10 ms·

Company backed by James Cameron & Google founders may mine asteroids

198 points by jen_h 15y ago

zipdog 15y ago
The Mars missions suggest we're close to having the tech to get robots onto asteroids, some of which might have a fuel source that can sustain an unmanned operation that launches minerals along trajectories back toward .. the moon perhaps. It seems infeasible to ferry the minerals back and forth, although the value of the minerals might be high enough to justify it. I wonder what the timeframe is for starting something? Space X has gone from start to regular orbital missions in 10 years and $800 million. Would it be so far-fetched to think of a 20 year timeframe for asteroid mining?
- cryptoz 15y ago
  The typical asteroid mining plan involves a multi-year approach where you send out large spaceships to slightly alter the orbit of the target asteroid. Without "much" effort, you can bring it to an orbit that passes closer to Earth by gravitationally tugging it, shortening the distance required do to the harvesting. The trip back is likely just hopping off the asteroid into a lower Earth orbit - not too tough.
drawkbox 15y ago
If true and feasible with technology soon... Cool for a couple of reasons: - Asteroid tracking... Resource companies will track nearly all asteroids within reach and help provide awareness of threats. - Robots! The technology advancement/innovation for bots and long range communications would be intense. - Space exploration will be a boon if resources are involved (as we all know every game is about asteroid mining in the future). - May bring back some sort of life form (It may end up taking over like Cloverfield then Cameron can later make a movie about it and Carmack the game). Possible problems: - We get really good at manipulating asteroids routes (some sort of harvesters that bring them closer to us to mine) and it becomes weaponized.
- bdunbar 15y ago
  Also cool - Replacing terrestrial mines with asteroid mines. - Bring an asteroid to L5. Mine. When done you have a place to live. and it becomes weaponized. Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon. We need to get used to this idea now.
  - pacaro 15y ago
    Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon Especially including the earth-bound minerals, is there a better way to get large heavy objects onto the surface of a planet that a "Kinetic Lance" (Peter F. Hamilton) or "Rod" (Neal Stephenson)?
    - bdunbar 15y ago
      This is a solved problem. Wrap your cargo in a capsule. Add parachutes.
      - Tuna-Fish 15y ago
        Most of the stuff that we land on planets is designed to be as light as possible. The proceeds from asteroid mining are going to be mighty heavy. I doubt manufacturing enough parachutes would make any sense. Then again, those aren't really necessary. Just build the goods to capsules that have aerodynamics and maximum mass so that they'll slow down to a reasonable terminal velocity in atmosphere, and there's no reason you cannot just drop them on some area with a solid enough ground. (And no inhabitants).
        jacques_chester 15y ago
        Peter F Hamilton addressed this in one of his novels; one of the Commonwealth Saga books I think. Essentially, his imagined industry uses solar energy to melt ores; these are then formed into a metallic foam and shaped into a stable aerodynamic shape (a sort of blunt wedge). They are then deorbited to land far out to sea. Because it's metallic foam, it has a high drag-to-weight ratio (hence lower terminal velocity) and it floats. Some of the ore is lost to ablation during re-entry, but ... so what? There's plenty more where it came from.
jboggan 15y ago
How about Cameron announcing a fleet of miniature mining robots running off a 16-bit processor? We can use 0x10c to crowdsource space exploration. But seriously, this would be a great development in human exploration. We finally might have a chance of surpassing the achievements of the Apollo program if we establish a viable economic reason for regularly journeying into space.
hristov 15y ago
Please try to post a link to the original article. It is more informative and rewards people that actually break the story. (Even if in this case the story is just a press release.) See below. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3859631 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3859631
- jen_h 15y ago
  I was originally going to link to the Mims memo, but I noticed that it had a few inaccuracies at the time of posting, so I opted for the Verge's recap - looks like the original's been updated (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27776/ http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27776/). (Very excited about this whole thing, btw. Have been hearing rumors around town about a bunch of MSL folks moving up north to work on something very cool...have been dying to find out what that something cool is.)
RandallBrown 15y ago
I kind of hope that people start dumping tons and tons of money into this kind of stuff. Right now, we don't need it, but I want us to be good at it when we do.
- angersock 15y ago
  The interesting thing to me is that, by the time we need it, we likely will not be able to do it. That's why it's important to take the long view.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
loverobots 15y ago
This is great. IMO the venture will fail (to mine asteroids) but will gain lots of knowledge while "failing." Great way for the mega-rich to make a mark, Paul Allen supported a lot of space projects too.
waterlesscloud 15y ago
There's nothing but speculation here. No one has actually announced asteroid mining, that's just someone's guess as to what the company may be about. Maybe it is, but there's no official announcement yet...
loarabia 15y ago
If this kind of thing interests you and you haven't read it yet, it might be worth reading "Mining the Sky" by John S. Lewis which goes into how this could in theory be done without enormous advancements in technology and what the value would be.
DanBC 15y ago
Rare earth minerals? I guess Google's feeling the pinch from Chinese supply blocking.
- Roboprog 15y ago
  Nah, we just need more unobtainium :-) (somebody had to say it) But seriously, whatever rare-earths we find there, nobody will complain about open pit mining. Like the old "Earth first" joke implies (... we'll strip mine the other planets later), it might be a good time to, well, start stripping potentially toxic chemicals from places we aren't trying to live in, since we pulled out much of the easy stuff here. (even if that's the opposite of the joke) Perhaps lithium is easier to find on the lighter "chondrite" (non nickel/iron) type asteroids?
