A Quixotic Quest to Mine Asteroids

[davmat787]

(more retro space propaganda from the cold war here if you dig that stuff) http://www.retronaut.co/2012/02/soviet-space-propaganda-posters-1958-1963/

I have always been fascinated by Cold War propaganda, and war propaganda in general, thanks for the link. Some of the posters that depict a US soldier are especially interesting, gives some insight on how the Kremlin wanted the citizenry to view the US. Example:

/off topic

 

[HopDAvid]

if you want the goodies you have to go near the region of the gas giants and that's a trip taking upwards of 10 years each way. go find a crew who is trained enough AND willing to spend 25 years in space;

They're not suggesting going near gas giants nor send humans on a 25 year round trip. You have expended zero effort researching their goals.

http://kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf

Some of the names of this paper are also on the Planetary Resources team.

They have some very experienced aerospace engineers with impressive track records. Their numbers are much more credible than yours.

 

[DigDog]

ok, maybe i was brash and i have to admit i was totally wrong.

From a long-term architectural point of view, the ability to test resource extraction processes and
enable commercial resource production ideas to be applied to the captured NEA would pave the way for
use of asteroidal materials in human deep-space expeditions, greatly reducing required up-mass from
Earth, and thus the cost, of such missions. A 500-t, carbonaceous C-type asteroid may contain up to
200 t of volatiles (~100 t water and ~100 t carbon-rich compounds), 90 t of metals (approximately 83 t
of iron, 6 t of nickel, and 1 t of cobalt), and 200 t of silicate residue (similar to the average lunar surface
material)

quoted from that paper.

it is totally worth it to spend $2.6 billion to retrieve 83 tons of iron.

TastesLikeChicken. you got me dude. i had nothing to do and i came back to post where i said i would not post anymore.

Think i said it's impossible? Nope. Practically it is, because it's not gonna happen. There isn't any money in it.

But it seems you just wanted to take the piss and didn't actually re-read what was posted before. It's not economically feasible, asteroids that are close to us have nothing awesome in them, and we haven't developed (not "theorised" .. developed) the technology yet.

Sure there's stuff out there worth a fortune or two. But it's not iron for sure. Nor gold.

And mind you, this speculating doesn't even take into account all the shit that's goning to go wrong - like dust accumulating in near orbit from processing ore. Or disruption of the toposphere, pollution, and all other environmental problems associated with launching into orbit.

Carl Sagan was, first of all, a realist. please don't insult his memory by hurr-durr we are going into space. Space mining is going to happen, eventually. because it's easier to get metals from space than to bring them into orbit, and if we want to build stuff in orbit that's where we'll get our stuff from.

But not only the idea that we should go mine asteroids to bring stuff back to earth is
bad, but to think it's gonna happen with our current technology and civilisation, and to make money out of it, it's ridiculous. And to top it off, it's not the brainchild of some serious research organisation, but of James "Titanic" Cameron and his bunch of investors friends. LOL.

This is the same reason why i hate michio kaku - he says things that are theorethically possible (*if* a certain number of yet uncertain, and frankly quite hapzardous theories are proven true) as if they are going to happen next wednesday at eight. Travel Between parallel Universes!! It's Real!!

Asteroid mining has the same appeal and problems as Mecha; if you have the technology to build a gundam-sized mech, you can - with the same technology level - build a tank that's 10x times more powerful. With the technological effort to develop space mining, we can mine more iron, gold, tellurium, and other bullshit here on earth.

It's just that getting stuff from earth where there's air and gravity, to space, is f* complicated, and complicated = expensive.

Now you may go back and see how all these were written before. I'm not trying to win an argument on "i like space mining" or "i don't like space mining". I even said myslef that there's stuff out there that is so precious it doesn't even have a monetary worth yet. Metallic hydrogen. alien lifeforms. concentrated neutron matter. holy smokes batman you don't need to be a genius to know this stuff. just Wikipedia and Celestia and a few too many hours of free time.

-------------------------------------

There's another recent thread here on AT i called bs on; take a look (about some 19yo girl who invented a new space engine), maybe you want to hate there too.
yeah i'm editing; don't wanna resurrect this thread, but wanted the satisfaction of trolling my awesomeness.
people that disagree with me: TastesLikeChicken
people that agree with me: Neil DeGrasse-Tyson
i win
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZw5Vz_imPM&feature=player_embedded

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

ok, maybe i was brash and i have to admit i was totally wrong.



quoted from that paper.

it is totally worth it to spend $2.6 billion to retrieve 83 tons of iron.

Which paper is this quoted from? It helps to actually link what you are quoting from in this forum.

And why would a C condrite be targeted for mining in the first place other than as an initial proof of concept?

TastesLikeChicken. you got me dude. i had nothing to do and i came back to post where i said i would not post anymore.

Think i said it's impossible? Nope. Practically it is, because it's not gonna happen. There isn't any money in it.

