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There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining
- zaszrespawned 10y agoNearly all the space sims - elite, eve, sc have mining as main feature. Appeals to the capitalism inside everyone :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zdkl 10y agoWild tangent about eve online: it's adopting a free tier on nov. 15! (Join usss) I guess we're all fascinated by extracting riches from 'the next frontier', for our epoch that's space and I can't wait to see real implementations of this dream of belt mining!
- prodmerc 10y agoI've grown tired of getting killed by some vastly superior player every time I undock. Otherwise, pretty good game.
- zdkl 10y agoYou need to team up! SOlo play is unfortunately not very interesting at first. Try to find some friendlies to fly with until you're confident enough to strike out on your own.
- kashkhan 10y agohow much platinum is there in the earth's core? $ 100 million per ounce is hardly grounds for a gold rush to the asteroid belt.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoThe Platinum in the Earth's core is not accessible, not even a little bit, not even with orders of magnitude improvements in technology.
- idlewords 10y agoNot with that kind of attitude!
- pitaj 10y agoThe platinum in the Earth's core and lower crust is inaccessible. The pressures and temperatures down there are much too high. Compare that to a cold, light asteroid, and you'll see the big picture.
- moneytide1 10y agoThis will only be profitable at precise times of the year - depending on what prospected material is needed for that time next year when it's had time to wait till the closest location of the parent planet after its had time to mine in that gravity well and slung back when the parent planet has circled around.
- wyager 10y agoNo, you could bring the asteroid into an earth orbit. You can ship down some of the expensive metals to cover your cost right away, but leave the bulk materials in HEO for spaceship construction. The easiest way to do this is to find an ice-rich asteroid and use a nuclear-thermal engine to vaporize the ice for propellant.
- manicdee 10y agoOrbit is much more expensive than reentry and landing (thanks to our atmosphere). Crash the asteroid into a convenient desert or shallow ocean, then continue with more conventional mining techniques.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoThat sounds a bit dramatic. How big would an asteroid need to be for the economics of bringing it to the surface of Earth to make sense. That meteor that lit up the sky in Chelyabinsk was estimated to be 20m in diameter and weigh around 13,000 tones[1], it exploded in the atmosphere releasing the energy of 500 kilotons of TNT (about 1.8 PJ), about 29 times the energy released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.[1] Not sure I'd want to be on the planet when you crash your asteroid into a convenient desert or shallow ocean. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
- jiltedfrog 10y agoYou could make Soyuz sized chunks, strap them with mechanisms that deploy parachutes as it enters earths atmosphere. It wont burn up like a meteor that way.
- gina650 10y agoJust had a meeting with this billionaire & pretty sure his goal is to be a trillionaire. https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/billionaire-breaking-into-trillion-dollar-space-market-gains-faa-approval-on-tomorrows-tech-podcast https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/billionaire-breaking-i...
- antishatter 10y agoBut where are we going to find a rag team of drillers that we can train to be astronauts to go mine in outer space?
- kcorbitt 10y ago> NASA estimates this belt to hold $700 quintillion of bounty. That’s about $100 billion for each person on Earth. Something this article doesn't say is whether that's the economic value that would be unlocked by bringing all that stuff back to earth, or just a naive calculation of (total quantity of rare earth metals in astroid belt) x (current spot price for said metals). Given the astronomical (ha) value listed, I'd assume the later. But of course, no one could expect the price of anything to remain stable when you're dumping orders of magnitude greater quantities of it onto the market, so a more realistic analysis of the actual economic opportunity would be helpful.
- BWStearns 10y agoRealistically I think the result would be a more civil version of the diamond market. Since there are only a couple players who could bring back anything you would just park your supply in orbit and bring it down when it was profitable. You'd still lower the prices but how much you brought home would be ceilinged by the total market demand. You'd probably bankrupt literally every terrestrial mining operation which wouldn't be the worst from an environmental and quality of life standpoint.
- ant6n 10y agoCost probably would depend on the 'moat', i.e. how easy is it for another player to enter the market. On the other hand, we may get a kind of OPEC of asteroid miners.