  - Natsu 15y ago
    I'm not sure about that. There are a lot of issues to consider, like how you get the materials back to earth and how you avoid creating lots of debris that poses a hazard to other spacecraft. Those are probably solvable, but not very easy. And it's not unimaginable that we might not want to take some of the materials back to earth, but rather use them to construct things elsewhere. In other words, maybe Google really will build a moonbase someday. I just hope I live to see it.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      > and how you avoid creating lots of debris that poses a hazard to other spacecraft. Debris is a considerable hazard. NASA tracks about 21,000 items bigger than 10 cm. They estimate there are about 500,000 items between 10 cm and 1 cm. They estimate there are 100 million items smaller than 1 cm. These items are travelling at about 7 km per second. The average impact speed is about 10 km/s. (http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/ http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/)
trefn 15y ago
Ben Bova has a series of scifi novels in which asteroid mining plays an important role - check out his Grand Tour & the Sam Gunn books if you're interested in fictional accounts.
- Roboprog 15y ago
  I'm thinking of Larry Niven and Charles Sheffield, but I know I've probably left out many other authors as well (RAH, ...). Say hello to the Belters, I guess.
redthrowaway 15y ago
At some point, we're going to need a space elevator if we are to have any hope of doing this economically and at scale. We really don't have any good way to move the large amounts of mass an industrial asteroid mining operation would require between LEO and the surface at the moment.
- bdunbar 15y ago
  We really don't have any good way to move the large amounts of mass an industrial asteroid mining operation would require between LEO and the surface at the moment. Sure we do. Wrap the goods in a capsule. Make sure you aim it in the right direction. Apply energy. It's getting _off_ the ground that is the problem.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    I realize that my post is unclear, so I'll edit it. Yes, Earth -> LEO is by far the most challenging, but LEO -> Earth is far from free of pitfalls. Absent a space elevator, there seems to be no reasonable way to get the necessary components for a smelter to space, so any ore coming back would be coming back raw. Throwing bits of asteroid at the planet seems inefficient, to say the least.
    - Roboprog 15y ago
      The end game might be to send parts and robots to make the mining equipment itself on site. Rebellious human operators / colonists not required.
    - jessriedel 15y ago
      > Throwing bits of asteroid at the planet seems inefficient, to say the least. It might be inefficient in the sense that you lose much or even most of your materials during re-entry/collection, but (for all we know) it could still much more economical than mining here on earth. If you can bring gold back to earth at a price of $1k/kg, it's not going to matter that half (or even 90%) was destroyed in the process. I assume here that you'd look around for asteroids that were of a Goldilocks size: not too small so that a large fraction of the material survives re-entry, but not too large so that it creates a serious risk of destruction.
bradleyland 15y ago
I'm having a thought that I'm having a difficult time even stepping in to. So James Cameron, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt are starting a venture to mine asteroids. James Cameron recently dove to the deepest parts of the ocean in his own submersible. The launch of Elon Musk & SpaceX's Falcon 9 mission to the ISS is just around the corner. I know I've read about other famous people launching wildly ambitious projects, but I can't remember them at the moment. This is just mind blowing to me. These are endeavors normally left to nation states. There's something buried in here that I find fascinating. In the past, when these endeavors were carried out by nation states, all the baggage of bureaucracy was along for the ride. Fast forward to today, and you have individuals with the imagination and the means to dream big. It's possible to undertake something insane -- like mining asteroids -- on your own. I'm left thinking about the way that Steve Jobs ran Apple. I don't intend to steal credit from all the hard work of the people at Apple, but Steve Jobs ran Apple in a way that stands in contrast to many other companies. The fulcrum of decision making was remarkably focused on a single point: him. I don't know the end game for capitalism, but a lot of people believe that along the way to its downfall, there is a massive consolidation of wealth. The presumption is that these individuals will all be corrupt fat cats that enslave the masses. What if it's the opposite? What if the people who end up with the wealth do great things with it? It's kind of like a bunch of micro-sized benevolent dictatorships, but the dictator is naturally selected through capitalistic means: successful individuals gather the wealth required to reach this role in society.
- angersock 15y ago
  "This is just mind blowing to me. These are endeavors normally left to nation states. There's something buried in here that I find fascinating." One wonders if the rise of markets, global communication, etc., have rendered the nation state somewhat obsolete. In theory, we still depend on our governments for things like public works, for ensuring peace, for promoting justice, and protecting personal property. These are things that we believe corporations would be ill-suited for. And yet, in practice, at least in the United States and in the PIGS of Europe--we see that hey, holy shit, they've dropped the ball in a lot of cases. I'm willing to wager that we wouldn't be too much worse off with a different system. Note: I take this position not in support of our new corporate overlords, but out of the necessity born from the realities of our government. If our government actually helped the public, actually had a legal system that worked justly and fairly, and actually did Good, I'd shun the amorality of the free market. But it doesn't, so I can't.
OzzyB 15y ago
This guy, Phil Plait, gives an related talk about asteroids and how it's a really good idea to be thinking about them now, just in case one should come close to hitting us and making us all extinct. Plus, he's a great speaker with a healthy dose of wit: http://www.ted.com/talks/phil_plait_how_to_defend_earth_from_asteroids.html http://www.ted.com/talks/phil_plait_how_to_defend_earth_from...
wtvanhest 15y ago
