

---

I'm RIGHT on admin priv + hosts (WFP/SFP)!

"figured out why privilege escalation's a bad thing?" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

How else can I programmatically update hosts itself?

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"it requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

Hypocrite later admits it!

Even MalwareBytes AntiMalware (best one) DEMANDS it or it can't do a job fully like many security tools!

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"Needing admin privileges every time a program updates is poor design" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

Stupid, mine doesn't to get new data. Only hosts itself updates need it vs WFP/SFP. Users set it too. It's not programmatic impersonation.

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"90's technology to fight modern war" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

Ozymandias/Watchmen per a namesake:

"I resolved to apply antiquities teachings" (hosts) "to our world today & began my path to conquest - Conquest not of men but of the evils that beset them: Fossil Fuels (antispyware), Oil (antivir), Nuclear Power (addons) are like a drug & you gentlemen along w/ foreign interests are the pushers"

It works Aryeh Goretsky NOD32/ESET said hosts = good security-> http://it.slashdot.org/comment...

Oliver Day (Symantec) too-> http://www.securityfocus.com/c...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts' Admin hosts+recommends APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit-> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

APK

P.S.=> Con't. in #2/5... apk

Coren22's "greatest hits" fails #2/5... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Virus scanners/Adblock software don't need admin priv to update" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

Neither does my program. AV does to remove threats - Adblock addons = Vastly INFERIOR in abilities + efficiency vs. hosts as I proved & no one proved me wrong to date!

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"your software does" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

No, hosts do due to WFP/SFP - Intake update of new hosts data doesn't!

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"won't reveal your source code" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

I don't owe you it. I don't give away work to be stolen by others so it's misused like GOOGLE CHROME http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

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"What's stopping you from pointing my bank's web site at your private server?" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

I don't keep a server. Security guru (not - you create no ware for security & your forensics skills = non-existent): Put it in a VM, trace it using process monitor + wireshark to prove it (don't need code)!

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"the possibility of being caught, which would be pretty hard to catch w/ such a large hosts file, as no one can go through it manually." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

I place hardcoded fav sites @ top of hosts for speed & reliabilty - you'd spot it easily & bulk of hosts is sorted blocked known bad threats.

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"What are you going to do when Windows gets rid of the hosts file completely?" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

Hasn't happened..

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"They have already taken steps to make it useless in Windows 10." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)

It works there!

Telemetry tracking (Killing 10 by itself) Win10 = Win8: A flop - who're you fooling other than yourself?

APK

P.S.=> Con't. in #3/5... apk

Coren22's "greatest hits" fails #3/5... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"I guess we should avoid your crap, it looks like it is marked as malware. Good luck getting that removed." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

62 sources of good repute show + /. users say otherwise:

Proven safe by 57 antivirus programs in its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

Same for the 32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

&

Per VirScan its installer too -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

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MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news... /.'ers say my work is good too:

"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)

"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)

"APK is kinda right... I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)

"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)

---

You tried using Computer Associates another antivirus I turned over on false positives (1/8 over time) & they were caught in ACCOUNTING SCANDALS FRAUD http://www.bing.com/search?q=c...

Reputable source (not): They had to sell off their PC security suite too (crap also) LOWERING the 'threat level' on THAT program (not my hosts file engine) TO ZERO!

* YOU ARE WRONG ON EVERY ACCOUNT NOTED!

APK

P.S.=> To be continued in part #4/5... apk

Coren22's "greatest hits" fails #4/5... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Coren22 'eats his words' vs. me 2x yet again:

"introduces risk you are relying on a 3rd party to update a hosts file potentially opening you up to MITM attacks" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 17, 2015

How can my program do it?

Only things it puts in as non-blocking IP addy to hostnames is ones users give it as their favs to speed up @ the TOP of hosts REVERSE DNS VERIFIED!

(For more speed, & reliability + security - in RAM as 1st resolver queried = faster & more secure vs. remote DNS w/ all its security issues in Kaminsky flaw, DNSChanger malware IP stack settings, routers bushwhacked in DNS settings, rogue DNS, Open DNS servers abused by malware. It aids in reliability vs. redirects).

YOU'D SPOT IT INSTANTLY AS THEY ARE @ TOP OF CUSTOM HOSTS & can easily edit anything you want out of it!

(Rest = known bad sites from 10 reputable security community sites for blocking - the MAJORITY of what's in my hosts files!)

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"maybe one day you can get a score 5 comment" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 17, 2015

See subject & ~ 12 +5 upmods making you "eat your words" vs. me (1st one: You tried using what I post there against me to FAIL):

+5 'modded up' posts by "yours truly" (11):

http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

"You believe you are getting the better of me" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 17, 2015

YOU GOT THE BEST OF YOURSELF in tech fails & lies about me. Your immature signatures about me SCREAM you're butthurt! You did it to yourself.

APK

P.S.=> Con't. in #5/5... apk

Coren22's "greatest hits" fails #5/5... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"defame me saying things he knows aren't true - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015

Hypocrite you're projecting & your signatures do the rest.

"the feeling of icky his software - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015

I show /.'ers say differently by quoted testimonials - Show us you've done better: YOU can't!

"maybe someone will think they are true - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015

Quotes of you = true - & You can't keep your word + projecting what YOU do (AD/DNS lie).

"I don't have time for the Troll APK, and refuse to respond anymore to a post signed APK" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 03, 2015

I protect users speeding them up, helping reliability, & security + anonymity online w/ more ability & efficiency than ANY 1 solution doing more w/ less - do you? No.

"I should change my signature again to rile him up more." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 03, 2015

Childish sigs = all you've got!

"I refuted his assertions - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015

&

"You claim I have never proved you wrong...a flat out lie." - by Coren22 on Monday November 16, 2015

&

"I proved you wrong on numerous occasions" - by Coren22 on Monday November 16, 2015

Where & on what tech? "Cat got your tongue"??

"written in shitty Delphi, "How to secure Windows" docs I could have written in my sleep when I was 20" - by Coren22 on Monday November 16, 2016

You're 30++ & haven't done either!

Show you've done MORE vs.a small partial list of mine & better, + earlier:

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

THEN talk vs. TALKING OUT YOUR ASS!

CIS Tool took fixes from me http://slashdot.org/comments.p... which you doubted & my layered security guides got me paid http://pcpitstop.com/news/winn... MILLIONS use.

APK

P.S.=>

"I never admit you were right" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

You PROVED I AM... apk

What could go wrong?

[Legal.Troll]

no concerns

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is to pump the sludge up, separate water and pipe the drain water back where it came from on the seafloor. So no, they are not hoisting buckets through kilometer of water. Therefore silt plumes should not be such a great issue, just however much is stirred up from the bottom. Well that's the theory anyway.