5 ms·

Sorry if this is remotely tangentially related, but wasn't there a startup many years ago backed by silicon valley bigwigs with the mission to mine asteroids fo

by kanobo 6y ago

Sorry if this is remotely tangentially related, but wasn't there a startup many years ago backed by silicon valley bigwigs with the mission to mine asteroids for gold and diamonds? Or did I see that in a movie?

d_silin 6y ago
Yes, Planetary Resources. I remember the announcement. They folded - asteroid mining is too much of challenge even now.
- kanobo 6y ago
  Yes, that's the one - thank you! I could not remember anything until seeing that name.
- cinntaile 6y ago
  Their website used to show what kind of skills they were looking for when you applied for a job there [0], I thought it was pretty interesting at the time because of how broad the skill set they were looking for was. So I saved it. [0] https://pastebin.com/5fGaPZ4H https://pastebin.com/5fGaPZ4H
kanox 6y ago
Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources ? Several similar companies were founded but really the business model is very far from being realistic. Asteroid are very difficult to reach and automated mining is even harder, plus mineral resources on earth are not even actually that scarce. This is a very silly article, the interesting investment in space right now is in LEO communication satellites and to a lesser extent in launch services.
54351623 6y ago
Probably Planetary Resources, this has been talked about for years. Several companies were looking at doing it but the time lines are always like 30 years out or something. Here's and article from 2015 talking about it https://www.space.com/30213-asteroid-mining-planetary-resources-2025.html https://www.space.com/30213-asteroid-mining-planetary-resour... The Colorado School of Mines even has a graduate program in it. https://space.mines.edu/ https://space.mines.edu/
csunbird 6y ago
Using nuclear options to transform ordinary metals to gold should be less pricier than running a gold mining operation on an asteroid flying by, I think. Do we have anyone as an expert on any of those options?
- 54351623 6y ago
  Not an expert but here is an article on turning lead into gold. Spoiler it's radioactive. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...
  - chii 6y ago
    For the energy cost, you might as well mine bitcoin instead of trying to make gold via nuclear reactions.
  - avian 6y ago
    Cost is more of a spoiler than radioactivity. At "one quadrillion dollars per ounce" you might as well do isotope separation and only collect stable gold 197. The additional cost of the separation would probably be just a rounding error in the whole thing.
- adrianN 6y ago
  The real value proposition of asteroid mining is the ability to source heavy things (metals, ice) from outside the gravity well, so that you don't have to lift them up. Manufacturing things is space is a pretty important thing in the tech skill-tree.
  - antupis 6y ago
    Yeah this space tourism needs infrastructure and shipping stuff from earth is expensive. So mining water and fertilizers(phosphorous) might be profitable surprising fast.
- garmaine 6y ago
teruakohatu 6y ago
Gold and diamonds are common enough on earth, we have as much as we need for industry. Articles often talk about rare-earth minerals but don't specify exactly what is desperately needed that can't be found or made on earth cheaper.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  There are a ton of industrial applications for which gold or silver would be extremely suitable but are too expensive. Gold has better electrical conductivity than copper at surfaces due to corrosion resistance, and silver has better thermal and electrical conductivity in bulk, so in almost every industrial use of bulk copper it's being used as a cost-compromise over gold-plated silver.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- menybuvico 6y ago
  It's partly a geopolitical thing. Chinese businesses control over 80% of the rare-earths market. Then there's pollution and the constant talk about exploitation of child workers in mines. You won't get pollution on Earth if a robot mines the stuff in deep space, a rocket brings it to lunar orbit where a commodity is manufactured, and then brought back to Earth for consumption.
- gibolt 6y ago
  Technological leaps happen when something new or uncommon becomes widely available. How many cost prohibitive applications become possible when the cost of any available raw mineral drops by at least one order of magnitude?
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    This is a non-sequitur - there's absolutely no expectation that space mining would result in the cost of any available raw mineral dropping by at least one order of magnitude; it's not a solution for "cheap mass mining" solution, it's a solution for very expensive targeted mining of something that we need very much. The parent post argument is that we can get as much gold as we need on earth with techniques that aren't used because they're too expensive, but even those would still be far cheaper than space mining. Space mining can be solution to prevent the price of some rare earth material skyrocketing in the future because we're running out of it, or to get something that's very rare and expensive (it's just that nobody has a clear proposal on what it's going to be) but at the moment gold is too common and cheap to justify the expense of mining it in space. At current costs it would be a waste of money to pick up gold bars orbiting Earth; after (if!) SpaceX Starship cuts down cost of bulk transfers to orbit ten times, then it may become economic to bring down certain exceptional cases of highly concentrated rare materials - but it certainly will not be cheaper than the price of any raw minerals that exist on Earth in reasonable quantities, such as gold ore (alluvium ores, which aren't that valuable by weight due to low concentration in gold)
garmaine 6y ago
Planetary Resources. They’ve now pivoted into an ethereum-based blockchain startup. No joke. (They were Washington State based, not Silicon Valley, however.)