My guess is that they will only intend to ship back the very expensive/weight minerials/metals and will leave in space materials with more weight but use in future missions. Once you establish materials in space, power plants in space, robots in space, it is a lot easier to move things further out. The end game to me is having separation between heavy materials in space and on earth and only transporting the lightest and most valuable between the two. (humans/gold/diamonds) etc.
- Retric 15y ago
  With current launch costs everything in LEO is worth about as much as gold per LB ~5-10k vs 20k. Thus in the short term mining water taking it to LEO and splitting it into Oxygen and Hydrogen for fuel tanks is probably a lot more profitable than shipping Gold / Platinum back to earth. PS: An ION drive tug boats to move stuff from LEO to geosynchronous orbit is IMO the most needed infrastructure to make space cheaper.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - wtvanhest 15y ago
    My point is that it is likely they will mine for other metals and materials overtime. As long as you can amass materials in space and keep it in geosynchronous orbit you can wait until future people get to space and can build spacecraft with them. To your point, water may be the best thing to mine but I wouldn't invest my time there specifically. I would get whatever material I could as easily as possible since I would not know what future missions/propulsion systems would be. Further, if you found an abundance of something with even a low energy/weight ratio or no known way to use it for energy it is entirely possible that someone on earth will figure it out, buy it from you and use it to travel. The cool thing is that whatever you get could be traded on some type of commodities/futures market with delivery in space which means you could theoretically sell it right after you mine it even if no one takes control or uses the material for 20 years. While the author assumes they will mine asteroids, I think it is just as likely they will build something to pick up and consolidate space junk. That will probably be the most profitable venture and has the dual property that it will prevent damage to other vehicles once pulled from orbit.
malay 15y ago
It would seem that a number of wealthy folks have an interest in space exploration. Musk has been mentioned, but Peter Thiel has also funded someone pursuing the idea of resource extraction from near Earth asteroids. Granted, it was for the 20 under 20 fellowship, so he is focused more on the research and design component, but nevertheless a fascinating area for wealthy people.
bane 15y ago
It's long been my thought that the value from mining asteroids will not be the return of the materials to Earth, but a vast reduction in the cost of putting stuff up in space. Imagine if all the shuttle ever had to do was ferry people and food cargo up/down while the ISS was built in space-sourced materiel. Suddenly the cost/kg for the ISS components becomes largely irrelevant and the total cost for similar projects drops to a fraction of what we paid (transport of people/food/(maybe fuel) + mining costs). Next step, start building the ships themselves in orbit and crew them from the growing population of space acclimated folk.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  This. Exactly. The potential profit value of doing asteroid mining, Moon mining, Mars mining, etc. is going to be much higher if the products are sold and used locally. The farther the material has to move, the delivery price goes up, and it becomes less attractive to buyers, and for less buyers. But set up a mining operation anywhere out of Earth's gravity well and orbit, and you call sell your stuff to, say, any colonies that are created on the Moon, Mars, or other asteroids. Plus the problem space of successfully and profitably doing mining and manufacturing off-Earth is really wide open right now, no competition, so huge potential long term profit upside for those willing to take the risk now and begin developing the capability.
- anusinha 15y ago
  Relatedly, there are powers in the pharmaceutical industry that would love to be able to carry out syntheses in space. The lack of an effective gravity force allows crystals to grow larger and this would be a useful property.
- pm90 15y ago
  Going up is costly, coming down isn't (as much). I'm no rocket scientist, but I guess it would still be possible to have large heat-resistant/disposable wrappers around a large gunk of asteroid rock and send it crashing into the ocean, or land by a simple parachute.
  - bane 15y ago
tomrod 15y ago
This is so exciting to me. The inner economist in me wants this to work so badly.
jbattle 15y ago
It's very exciting to think I could see asteroid mining in my life - but I have to wonder if it's solving the most crucial problem. Is earth really that strapped for metal? It seems to me that the energy used to return mass from the asteroid will quickly become far more valuable than whatever they bring back. Unless they are returning mostly stuff that is really rare on earth.
- archangel_one 15y ago
  One possible advantage to the energy situation is that if you have a space elevator or similar structure, bringing lumps of asteroid down it counterbalances bringing other things back up.
- smhinsey 15y ago
  To me, it's all about the composition of the asteroid that you choose to mine. In these early days, I think we'll probably be more focused on targets of opportunity, but once the technology base exists to be picky, if you could locate a body full of precious metals, say gold and platinum, it could easily dwarf the earthbound supply. I think the most interesting opportunities lie not with traditional methods of exploiting these materials, but with the methods we will discover once previously rare materials become abundant and cheap. Of course, devaluing gold to the point of aluminum is going to cause political upheaval and that will have to be dealt with, and while this conjures images of chaos and serious trouble, it doesn't seem like all that big of a deal compared to what will happen when a private entity starts talking about bringing a dinosaur-killer-sized body near the earth.
keenerd 15y ago
I really want to believe this is real. The cynic in me says that anything this outlandish is a fraud - something akin to Project Azorian and magnanese nodules[1]. The parallels are uncanny, but even as a cover mining asteroids makes no sense. Unlike the sea floor, there is nothing else of interest out there in space. If I were writing a sci-fi book the most plausible plot would be that Planetary Resources is a government puppet for dealing with some sort of extraterrestrial contact. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
