A Quixotic Quest to Mine Asteroids

[Moonbeam]

Hmmm - I have what I think is a novel thought.

In addition to the obvious reasons for doing this, demonstration of the ability to do this also could lead to a way to protect the Earth from other comets/asteroids. Providing we continue to pay for funding to keep scanning space for "things" that could impact the Earth and screw things up for us, a possible method to divert such a thing (provided we have a LOT of advance notice) would be to maneuver one of these huge chunks of iron floating around in space, and put it on a collision course trajectory with something that would otherwise be on a collision course with Earth.

There are numerous reasons why pursuing this is a great idea. However, at present time, I cannot fathom how it could be commercially successful.

I recently read something about a new materials discovery that had implications for a space elevator. I have a fairly extensive library but a poor filing system.

 

[Exterous]

I wish them luck (although sucess will liklely bring Google that much closer to world domination). I am all for furthering our exploration/exploitation of space

 

[Trell]

I hope this space mining thing works out, but with the current cost of launching things into orbit I am not optimistic.

The cost of launching things into space is actually one of the big reasons to develop the mining of asteroids. If we can get the majority of metal, water, and other materials either directly from asteroids or manufacture them in "space factories" from the raw materials in space already plus whatever we need form earth it becomes much much cheaper to do big things in space. You then just have the cost of ferrying people and small amounts of supplies into space.

This whole idea was even mentioned by some of the people involved in this project, they said the first thing they plan to mine is water/ice from asteroids because it currently costs $50k a pound to launch it into space...

 

[DigDog]

Space Commerce And Mining

 

[werepossum]

Communist

Much as I fear it, you can't have civilization without government and therefore socialism.

 

[Moonbeam]

The thing I love about colonies in space is the potential diversity that will come with separation. The potential for experimentation will be endless. It will be like playing the game Life???? or is it Spore, for real. Doubtless the cheapest source of new materials will be to eat each other, in heaven as it is on earth.

 

[Moonbeam]

Space Commerce And Mining

The Federation of Liberal Off World Colonies. From the asteroids who have according to their minerals, to the folk who have not according to their mining abilities.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I recently read something about a new materials discovery that had implications for a space elevator. I have a fairly extensive library but a poor filing system.

Carbon nanotubes have the requisite strength as well as a graphene laminate. The problem is producing the required lengths. That ought to be a high research priority but alas scientists don't control funding.

 

[Moonbeam]

Carbon nanotubes have the requisite strength as well as a graphene laminate. The problem is producing the required lengths. That ought to be a high research priority but alas scientists don't control funding.

I think it has to be the latter I was reading about. I know the issue is strength, to have a cable that won't break under the pull of its own weight in gravity. Graphene is light as I recall.

 

[yllus]

As to the questions of if this is economically worthwhile, I saw this yesterday:

Mashable Business - This $20 Trillion Rock Could Turn a Startup Into Earth’s Richest Company

Meet Amun 3554. Doesn’t look like much, right? Little more than a mile wide, it’s one of the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroids yet discovered. Unless it ever decides to smash into us — a theoretical possibility, but extremely unlikely over the next few centuries — it will continue orbiting the sun, unknown and unmolested.

That is, unless Planetary Resources has its way. Planetary Resources is the asteroid-mining company launched Tuesday in Seattle, with backing from Microsoft and Google billionaires, along with the equally prominent James Cameron and Ross Perot Jr.

Its object is to completely dismember poor little rocks like Amun.

That’s because Amun is a goldmine — well, not gold so much. But it does contain a cool $8 trillion worth of platinum, an essential precious metal used in everything from jewelry to fuel cells to computers (and one that’s currently trading at the same rate as gold — $1500 an ounce.) On Earth, only a few hundred tonnes of the stuff are produced every year.

The $8 trillion figure is an estimate based on observations by John S. Lewis, professor of planetary science, author of Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets, and now a consultant to Planetary Resources. He also found 3554 Amun to contain another $8 trillion in iron and nickel, and a mere $6 trillion worth of cobalt.

So, the total payout from one unassuming asteroid? $20,000,000,000,000.

That’s what got Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis so excited. “There are $20 trillion checks up there waiting to be cashed,” he enthused at a space development conference in 2006.

...

To become the wealthiest company in the world, Planetary Resources need only capture one rock. Less than that, in fact.

Apple, currently the world’s most valuable company, has a market cap of $500 billion. To match that in resources, let alone market cap, Planetary Resources need only mine one-fortieth of 3554 Amun.