But it seems you just wanted to take the piss and didn't actually re-read what was posted before. It's not economically feasible, asteroids that are close to us have nothing awesome in them, and we haven't developed (not "theorised" .. developed) the technology yet.

I read what was posted before, by you, which ignored quite a bit of additional scientific commentary on the subject that indicated asteroids contain far more than simply iron and other common metals. Is there any reason you feel it necessary to ignore those comments other than being desparate to defend your position?

Sure there's stuff out there worth a fortune or two. But it's not iron for sure. Nor gold.

And mind you, this speculating doesn't even take into account all the shit that's goning to go wrong - like dust accumulating in near orbit from processing ore. Or disruption of the toposphere, pollution, and all other environmental problems associated with launching into orbit.

That's why an asteroid should be moved into moon orbit, not Earth orbut. It mitigates those sorts of problems. That's already been addressed.

Carl Sagan was, first of all, a realist. please don't insult his memory by hurr-durr we are going into space. Space mining is going to happen, eventually. because it's easier to get metals from space than to bring them into orbit, and if we want to build stuff in orbit that's where we'll get our stuff from.

But not only the idea that we should go mine asteroids to bring stuff back to earth is
bad, but to think it's gonna happen with our current technology and civilisation, and to make money out of it, it's ridiculous. And to top it off, it's not the brainchild of some serious research organisation, but of James "Titanic" Cameron and his bunch of investors friends. LOL.

This is the same reason why i hate michio kaku - he says things that are theorethically possible (*if* a certain number of yet uncertain, and frankly quite hapzardous theories are proven true) as if they are going to happen next wednesday at eight. Travel Between parallel Universes!! It's Real!!

Asteroid mining has the same appeal and problems as Mecha; if you have the technology to build a gundam-sized mech, you can - with the same technology level - build a tank that's 10x times more powerful. With the technological effort to develop space mining, we can mine more iron, gold, tellurium, and other bullshit here on earth.

It's just that getting stuff from earth where there's air and gravity, to space, is f* complicated, and complicated = expensive.

Now you may go back and see how all these were written before. I'm not trying to win an argument on "i like space mining" or "i don't like space mining". I even said myslef that there's stuff out there that is so precious it doesn't even have a monetary worth yet. Metallic hydrogen. alien lifeforms. concentrated neutron matter. holy smokes batman you don't need to be a genius to know this stuff. just Wikipedia and Celestia and a few too many hours of free time.

It seems you are trying to "win" an argument by using quite a few specious arguments, along with a lack of links, that really don't withstand much scrutiny. Here's the simple retort. If a company can show that it will cost 2 trillion dollars to mine an asteroid worth 20 trillion there will be investors lined up to take that chance. Is it going to happen tomorrow? Of course not. Could it happen in 20, 30, or 50 years? Damn skippy.

Keep this in mind. Little more than 100 years ago manned flight was a pipe dream. Today flying around the globe is taken for granted. Commercial space operations are about to take off. How long will it be before we are tackling pretty grandiose projects in space? We are on another cusp.

 

[WelshBloke]

What kind of asteroid is worth 20 trillion dollars?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

What kind of asteroid is worth 20 trillion dollars?

See post #35 in this thread.

 

[ichy]

On a vaguely related note I saw that SpaceX had to abort their first launch attempt at T -.5 seconds, but will try again on Tuesday. Go SpaceX, go!

 

[WelshBloke]

See post #35 in this thread.

That asteroids only worth $20 trillion because no one owns it.

I cant be arsed to work out how much $8T of platinum is but I bet the price would take a nose dive if anyone owned that much.

 

[EagleKeeper]

That asteroids only worth $20 trillion because no one owns it.

I cant be arsed to work out how much $8T of platinum is but I bet the price would take a nose dive if anyone owned that much.

Difference between owning and placing on the market.

That is why DeBeers only puts on a small amount of diamonds at anytime up for sale.
They have plenty more; to offer them for sale would flood the market and drive down prices.

 

[WelshBloke]

Difference between owning and placing on the market.

That is why DeBeers only puts on a small amount of diamonds at anytime up for sale.
They have plenty more; to offer them for sale would flood the market and drive down prices.

DeBeers diamonds are cheap to mine though, theres going to be a few people wanting a return on their investments with the asteroid mining. Saying "well, we have a crap ton of metals but we just dont want to sell it" might not go down too well.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

That asteroids only worth $20 trillion because no one owns it.

I cant be arsed to work out how much $8T of platinum is but I bet the price would take a nose dive if anyone owned that much.

Maybe so, but even if the price of the metals and rare-Earth elements in the asteroid were cut in half, you'd still have a $10 trillion asteroid.

Besides that, the market for platinum would not be static. It's a very valuable catalyst and if the price were cut in half it would become more economically feasible to adapt it for quite a few more uses than it is today. That would help to counter-balance any severe drops in market price.