tgflynn 15y ago
I'm highly skeptical of this story (the original MIT tech review article seemed very speculative). I fail to see how mining asteroids to use their resources on Earth could make economic sense in any reasonable time-frame. What resources are so scarce that it would pay to mine them in space ? My impression is that with the exceptions of food, energy and luxury goods like gold, silver and diamonds the cost of natural resources makes a very small contribution to the cost of goods. Moreover mining asteroids would require the development of robotics technologies which, if applied on Earth, would substantially reduce the costs of most natural resources from their already low levels.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  I understand your skepticism. Here's how I would address that. 1) They may not necessarily think they're going to be able to deploy a cost effective business service overnight. They may realize it's going to take a while, and more pieces have to be put in place. But there are things they can start working on now that push in that direction. 2) SpaceX. And to a lesser extent, the other space teams and competitions that have had successes in last few years. Surely one of them, or a combination of a few of them, are going to bring that cost/risk to orbit down significantly. Opening up new business possibilities as potentially profitable. 3) All the recent apparent advances in robotics capabilities, embedded computing and submersibles (where the mission demands are so extreme they are not too unlike spacecraft in many ways). Drones. Pack mules. Exo-wear. Quadcopters. Powerful computers that also happen to be small, lower power draining and super cheap -- cost of risk goes down, variety of potential applications goes up. 4) Increasing sense of impending resource wars on Earth, due to the rise of the BRIC countries, all the key minerals needed by modern electronics/computing/batteries/PV only present in China or Africa or country-that-is-not-the-US. The predicted water shortages. The increasing sense that the way that modern large-scale agriculture is done (high yields via chemicals that are toxic to humans in the long run) and so might need to switch back to lower-yield-per-acre methods. And so on. The strategic takeaway is that if population grows, Earth resources grow more scarce, and especially US-controlled resources grow more scarce, then there may be an increased demand for resources from somewhere off-Earth, or kept entirely out of control of some particular Earth-based nations or companies. Is this an immediate need requiring an overnight solution? No. But if you have billions, you can afford to think about the longer term, and you have the money to risk starting those investments today. Just in case. Also, to kick it up a notch, consider the alternative: do you really think that, say, the US Congress or Presidency is going to take any bold decisive action that's going to positively address these long term concerns? Do you think they're even allowed to, by the rules they have to follow, or by their political patrons? Or do you think they'll stick to addressing more ephemeral, near-term concerns, to quick wins, political point scoring, propaganda, etc.? I know how I'd bet. :)
InclinedPlane 15y ago
Some things to keep in mind: Launch costs are poised to make a dramatic drop (by a factor of 10-100) within the next decade or two. Now, you could say that it's silly to make a financial bet on this coming to fruition but such a bet is unnecessary, one can simply do research and prototyping and then make the decision on whether to scale up and go for broke or not based on the development of launch costs. By the same token, launch costs will also affect the growth in orbital assets and infrastructure, which can both facilitate certain aspects of asteroid mining as well as potentially serve as a market for mined resources. Not everything from such mines need to be delivered to the Earth's surface, for example. Using robotics and efficient propulsion technologies like solar sails or ion engines make it possible to deliver to Earth or Earth orbit far more mass than the mass of the machinery launched from Earth, which will be the major cost involved. Consider a few things that might be worthwhile. Precious metals and rare Earths could be worth a considerable amount of money. Iridium alone is worth $15 million per tonne, for example. Gold and Platinum are also worth a lot of money. But other things might also be worthwhile, such as water, methane, and silicon. Not necessarily on Earth, but perhaps in orbit. If there is a substantial population of humans living in orbit then water and oxygen could be a valuable commodity, as would propellant (oxygen, methane, hydrogen, etc.) Or, consider a small near Earth asteroid that is robotically mined to deliver large quantities of silicon and aluminum to Earth orbit, where they are used to manufacture solar cells, supporting structure, and power systems in geostationary orbit to build space based solar power systems. Then, only the ground components (rectenna fields) need to be built on Earth, and only a small amount of components and materials need to be launched from Earth for each new power station. It could well be a cost effective way to deliver electrical power in the near future, although much of that is dependent on automated mining operations and the costs of operating a manufacturing facility in orbit. It's certainly a risky endeavor at present, but it's not such a crazy idea as it may seem.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  Bingo. And people have been talking for a long time about how eventually launch costs would drop. In theory. But with SpaceX's recent successes, with their stated intentions, with the nature of their leadership, I think the folks behind Planetary Resources thought, "You know. Now might be the time. SpaceX, in particular, looks about to really bring down cost to orbit. Let's get in on that. What's going to be enabled by that? That's right, asteroid mining. Let's fill out the paperwork and start assembling the cash, the team, to get the ball rolling."
chubs 15y ago
So is the idea that they want to mine for Helium-3 and bring it back to power cold fusion reactors? If so - brilliant!
buu700 15y ago
James Cameron is mining space? I have a feeling that the sequel to Avatar will be a documentary...
tocomment 15y ago
Would mining an asteroid be simpler than mining on Earth? Perhaps you could just get the asteroid spinning really fast and then blow it up. The debris would separate by density and then you just go around and pick up the desired materials. Is this workable, HN?

