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An average half-kilometer S-type asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion.
- sanj 17y agoI suspect that flooding the market with those metals would depress the price of those commodities significantly.
- aberman 17y agoFortunately, if you depress the price of a 20 Trillion dollar asset, you're still in pretty good shape ;)
- mynameishere 17y agoYeah, the same bit of ignorance bothered me about alchemists: The only purpose alchemy could serve would be turning gold into lead, with respect to the marketplace.
- dantheman 17y agoThe trick is that you own the process, so you can buy up everything before people realize gold is worthless.
- noonespecial 17y agoIts not really about that. The point is that the wealth of a single small planet is insignificant compared to the wealth of even the extra bits floating around our solar system. What could we build if titanium was free (or very close)? What would our houses and cars look like if there was a limitless supply of aluminum? A vital step to us getting off this planet in a meaningful way is sending robots out to gather resources, both to build the ships we'll need outside of our gravity well and to return some of that abundance to the surface so we can alleviate our scarcities here.
- tjic 17y ago> What would our houses and cars look like if there was a limitless supply of aluminum? There IS a limitless supply of aluminum. The top kilometer of crust all over the earth is stunningly rich in aluminum. It's just that PROCESSING it takes energy. ...just like processing an asteroid. Dirt, though, has the added advantage of already being HERE.
- noonespecial 17y agoThere's "plenty" of titanium here too, most of its just in the form of titanium dioxide which happens to be very hard to turn back into the good stuff. (But its fantastic for making paint..) As I recall, the allure with metals in asteroids that they are "hunks of cut up planets". Instead of digging and processing, you just scrape the good stuff off the surface and (being in deep space and all) its not oxidized or otherwise contaminated like it is when found on earth. You build your kickass starship out of it right then and there or encapsulate it in some heat shielding and drop it in the nearest ocean for retrieval. A great many people who bought a bunch of gold as a hedge against inflation might be disappointed though...
- prewett 17y agoI suspect the metals are oxidized on the asteroids, too. If aluminum takes so much energy to liberate from the oxygen, it must really like to combine with oxygen. I'd guess there was a fair amount of oxygen floating around with the aluminum before it clumped together into asteroids, even if there isn't now.
- noonespecial 17y agoAsteroidal resources are unique and diverse. In general, they are different from the dirt beneath our feet and the ores that we mine from our planet's crust. Likewise, they are much different than the Moon, Mars, and other planets' crusts. Asteroids are much more metal-rich, like the core of the Earth, Moon, Mars and any other planet, and unlike their crusts. The asteroids are normally not as enriched in oxides, silicates, and the other lighterweight elements that floated up to dominate a planetary crust. Many asteroids are like a mixture of a planetary metal core plus a crust plus the mantle in between. Some are entirely like a core or a mantle or a crust, having come from a large parent body which was broken up. In most asteroids, free metal is abundant in the mix, and often dominant. This free metal can be used without any further industrial processing. http://www.permanent.com/a-overvw.htm http://www.permanent.com/a-overvw.htm
- sown 17y agoWe'll figure out something to do with it. :) But yeah, to consume that much materials would take entire worlds, colonized.
- ryanhuff 17y agoPerhaps Nasa can become a profit center. :-P
- rmorrison 17y agoDoes the gov't even have any profit centers outside the IRS?
- dfranke 17y agoGraft.
- camccann 17y agoThe Postal Service and the Patent and Trademark office have had net positive cash flow some years. Not for the last few years though, I think.
- xenophanes 17y agoThe post office couldn't make a profit if it didn't have laws supporting it. They have terrible customer service, take sundays off, various other problems, UPS and Fed Ex would destroy them. Of course the Patent and Trademark office is law supported too.
- tierack 17y agoPerhaps FexEx and UPS could "destroy" the USPS if they didn't have to worry about guaranteeing relatively quick delivery for envelopes from Kirby, WY to Boone, TN for the same inexpensive price as deliveries within a few blocks. The USPS may have laws supporting it, but don't we have expectations of it that far exceed whatever private business could hope to accomplish for profit? (And, naively, aren't there many private businesses that couldn't make a profit without laws supporting them?)