Of course, there’s a catch. You couldn’t offload all those metals on the world market at once, for fear of crashing their prices. But the company would still own that much in equity, which would allow them to borrow against it. They would be that wealthy, to all intents and purposes. That’s just how capitalism works.

Still, for all this wealth, platinum and gold may not be the most important thing the asteroid miners are hunting. The water on some ice-bound asteroids could count for more in the long run. Not only does it make the existence of life in space that much easier, but it can also be broken down into the perfect rocket fuels: hydrogen and oxygen.

The more Planetary Resources starts a gold rush, the more important water in space becomes. No wonder the company is already talking about building a chain of orbital and space-bound refueling stations. Ice from asteroids and comets could be the next oil industry.

 

[Moonbeam]

Imagine when we encase the sun in a sphere of solar cells.

 

[Paratus]

Imagine when we encase the sun in a sphere of solar cells.

The good old Dyson Sphere. We'd have break up a couple of planets to do that however.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

The good old Dyson Sphere. We'd have break up a couple of planets to do that however.

Next up to develop - von neumann machines. Send some off to Barnard's star and make Ringworld.

 

[Moonbeam]

Next up to develop - von neumann machines. Send some off to Barnard's star and make Ringworld.

Do you remember how many earth surfaces that is or the rotational velocity to produce 1G? Don't remember how wide the ring was either, but talk about a lot of land or ocean surface. What a hike it would be to try to see everything on foot. I can't help but think if there were only women there and it was up to me to ...... well you know.

 

[werepossum]

Do you remember how many earth surfaces that is or the rotational velocity to produce 1G? Don't remember how wide the ring was either, but talk about a lot of land or ocean surface. What a hike it would be to try to see everything on foot. I can't help but think if there were only women there and it was up to me to ...... well you know.

LOL

 

[DrPizza]

Of course, there’s a catch. You couldn’t offload all those metals on the world market at once, for fear of crashing their prices. But the company would still own that much in equity, which would allow them to borrow against it. They would be that wealthy, to all intents and purposes. That’s just how capitalism works.

I hereby declare that http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3492919.stm this 4000km diameter diamond is mine. Now, will someone please give me a one trillion dollar low interest loan?
Now, I'd like to borrow

 

[ichy]

The cost of launching things into space is actually one of the big reasons to develop the mining of asteroids. If we can get the majority of metal, water, and other materials either directly from asteroids or manufacture them in "space factories" from the raw materials in space already plus whatever we need form earth it becomes much much cheaper to do big things in space. You then just have the cost of ferrying people and small amounts of supplies into space.

Then you just have that "minor" challenge of making space factories.

 

[yllus]

I hereby declare that http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3492919.stm this 4000km diameter diamond is mine. Now, will someone please give me a one trillion dollar low interest loan?
Now, I'd like to borrow

Haha. Actually the one thing that seems to be missing in the articles I've read is how possession is declared. My assumption was these corporations mean to divert these asteroids to crash into the ocean somewhere where they'll retrieve it and tugboat it somewhere. And I've now found an article that explains that, too...

Forbes - How Billionaire Asteroid Miners Make Money -- Without Mining Asteroids

How To Mine An Asteroid

When I wrote about Planetary Resources’ press conference earlier this week, the primary point that frustrated me is that the company provided few details about how they actually intended to extract resources from asteroids and return them to Earth. As it turns out, part of that reason is because they’re still very much in development.

“The short answer is that it will take prospecting and in situ spacecraft to determining the most effective way to extract those resources,” said Lewicki.

Not that they don’t have any idea how to proceed – as Lewicki points out, people have been thinking about this problem for decades, and there are some “attractive techniques,” such as using the heat and cold differential where the sun hits the surface of the asteroid to provide the energy needed to extract resources.

“The devil is in the details,” said Lewicki. “But at this stage, we’re not going to worry about it. We’re confident that we can work out the specifics, and recognize that there’s already a lot of research in this area. Our focus as a company is to develop low-cost solutions for the spacecraft we’ll need to determine how best to mine asteroids. While we’re doing that, we’re also focused on building a sustainable business.”

So it might not be as bad as a system of, "Called it!" You'd have to at least plant a robotic leg on the surface of said asteroid to claim it?

 

[William Gaatjes]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577356190967904210.html

I hope James Cameron finds a better plot on an asteroid for his next movie.
:sneaky:
Jokes aside ,this is very interesting,although i don`t see how can one mine asteroids,unless taking the factory with them is an option.