198 points by jen_h 15y ago

The Mars missions suggest we're close to having the tech to get robots onto asteroids, some of which might have a fuel source that can sustain an unmanned operation that launches minerals along trajectories back toward .. the moon perhaps. It seems infeasible to ferry the minerals back and forth, although the value of the minerals might be high enough to justify it. I wonder what the timeframe is for starting something? Space X has gone from start to regular orbital missions in 10 years and $800 million. Would it be so far-fetched to think of a 20 year timeframe for asteroid mining?

cryptoz 15y ago
The typical asteroid mining plan involves a multi-year approach where you send out large spaceships to slightly alter the orbit of the target asteroid. Without "much" effort, you can bring it to an orbit that passes closer to Earth by gravitationally tugging it, shortening the distance required do to the harvesting. The trip back is likely just hopping off the asteroid into a lower Earth orbit - not too tough.

drawkbox 15y ago

If true and feasible with technology soon... Cool for a couple of reasons: - Asteroid tracking... Resource companies will track nearly all asteroids within reach and help provide awareness of threats. - Robots! The technology advancement/innovation for bots and long range communications would be intense. - Space exploration will be a boon if resources are involved (as we all know every game is about asteroid mining in the future). - May bring back some sort of life form (It may end up taking over like Cloverfield then Cameron can later make a movie about it and Carmack the game). Possible problems: - We get really good at manipulating asteroids routes (some sort of harvesters that bring them closer to us to mine) and it becomes weaponized.

bdunbar 15y ago
Also cool - Replacing terrestrial mines with asteroid mines. - Bring an asteroid to L5. Mine. When done you have a place to live. and it becomes weaponized. Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon. We need to get used to this idea now.
- pacaro 15y ago
  Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon Especially including the earth-bound minerals, is there a better way to get large heavy objects onto the surface of a planet that a "Kinetic Lance" (Peter F. Hamilton) or "Rod" (Neal Stephenson)?
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    This is a solved problem. Wrap your cargo in a capsule. Add parachutes.
    - Tuna-Fish 15y ago
      Most of the stuff that we land on planets is designed to be as light as possible. The proceeds from asteroid mining are going to be mighty heavy. I doubt manufacturing enough parachutes would make any sense. Then again, those aren't really necessary. Just build the goods to capsules that have aerodynamics and maximum mass so that they'll slow down to a reasonable terminal velocity in atmosphere, and there's no reason you cannot just drop them on some area with a solid enough ground. (And no inhabitants).
      - jacques_chester 15y ago
        Peter F Hamilton addressed this in one of his novels; one of the Commonwealth Saga books I think. Essentially, his imagined industry uses solar energy to melt ores; these are then formed into a metallic foam and shaped into a stable aerodynamic shape (a sort of blunt wedge). They are then deorbited to land far out to sea. Because it's metallic foam, it has a high drag-to-weight ratio (hence lower terminal velocity) and it floats. Some of the ore is lost to ablation during re-entry, but ... so what? There's plenty more where it came from.

jboggan 15y ago

How about Cameron announcing a fleet of miniature mining robots running off a 16-bit processor? We can use 0x10c to crowdsource space exploration. But seriously, this would be a great development in human exploration. We finally might have a chance of surpassing the achievements of the Apollo program if we establish a viable economic reason for regularly journeying into space.

hristov 15y ago

Please try to post a link to the original article. It is more informative and rewards people that actually break the story. (Even if in this case the story is just a press release.) See below. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3859631 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3859631

jen_h 15y ago
I was originally going to link to the Mims memo, but I noticed that it had a few inaccuracies at the time of posting, so I opted for the Verge's recap - looks like the original's been updated (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27776/ http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27776/). (Very excited about this whole thing, btw. Have been hearing rumors around town about a bunch of MSL folks moving up north to work on something very cool...have been dying to find out what that something cool is.)

RandallBrown 15y ago

I kind of hope that people start dumping tons and tons of money into this kind of stuff. Right now, we don't need it, but I want us to be good at it when we do.

angersock 15y ago
The interesting thing to me is that, by the time we need it, we likely will not be able to do it. That's why it's important to take the long view.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

loverobots 15y ago

This is great. IMO the venture will fail (to mine asteroids) but will gain lots of knowledge while "failing." Great way for the mega-rich to make a mark, Paul Allen supported a lot of space projects too.

waterlesscloud 15y ago

There's nothing but speculation here. No one has actually announced asteroid mining, that's just someone's guess as to what the company may be about. Maybe it is, but there's no official announcement yet...

loarabia 15y ago

If this kind of thing interests you and you haven't read it yet, it might be worth reading "Mining the Sky" by John S. Lewis which goes into how this could in theory be done without enormous advancements in technology and what the value would be.

DanBC 15y ago

Rare earth minerals? I guess Google's feeling the pinch from Chinese supply blocking.