- randallsquared 17y agoaren't there many private businesses that couldn't make a profit without laws supporting them? In a sense, no, by definition.
- 27182818284 17y agoIf you haven't read _Entering Space_ I highly recommend that you do. Published in 1999, it was my first introduction to the basic economics and technology required for asteroid mining. It not only that, but also many other topics from possible Lagrange point space stations to Helium 3 fusion. As a bonus, it is old enough that your local library probably has it for you to check out with no reservations.
- MikeCapone 17y ago> As a bonus, it is old enough that your local library probably has it for you to check out with no reservations. Unless other HN readers are in the same city :)
- ggrot 17y ago"Moore's Law has given us exponential growth in computing technology, which has led to exponential growth in nearly every other technological industry." This is very untrue.
- idlewords 17y ago(minus shipping and handling)
- holdenc 17y agoThis article seems a little overly optimistic on the logistics problems of exploiting asteroids. It even compares them to Alaska.
- amohr 17y agoAnd where does one apply for the position of Space Adventurer? I want in.
- tjic 17y agoAs much as I'm a fan of space exploration, it's a bit silly to say that an asteroid is worth $20 trillion. The ore in an asteroid, REFINED, is worth that much. It's a fair bit of work to move that ore from pt A to pt B, crush it, smelt it, refine it, anneal it, etc. A cubic kilometer of sea water is worth a similarly preposterous amount ... and yet, noone has become a trillionaire by refining sea water. It costs more to do it than the minerals are worth. Will it happen some day? Sure. Is it relevant today? No.
- jimmyjim 17y ago>First, private capital is seeing space as a good investment, willing to fund individuals who are passionate about exploring space, for adventure as well as profit. What was once affordable only by nations can now be lucrative, public-private partnerships. For the moment being, that sounds specious at best. We (the US) are not able to get back to the moon because of a lack of funds (NASA accounted for some 5% of the entire federal budget in 1966, now it's down to .5%); any amount of funding by private entities for such tasks is minuscule in comparison, and therefore obviously insufficient. But I suppose that'll change in interesting ways with time.
- NathanKP 17y agoI doubt that earth has the resources to serve as a processing facility for space asteroids. Even if we get metals from asteroids we would still have to smelt and refine them on Earth, which is a polluting and resource demanding process.
- brennannovak 17y agoThank you, finally one person who comments on the environmental aspect of this notion.
- qw 17y agoWould it not be possible to create a nuclear powered robotic installation on that asteroid as well? I guess the initial costs are high, but it would pay off in the long term (just move the factory once you are done, the low gravity requires little fuel)
- lutorm 17y agoIf you're only going to the asteroid belt, you can probably get away with photovoltaics instead of nuclear power, too. And yeah, it seems it would be better to do it in place. But if it's really quite pure metal, there's not much refining that would need to be done.
- JoeAltmaier 17y agoRefining almost-pure metals is fortunately NOT as polluting as refining ore. It may come to the point where it becomes illegal to refine anything BUT roid-metal.
- noarchy 17y agoDid any Eve Online players here see "20 trillion ISK" when they read the headline? ;)
- ksraines 17y agoUnfortunately this article overlooks the "startup" costs for developing and deploying the requisite technologies for harvesting the profits (which are significant enough to preclude privatization, IMO). And there is another more grievous oversight in the article which pertains to the sinister slight-of-hand on the administration's policy: they intend to slough off the cost of developing and deploying what portends to be mankind's greatest engineering feat, while planning to reap the profits: do you really think for one second that good old Uncle Sam will not find away to skim away a hefty share of these (potential) profits? do you think that such asteroids will be corporate or "social" property (read government)? Tying together one last point, does anyone really believe that this administration has a new found faith in the free markets - or is all of this pandering and innuendo just a red hearing to keep us from sobering up to the cold fact that the promising Constellation project was just killed?
