Planetary Resources Reveals Out-of-This-World 3D Printing (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: If one is going to get into the asteroid mining business, one needs to prove that you can do something with what's brought back. That seems to be the thinking behind Planetary Resources' recent presentation at CES in Las Vegas, where the asteroid mining company unveiled the first object 3D printed using extraterrestrial materials. Made in collaboration with 3D Systems, the nickel-iron sculpture represents a stylized, geometric spacecraft, such as might be used for asteroid mining or prospecting. Planetary Resources says it is representative of what could be printed in a weightless environment.

Comments

Complete bumkum

[BarbaraHudson]

All the nickel near the surface of this planet comes from meteorites. This is a non-story to generate hype. There is NOTHING to see here.

Re:We need to 3D print blasters.

[Rei]

I don't even get the point of this. Was there anybody doubting that you could laser sinter prepared nickel-iron powder? People have been laser sintering iron alloys containing nickel and cobalt for ages. I care about whether they can turn surface rock (loose or firmly attached, in chunks or as non-uniform dust) into an acceptable printing feedstock in microgravity and get it into the printer's feed system. Heck, at least modify your 3d printer to be able to handle microgravity - good luck using a stock DMP 320 in space, the dust will just drift off. Do something meaningful here.

I'm actually a fan of the concept of space mining - I think that with ~2 decades of actual funded, dedicated effort the mining of precious-metal-rich earth-crossing asteroids could potentially prove profitable (using a quench gun to eject unguided projectiles (sintered into an ideal reentry shape) onto an Earth-intercept trajectory). Such bodies are more precious metal rich than even the best mines on Earth (as well as often with gem-quality peridot), 1-2 orders of magnitude more than typical mines, zero overburden (many Earth mines cost hundreds of millions to billions just to strip the overburden), a massive premium on sales due to the materials' origin, and our old foe the rocket equation doesn't come into play since they're such weak gravity wells. And there's really not all that much technology to develop... we've got landing in microgravity down, we need to get better at anchoring and roving, we're good at scooping regolith but it needs to be large scale and continuous, and we need a nuclear or solar sinterer and an aimable quench gun Based on other NASA missions, total development cost is probably on the order of $2-3B, including one or two smaller technology testing missions. And less cost on future mines.

But this printing thing is just pointless. It has absolutely no bearing on any of the technical challenges related to space mining or resource utilization.