Roboprog 15y ago
Nah, we just need more unobtainium :-) (somebody had to say it) But seriously, whatever rare-earths we find there, nobody will complain about open pit mining. Like the old "Earth first" joke implies (... we'll strip mine the other planets later), it might be a good time to, well, start stripping potentially toxic chemicals from places we aren't trying to live in, since we pulled out much of the easy stuff here. (even if that's the opposite of the joke) Perhaps lithium is easier to find on the lighter "chondrite" (non nickel/iron) type asteroids?
- Natsu 15y ago
  I'm not sure about that. There are a lot of issues to consider, like how you get the materials back to earth and how you avoid creating lots of debris that poses a hazard to other spacecraft. Those are probably solvable, but not very easy. And it's not unimaginable that we might not want to take some of the materials back to earth, but rather use them to construct things elsewhere. In other words, maybe Google really will build a moonbase someday. I just hope I live to see it.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    > and how you avoid creating lots of debris that poses a hazard to other spacecraft. Debris is a considerable hazard. NASA tracks about 21,000 items bigger than 10 cm. They estimate there are about 500,000 items between 10 cm and 1 cm. They estimate there are 100 million items smaller than 1 cm. These items are travelling at about 7 km per second. The average impact speed is about 10 km/s. (http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/ http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/)

trefn 15y ago

Ben Bova has a series of scifi novels in which asteroid mining plays an important role - check out his Grand Tour & the Sam Gunn books if you're interested in fictional accounts.

Roboprog 15y ago
I'm thinking of Larry Niven and Charles Sheffield, but I know I've probably left out many other authors as well (RAH, ...). Say hello to the Belters, I guess.

redthrowaway 15y ago

At some point, we're going to need a space elevator if we are to have any hope of doing this economically and at scale. We really don't have any good way to move the large amounts of mass an industrial asteroid mining operation would require between LEO and the surface at the moment.

bdunbar 15y ago
We really don't have any good way to move the large amounts of mass an industrial asteroid mining operation would require between LEO and the surface at the moment. Sure we do. Wrap the goods in a capsule. Make sure you aim it in the right direction. Apply energy. It's getting _off_ the ground that is the problem.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  I realize that my post is unclear, so I'll edit it. Yes, Earth -> LEO is by far the most challenging, but LEO -> Earth is far from free of pitfalls. Absent a space elevator, there seems to be no reasonable way to get the necessary components for a smelter to space, so any ore coming back would be coming back raw. Throwing bits of asteroid at the planet seems inefficient, to say the least.
  - Roboprog 15y ago
    The end game might be to send parts and robots to make the mining equipment itself on site. Rebellious human operators / colonists not required.
  - jessriedel 15y ago
    > Throwing bits of asteroid at the planet seems inefficient, to say the least. It might be inefficient in the sense that you lose much or even most of your materials during re-entry/collection, but (for all we know) it could still much more economical than mining here on earth. If you can bring gold back to earth at a price of $1k/kg, it's not going to matter that half (or even 90%) was destroyed in the process. I assume here that you'd look around for asteroids that were of a Goldilocks size: not too small so that a large fraction of the material survives re-entry, but not too large so that it creates a serious risk of destruction.

bradleyland 15y ago

I'm having a thought that I'm having a difficult time even stepping in to. So James Cameron, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt are starting a venture to mine asteroids. James Cameron recently dove to the deepest parts of the ocean in his own submersible. The launch of Elon Musk & SpaceX's Falcon 9 mission to the ISS is just around the corner. I know I've read about other famous people launching wildly ambitious projects, but I can't remember them at the moment. This is just mind blowing to me. These are endeavors normally left to nation states. There's something buried in here that I find fascinating. In the past, when these endeavors were carried out by nation states, all the baggage of bureaucracy was along for the ride. Fast forward to today, and you have individuals with the imagination and the means to dream big. It's possible to undertake something insane -- like mining asteroids -- on your own. I'm left thinking about the way that Steve Jobs ran Apple. I don't intend to steal credit from all the hard work of the people at Apple, but Steve Jobs ran Apple in a way that stands in contrast to many other companies. The fulcrum of decision making was remarkably focused on a single point: him. I don't know the end game for capitalism, but a lot of people believe that along the way to its downfall, there is a massive consolidation of wealth. The presumption is that these individuals will all be corrupt fat cats that enslave the masses. What if it's the opposite? What if the people who end up with the wealth do great things with it? It's kind of like a bunch of micro-sized benevolent dictatorships, but the dictator is naturally selected through capitalistic means: successful individuals gather the wealth required to reach this role in society.

angersock 15y ago
"This is just mind blowing to me. These are endeavors normally left to nation states. There's something buried in here that I find fascinating." One wonders if the rise of markets, global communication, etc., have rendered the nation state somewhat obsolete. In theory, we still depend on our governments for things like public works, for ensuring peace, for promoting justice, and protecting personal property. These are things that we believe corporations would be ill-suited for. And yet, in practice, at least in the United States and in the PIGS of Europe--we see that hey, holy shit, they've dropped the ball in a lot of cases. I'm willing to wager that we wouldn't be too much worse off with a different system. Note: I take this position not in support of our new corporate overlords, but out of the necessity born from the realities of our government. If our government actually helped the public, actually had a legal system that worked justly and fairly, and actually did Good, I'd shun the amorality of the free market. But it doesn't, so I can't.