by kanobo 6y ago

d_silin 6y ago

Yes, Planetary Resources. I remember the announcement. They folded - asteroid mining is too much of challenge even now.

kanobo 6y ago
Yes, that's the one - thank you! I could not remember anything until seeing that name.
cinntaile 6y ago
Their website used to show what kind of skills they were looking for when you applied for a job there [0], I thought it was pretty interesting at the time because of how broad the skill set they were looking for was. So I saved it. [0] https://pastebin.com/5fGaPZ4H https://pastebin.com/5fGaPZ4H

kanox 6y ago

Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources ? Several similar companies were founded but really the business model is very far from being realistic. Asteroid are very difficult to reach and automated mining is even harder, plus mineral resources on earth are not even actually that scarce. This is a very silly article, the interesting investment in space right now is in LEO communication satellites and to a lesser extent in launch services.

54351623 6y ago

Probably Planetary Resources, this has been talked about for years. Several companies were looking at doing it but the time lines are always like 30 years out or something. Here's and article from 2015 talking about it https://www.space.com/30213-asteroid-mining-planetary-resources-2025.html https://www.space.com/30213-asteroid-mining-planetary-resour... The Colorado School of Mines even has a graduate program in it. https://space.mines.edu/ https://space.mines.edu/

csunbird 6y ago

Using nuclear options to transform ordinary metals to gold should be less pricier than running a gold mining operation on an asteroid flying by, I think. Do we have anyone as an expert on any of those options?

54351623 6y ago
Not an expert but here is an article on turning lead into gold. Spoiler it's radioactive. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...
- chii 6y ago
  For the energy cost, you might as well mine bitcoin instead of trying to make gold via nuclear reactions.
- avian 6y ago
  Cost is more of a spoiler than radioactivity. At "one quadrillion dollars per ounce" you might as well do isotope separation and only collect stable gold 197. The additional cost of the separation would probably be just a rounding error in the whole thing.
adrianN 6y ago
The real value proposition of asteroid mining is the ability to source heavy things (metals, ice) from outside the gravity well, so that you don't have to lift them up. Manufacturing things is space is a pretty important thing in the tech skill-tree.
- antupis 6y ago
  Yeah this space tourism needs infrastructure and shipping stuff from earth is expensive. So mining water and fertilizers(phosphorous) might be profitable surprising fast.
garmaine 6y ago

teruakohatu 6y ago

Gold and diamonds are common enough on earth, we have as much as we need for industry. Articles often talk about rare-earth minerals but don't specify exactly what is desperately needed that can't be found or made on earth cheaper.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
There are a ton of industrial applications for which gold or silver would be extremely suitable but are too expensive. Gold has better electrical conductivity than copper at surfaces due to corrosion resistance, and silver has better thermal and electrical conductivity in bulk, so in almost every industrial use of bulk copper it's being used as a cost-compromise over gold-plated silver.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
menybuvico 6y ago
It's partly a geopolitical thing. Chinese businesses control over 80% of the rare-earths market. Then there's pollution and the constant talk about exploitation of child workers in mines. You won't get pollution on Earth if a robot mines the stuff in deep space, a rocket brings it to lunar orbit where a commodity is manufactured, and then brought back to Earth for consumption.
gibolt 6y ago
Technological leaps happen when something new or uncommon becomes widely available. How many cost prohibitive applications become possible when the cost of any available raw mineral drops by at least one order of magnitude?
- PeterisP 6y ago
  This is a non-sequitur - there's absolutely no expectation that space mining would result in the cost of any available raw mineral dropping by at least one order of magnitude; it's not a solution for "cheap mass mining" solution, it's a solution for very expensive targeted mining of something that we need very much. The parent post argument is that we can get as much gold as we need on earth with techniques that aren't used because they're too expensive, but even those would still be far cheaper than space mining. Space mining can be solution to prevent the price of some rare earth material skyrocketing in the future because we're running out of it, or to get something that's very rare and expensive (it's just that nobody has a clear proposal on what it's going to be) but at the moment gold is too common and cheap to justify the expense of mining it in space. At current costs it would be a waste of money to pick up gold bars orbiting Earth; after (if!) SpaceX Starship cuts down cost of bulk transfers to orbit ten times, then it may become economic to bring down certain exceptional cases of highly concentrated rare materials - but it certainly will not be cheaper than the price of any raw minerals that exist on Earth in reasonable quantities, such as gold ore (alluvium ores, which aren't that valuable by weight due to low concentration in gold)

garmaine 6y ago

Planetary Resources. They’ve now pivoted into an ethereum-based blockchain startup. No joke. (They were Washington State based, not Silicon Valley, however.)