- stale2002 10y agoThe problem with cartels like this is that all it takes is a single person to break to cartel, for the whole thing to come crashing down. Someone might even do it as a charity operation.
- xenobioticants 10y agoConsidering that bringing the resources to Earth would still require landing rights, I'd imagine such a cartel would be easy to break by the world's governments.
- shmerl 10y ago> That’s because the value of many asteroids are measured in the quintillions of dollars Doesn't abundance of certain material make it cheaper? So the value isn't necessarily linearly dependent on the amount. Reminds me "The Laxian Key" by Robert Sheckley[1] (read it, if you haven't yet). [1]. https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-11/Galaxy_1954_11#page/n30/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-11/Galaxy_195...
- wyager 10y agoEven after completely saturating the market, a large asteroid would easily fetch tens of trillions over the next hundred years. The first person to bring in a large metal- and ice-rich asteroid would dominate the space production market for decades to come.
- BurningFrog 10y agoDepends on when the second person brings in a similar rock.
- gizmo686 10y agoDoes it? By "bring in", I assume we are talking about placing into a convenient orbit, because I do not see a reasonable way to bring a large asteroid down to the surface in the forseable future. However, my (non laywer) understanding of space law is that it is prohibited (by treaty) to own celestial objects. You can own samples you minded from them, but not the objects themselves. If this understanding is correct, it means that after you park the asteroid in orbit, you are allowed to mine it, and sell the ore. However, so is everyone else; despite the fact that you invested the money in moving the asteroid.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoLaw is a high-latency side-chain of authority. When / if we get to mining asteroids, and generally inhabiting space, either personally or via robots, treaties / laws will be remapped to match the reality of the times.
- psranga 10y agoIs it possible that mining activity could accidentally change the orbits of one of these asteroids enough to send it crashing into earth eventually (in a few decades)?
- ctrl-j 10y agoTechnically yes. But really, no. Technically a pigeon in New York could deuce one out mid-flight, and it could catch an updraft and wind up landing on my car in Seattle. Will it ever happen? Those odds are probably better than a rogue asteroid set loose from mining hitting the earth.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoBy comparison, there's $956 quintillion of platinum in the earth's crust, and similar amounts of other precious metals. 5 ug/kg (incidence of platinum in crust) x 6x10^24 kg (crust size) x 32 USD/g (price of platinum) Asteroid mining is crazy silly. We're not supply limited for any element on earth, we're demand limited. If the price of platinum rose substantially, so would supply. It doesn't matter how much of anything is available in space, the only thing that matters is cost. Can it be extracted and brought back to earth for a cost less than the current price on earth? AFAICT, we're not even close to that for anything.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoAdditionally, the production cost of most rare metals is very highly correlated with the cost of energy. It seems likely that space mining may have to compete with metals produced at a price an order of magnitude cheaper than the current price because cheap solar energy appears to be coming.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoSolar power is going to be way, way cheaper in space than even the most optimistic ground-based solar technologies. For instance, it'd be practical to build a multi-kilometer diameter mirror out of thin plastic, and just melt the entire asteroid and distill off what you wanted. To expand a bit: a mirror for a solar furnace on Earth has to be strong enough to hold itself up against the force of gravity and handle wind and precipitation loading. A mirror in space doesn't. It can be one molecule of plastic thick, with a few atoms of thickness of aluminum as a coating. Plus you don't have to worry about cleaning off dust, bird poop, and whatnot. You're going to need some station-keeping so a large, flimsy mirror doesn't drift with the solar wind, but even the purest asteroid is going to have some slag that will make dandy propellant.
- zdkl 10y agoThere's much less high speed objects to puncture the mirror on earth. I think the environment up there is more hostile than you describe
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 10y agoThe comments on the article by Tom Billings are far more interesting than the article itself was.
- mooreds 10y agoDid a bit of research on Tom and seems like he knows his stuff. Thanks for the pointer, otherwise I wouldn't have checked out the comments section.