OzzyB 15y ago

This guy, Phil Plait, gives an related talk about asteroids and how it's a really good idea to be thinking about them now, just in case one should come close to hitting us and making us all extinct. Plus, he's a great speaker with a healthy dose of wit: http://www.ted.com/talks/phil_plait_how_to_defend_earth_from_asteroids.html http://www.ted.com/talks/phil_plait_how_to_defend_earth_from...

wtvanhest 15y ago

My guess is that they will only intend to ship back the very expensive/weight minerials/metals and will leave in space materials with more weight but use in future missions. Once you establish materials in space, power plants in space, robots in space, it is a lot easier to move things further out. The end game to me is having separation between heavy materials in space and on earth and only transporting the lightest and most valuable between the two. (humans/gold/diamonds) etc.

Retric 15y ago
With current launch costs everything in LEO is worth about as much as gold per LB ~5-10k vs 20k. Thus in the short term mining water taking it to LEO and splitting it into Oxygen and Hydrogen for fuel tanks is probably a lot more profitable than shipping Gold / Platinum back to earth. PS: An ION drive tug boats to move stuff from LEO to geosynchronous orbit is IMO the most needed infrastructure to make space cheaper.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- wtvanhest 15y ago
  My point is that it is likely they will mine for other metals and materials overtime. As long as you can amass materials in space and keep it in geosynchronous orbit you can wait until future people get to space and can build spacecraft with them. To your point, water may be the best thing to mine but I wouldn't invest my time there specifically. I would get whatever material I could as easily as possible since I would not know what future missions/propulsion systems would be. Further, if you found an abundance of something with even a low energy/weight ratio or no known way to use it for energy it is entirely possible that someone on earth will figure it out, buy it from you and use it to travel. The cool thing is that whatever you get could be traded on some type of commodities/futures market with delivery in space which means you could theoretically sell it right after you mine it even if no one takes control or uses the material for 20 years. While the author assumes they will mine asteroids, I think it is just as likely they will build something to pick up and consolidate space junk. That will probably be the most profitable venture and has the dual property that it will prevent damage to other vehicles once pulled from orbit.

malay 15y ago

It would seem that a number of wealthy folks have an interest in space exploration. Musk has been mentioned, but Peter Thiel has also funded someone pursuing the idea of resource extraction from near Earth asteroids. Granted, it was for the 20 under 20 fellowship, so he is focused more on the research and design component, but nevertheless a fascinating area for wealthy people.

bane 15y ago

It's long been my thought that the value from mining asteroids will not be the return of the materials to Earth, but a vast reduction in the cost of putting stuff up in space. Imagine if all the shuttle ever had to do was ferry people and food cargo up/down while the ISS was built in space-sourced materiel. Suddenly the cost/kg for the ISS components becomes largely irrelevant and the total cost for similar projects drops to a fraction of what we paid (transport of people/food/(maybe fuel) + mining costs). Next step, start building the ships themselves in orbit and crew them from the growing population of space acclimated folk.

mkramlich 15y ago
This. Exactly. The potential profit value of doing asteroid mining, Moon mining, Mars mining, etc. is going to be much higher if the products are sold and used locally. The farther the material has to move, the delivery price goes up, and it becomes less attractive to buyers, and for less buyers. But set up a mining operation anywhere out of Earth's gravity well and orbit, and you call sell your stuff to, say, any colonies that are created on the Moon, Mars, or other asteroids. Plus the problem space of successfully and profitably doing mining and manufacturing off-Earth is really wide open right now, no competition, so huge potential long term profit upside for those willing to take the risk now and begin developing the capability.
anusinha 15y ago
Relatedly, there are powers in the pharmaceutical industry that would love to be able to carry out syntheses in space. The lack of an effective gravity force allows crystals to grow larger and this would be a useful property.
pm90 15y ago
Going up is costly, coming down isn't (as much). I'm no rocket scientist, but I guess it would still be possible to have large heat-resistant/disposable wrappers around a large gunk of asteroid rock and send it crashing into the ocean, or land by a simple parachute.
- bane 15y ago

tomrod 15y ago

This is so exciting to me. The inner economist in me wants this to work so badly.

jbattle 15y ago

It's very exciting to think I could see asteroid mining in my life - but I have to wonder if it's solving the most crucial problem. Is earth really that strapped for metal? It seems to me that the energy used to return mass from the asteroid will quickly become far more valuable than whatever they bring back. Unless they are returning mostly stuff that is really rare on earth.

archangel_one 15y ago
One possible advantage to the energy situation is that if you have a space elevator or similar structure, bringing lumps of asteroid down it counterbalances bringing other things back up.
smhinsey 15y ago
To me, it's all about the composition of the asteroid that you choose to mine. In these early days, I think we'll probably be more focused on targets of opportunity, but once the technology base exists to be picky, if you could locate a body full of precious metals, say gold and platinum, it could easily dwarf the earthbound supply. I think the most interesting opportunities lie not with traditional methods of exploiting these materials, but with the methods we will discover once previously rare materials become abundant and cheap. Of course, devaluing gold to the point of aluminum is going to cause political upheaval and that will have to be dealt with, and while this conjures images of chaos and serious trouble, it doesn't seem like all that big of a deal compared to what will happen when a private entity starts talking about bringing a dinosaur-killer-sized body near the earth.