- brennannovak 17y agoWOW, I guess no one on HN remotely thinks humans and the earth are facing any sort of environmental problems at the moment. All everyone here is talking about is the profit margins and logistics of pulling this preposterous, albeit very cool, idea off. I'm all for adventure, technology, progress, blah blah blah. I am thrilled about the possibilities of space. But realistically I think we as a species need to better undertand ourselves and create better; more sustainable systems on our native plannet before we embalance our natural habit and ecosystem on an intergalactic scale.
- anigbrowl 17y agointerplanetary
- ryanpetrich 17y ago♫ intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic ♫
- rglovejoy 17y agoInterplanet Janet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDre36ZW14I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDre36ZW14I
- olefoo 17y agoHere is something to think about, nearly everyone who's been intimately involved in supporting habitat in space has developed a deep and abiding respect for how difficult it is and how fragile and precious the biosphere we take for granted is. Our world is a small watery dot floating in the dark. We don't have a backup.
- jff 17y agoHippies can remain behind and hug redwoods in northern california. If you need me, I'll be digging asteroids out somewhere past Mars.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Devilboy 17y agoI think what might finally send us to the asteroid belt will be the military. If we are able to pick an appropriate sized asteroid and deflect it off it's course, the asteroid can easily be accelerated using Mars or Venus or the Sun. We can take it anywhere we feel like. We can destroy any target on earth - as small as a city or as large as you want. The energy needed to deflect the asteroid is minuscule compared to the kinetic energy you can exert on your target. The ultimate WMD.
- tcskeptic 17y agoIt is unfortunate that he uses the Alaska purchase as the benchmark for shrewd public investment as there is some thought that maybe it wasn't, see: http://bit.ly/d3WsHn http://bit.ly/d3WsHn The purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, ridiculed in 1867 as “Seward’s Folly,” is now viewed as a shrewd business deal. A purely financial analysis of the transaction, however, shows that the price was greater than the net present value of cash flow from Alaska to the federal government from 1867 to 2007.
- lrm242 17y agoIf this is interesting to folks, I highly recommend "Mining the Sky": http://www.amazon.com/Mining-Sky-Untold-Asteroids-Planets/dp/0201328194 http://www.amazon.com/Mining-Sky-Untold-Asteroids-Planets/dp....
- hammmatt 17y agoAn interesting article, but full of speculation. Many assumptions where made to produce the conclusions and the data (like an asteroid being worth 20 trillion). Yes, I agree with many of the predictions of the article. Like how private industry will take over the space exploration. But the opinion of the author and I is about as valuable as a crystal ball. If we are going to play the speculation game, here is what interests me about the subject. 1) Who would get the mining rights in space? Or would it be a 'gold rush?' If so, would it be like international waters with no laws? Could I achieve my childhood dream of being a space pirate? ;) 2) Most of the asteroids of our solar system take months to reach reach with our fastest ships. If you want a human presence we are talking YEARS. Humans on prolonged space flights are very, very tricky to take care of. That makes a strong case for only sending robots, and that would require some very wicked AI, since the transmission times for controls would be too great. Think about all the hazards and procedures the robot(s) would have to perform. Guidance, acquisition, positioning, detection of surroundings, plotting return course, AVOIDANCE, ext. And the hardware implications, the fuel, the power, capturing, ext. It would make a Mars rover look like an RC car. And the two mars rovers cost us approx. 820 million dollars. The cost of development may be justified by a 20 trillion dollar prize, but the cost to buy in is very high. If a corporation did want to fund it with billions of dollars without knowing if they were going to see a return, and willing to wait years for it. Then you have a winner, I don't see anyone jumping at the bit to take that risk though. 3) While asteroid mining seems like a great idea. Why are aren't we being more creative about the other things we can do in space? Where is the startup mentality? How about technicians that repair satellites in orbit? Great place to hone the programing for the asteroid gatherers.