- BuffaloBagel 10y agoReminds me of the Monty Python skit with the price of crotchless panties skyrocketing on Jupiter. It's all about supply and demand.
- akhatri_aus 10y agoThe next type of pollution: gravitational pollution. Increasing the earth's gravity.
- pitaj 10y agoWhat do you mean? The earth is venting about 50,000 metric tons of mass per year. The addition of rare materials from space probably wouldn't match that. That's not even considering that the vast majority of materials would be used for space travel itself.
- andrewflnr 10y agoUm, what? If you're thinking about volcanism, I'm pretty sure none of that escapes earth. It doesn't change our total mass.
- neltnerb 10y agoFor comparison, human CO2 emissions are 10 billion metric tons per year. 50,000 tons is such a small amount that they're probably just referencing helium and other gases escaping the atmosphere.
- a-b 10y agoI was always curious if it is possible to land few water ice based comets on the Mars while no one lives there.
- WalterBright 10y agoWhat space mining is good for is having construction materials for space ships that don't have to be boosted up out of Earth's gravity well.
- idlewords 10y agoThere's always money in the banana stand.
- jiltedfrog 10y agoOr maybe strap rockets to the asteroid and safely drop it in a shallow part of the Ocean, where you can retrieve it at convenience. First you have to break it into smaller pieces, a regulated implosion or something. Then strapping rockets to it, so you can control its motion in three axes (three rockets, maybe) and remotely guide it to earth. 3/4 ocean is hard to miss.
- Lerc 10y agoThe conclusion is broadly correct. There _is_ a lot of money to be made in asteroid mining. The reasoning is completely ridiculous. Imagine giving everyone on the planet a 1000kg ball of gold. It would make it pointless to trade and be a pain to have around, You'd pay people to take it away and dump it. Asteroid mining _will_ be a massive provider of resources in the future. Industries that use those resources will pay for them. I imagine some truly awesomely huge structures will be manufactured in space in the further future with the vast resources available. There will be an interesting adjustment to the valuation of metals once the industry develops. The metals most used will drop to around the cost of collecting them (plus some profit for the miners). Metals that have less use than their relative abundance within the asteroids being mined are effectively a waste product where supply would exceed demand. Gold is probably in that category. It's useful for things, but not _that_ useful. So I wouldn't invest in Gold long term. That might be quite a long term though.
- beautifulfreak 10y agoIt would be only slightly more valuable than asphalt once we pave the streets with gold.
- xenobioticants 10y agoWhat I've never understood about this: the Outer Space Treaty says "The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all the States. The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet.[3] Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means"." This basically means that no one can lay claim to stuff in space. But say there is an extremely valuable metal floating around, and company A wants to mine it. They arrive and start to mine it. Now, company B arrives a year later and also wants to mine it but company A is in the way. According to the treaty, company A can't claim the resource so they can't tell company B to go away, and company B can't tell company A to get out of the way. How does this get resolved?
- gpvos 10y agoNo nation can lay claim to stuff in space. But that does not rule out that companies can, and I guess disputes between them will need to be resolved by international law?
- xenobioticants 10y agoThat automatically means no company can lay claim to stuff in space. When you read that Denmark, Russia, Norway etc. are laying claim to the North Pole (and more importantly, the oil underneath it), it pretty much means they are laying claim so they can offer the drilling rights to company X. However, since no one 'owns' space, it is impossible to grant rights. This does not mean that everyone can randomly lay claim to stuff in space, it means no one can. Although since no one can really effectively enforce the 'no-claim' part, there's no one to stop companies from doing so. It'll get extremely interesting when a company of country A returns an extremely rare very useful element. Country A will of course lay claim to it, but according to the Outer Space Treaty all space exploration is done 'for the benefit of mankind', so other countries would be able to claim this extremely rare element (or its benefits) must be shared. That'd be hell of an interesting international law case.
- tim333 10y agoIt's not economic now but come the singularity we can send the robots up there to get gold diamonds for our palaces. Or something like that.