keenerd 15y ago

I really want to believe this is real. The cynic in me says that anything this outlandish is a fraud - something akin to Project Azorian and magnanese nodules[1]. The parallels are uncanny, but even as a cover mining asteroids makes no sense. Unlike the sea floor, there is nothing else of interest out there in space. If I were writing a sci-fi book the most plausible plot would be that Planetary Resources is a government puppet for dealing with some sort of extraterrestrial contact. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

tgflynn 15y ago

I'm highly skeptical of this story (the original MIT tech review article seemed very speculative). I fail to see how mining asteroids to use their resources on Earth could make economic sense in any reasonable time-frame. What resources are so scarce that it would pay to mine them in space ? My impression is that with the exceptions of food, energy and luxury goods like gold, silver and diamonds the cost of natural resources makes a very small contribution to the cost of goods. Moreover mining asteroids would require the development of robotics technologies which, if applied on Earth, would substantially reduce the costs of most natural resources from their already low levels.

mkramlich 15y ago
I understand your skepticism. Here's how I would address that. 1) They may not necessarily think they're going to be able to deploy a cost effective business service overnight. They may realize it's going to take a while, and more pieces have to be put in place. But there are things they can start working on now that push in that direction. 2) SpaceX. And to a lesser extent, the other space teams and competitions that have had successes in last few years. Surely one of them, or a combination of a few of them, are going to bring that cost/risk to orbit down significantly. Opening up new business possibilities as potentially profitable. 3) All the recent apparent advances in robotics capabilities, embedded computing and submersibles (where the mission demands are so extreme they are not too unlike spacecraft in many ways). Drones. Pack mules. Exo-wear. Quadcopters. Powerful computers that also happen to be small, lower power draining and super cheap -- cost of risk goes down, variety of potential applications goes up. 4) Increasing sense of impending resource wars on Earth, due to the rise of the BRIC countries, all the key minerals needed by modern electronics/computing/batteries/PV only present in China or Africa or country-that-is-not-the-US. The predicted water shortages. The increasing sense that the way that modern large-scale agriculture is done (high yields via chemicals that are toxic to humans in the long run) and so might need to switch back to lower-yield-per-acre methods. And so on. The strategic takeaway is that if population grows, Earth resources grow more scarce, and especially US-controlled resources grow more scarce, then there may be an increased demand for resources from somewhere off-Earth, or kept entirely out of control of some particular Earth-based nations or companies. Is this an immediate need requiring an overnight solution? No. But if you have billions, you can afford to think about the longer term, and you have the money to risk starting those investments today. Just in case. Also, to kick it up a notch, consider the alternative: do you really think that, say, the US Congress or Presidency is going to take any bold decisive action that's going to positively address these long term concerns? Do you think they're even allowed to, by the rules they have to follow, or by their political patrons? Or do you think they'll stick to addressing more ephemeral, near-term concerns, to quick wins, political point scoring, propaganda, etc.? I know how I'd bet. :)

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Some things to keep in mind: Launch costs are poised to make a dramatic drop (by a factor of 10-100) within the next decade or two. Now, you could say that it's silly to make a financial bet on this coming to fruition but such a bet is unnecessary, one can simply do research and prototyping and then make the decision on whether to scale up and go for broke or not based on the development of launch costs. By the same token, launch costs will also affect the growth in orbital assets and infrastructure, which can both facilitate certain aspects of asteroid mining as well as potentially serve as a market for mined resources. Not everything from such mines need to be delivered to the Earth's surface, for example. Using robotics and efficient propulsion technologies like solar sails or ion engines make it possible to deliver to Earth or Earth orbit far more mass than the mass of the machinery launched from Earth, which will be the major cost involved. Consider a few things that might be worthwhile. Precious metals and rare Earths could be worth a considerable amount of money. Iridium alone is worth $15 million per tonne, for example. Gold and Platinum are also worth a lot of money. But other things might also be worthwhile, such as water, methane, and silicon. Not necessarily on Earth, but perhaps in orbit. If there is a substantial population of humans living in orbit then water and oxygen could be a valuable commodity, as would propellant (oxygen, methane, hydrogen, etc.) Or, consider a small near Earth asteroid that is robotically mined to deliver large quantities of silicon and aluminum to Earth orbit, where they are used to manufacture solar cells, supporting structure, and power systems in geostationary orbit to build space based solar power systems. Then, only the ground components (rectenna fields) need to be built on Earth, and only a small amount of components and materials need to be launched from Earth for each new power station. It could well be a cost effective way to deliver electrical power in the near future, although much of that is dependent on automated mining operations and the costs of operating a manufacturing facility in orbit. It's certainly a risky endeavor at present, but it's not such a crazy idea as it may seem.

mkramlich 15y ago
Bingo. And people have been talking for a long time about how eventually launch costs would drop. In theory. But with SpaceX's recent successes, with their stated intentions, with the nature of their leadership, I think the folks behind Planetary Resources thought, "You know. Now might be the time. SpaceX, in particular, looks about to really bring down cost to orbit. Let's get in on that. What's going to be enabled by that? That's right, asteroid mining. Let's fill out the paperwork and start assembling the cash, the team, to get the ball rolling."

chubs 15y ago

So is the idea that they want to mine for Helium-3 and bring it back to power cold fusion reactors? If so - brilliant!

buu700 15y ago

James Cameron is mining space? I have a feeling that the sequel to Avatar will be a documentary...

tocomment 15y ago

Would mining an asteroid be simpler than mining on Earth? Perhaps you could just get the asteroid spinning really fast and then blow it up. The debris would separate by density and then you just go around and pick up the desired materials. Is this workable, HN?