More details

And would they actually start, it would really be a plot for another alien invasion movie. But this time the last one... IMHO Asteroids and meteorites are birth places of life. Bursts of energetic radiation and a lot of the right elements...

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Do you remember how many earth surfaces that is or the rotational velocity to produce 1G? Don't remember how wide the ring was either, but talk about a lot of land or ocean surface. What a hike it would be to try to see everything on foot. I can't help but think if there were only women there and it was up to me to ...... well you know.

I didn't google so I might be off smidgen, but I have the outside rotational velocity at 773 kps (maybe mps) or something very much like that. The inhabitable surface was millions or billions that of our entire planet.

Being made of Unobtanium it had impossible physical properties, but I think something smaller (a mere several hundred thousand earth size ring could be technologically feasable in a few hundred years, maybe considerably sooner.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Btw, my budding scientist son is quite interested in exotic material science. I told him that if he invented a single chain strand like in the "Known Space" series he should name it Sinclair monofilament.

 

[DigDog]

srsly mining on asteroids is the second most unlikely thing i'v heard this week;

asteroids don't stand still. mining equipment doesn't fly on its own. mining equipment doesn't operate itself. asteroid material composition is relatively unknown until you actually land on it. asteroids are all pretty much darn far from Texas.

in the best case scenario, you find an asteroid made mostly of precious stuff (it can't be diamonds, as that would make the price plummet, causing a flash sale of all the way-too-many diamonds stored on earth but not in commerce [for the very same reason] making the price even lower), launch a number of rockets all carrying massive loads of machinery, habitat resources, crew, to a yet unbuilt space station where the whole shebang is assembled in a form which can travel the *who knows how many* years before it actually gets to said asteroid, whereas the rig is assembled and the - probably paid in gold, diamonds, supermodels and cocaine-producing plots of land - unconcievably well trained crew of scientist/miner/astronauts procedes to assemble the rig, mine the asteroid, then load the cargo, plot the return to the base where a newly assembled mass cannon shoots the payloads back into the stratosphere causing massive damage to it and the environment (unless LOL you plan to actually fly a shuttle up ..and back down .. for every load).

very realistic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InnerSolarSystem-en.png

incoming: quote madness

The cost of launching things into space is actually one of the big reasons to develop the mining of asteroids. If we can get the majority of metal, water, and other materials either directly from asteroids or manufacture them in "space factories" from the raw materials in space already plus whatever we need form earth it becomes much much cheaper to do big things in space. You then just have the cost of ferrying people and small amounts of supplies into space.

This whole idea was even mentioned by some of the people involved in this project, they said the first thing they plan to mine is water/ice from asteroids because it currently costs $50k a pound to launch it into space...

As of today, April 2, 2010, gold is $1,118.45 per troy ounce. One pound of gold is worth $16,310.37 today.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_is_gold_per_pound#ixzz1tIOYXxZS

returning materials from space isn't cheap either. you can't just dump stuff from above and expect everything to go well. going there, getting the stuff, isn't *that* hard; it's mostly that we don't have the mindset as a population of doing that, but when you have people willing to spend 15 years in space to go get their boss a big chunk of gold back to earth, everything is easier.

the problem is actually returning the stuff inside the atmosphere. even with high altitude balloons, nanocable, space elevators (all technologies we have actually ZERO idea on how to implement), the costs and logistics involved make it economically non-viable to practice any form of space mining, until we will have need for stuff which simply doesn't exist on earth, like metallic hydrogen - and prolly chances are that by the time we'll need it, we'll know how to manufacture it here on earth.

 

[blankslate]

The gold traders coalition will prevent that from happening because of the mass quantities of gold in the asteroid belt

 

[Rebel44]

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Hmmm - I have what I think is a novel thought.

In addition to the obvious reasons for doing this, demonstration of the ability to do this also could lead to a way to protect the Earth from other comets/asteroids. Providing we continue to pay for funding to keep scanning space for "things" that could impact the Earth and screw things up for us, a possible method to divert such a thing (provided we have a LOT of advance notice) would be to maneuver one of these huge chunks of iron floating around in space, and put it on a collision course trajectory with something that would otherwise be on a collision course with Earth.

There are numerous reasons why pursuing this is a great idea. However, at present time, I cannot fathom how it could be commercially successful.

Which, should Apophis end up putting us in the crosshairs after all, will be a technology of inestimable worth, in a couple of decades.