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Space Technology

John S. Lewis On the Space Commodities Market 61

Posted by timothy from the right-guy-to-ask dept.
John S. Lewis -- Deep Space Industries' chief scientist, author, and University of Arizona professor -- speaks in an interview with Air & Space magazine about the practicalities and possibilities of deep-space mining, a topic on which he is unapologetically bullish. He points out, though, that some of the artist's-conception version of space mining skips over some of the economic realities of getting back to Earth metals that are scarce here. From the interview: But—and here’s the big conditional—if we develop an industrial capability in space such that we’re processing large amounts of metals to make solar-powered satellites, for example, then as a byproduct, we would have very substantial quantities of platinum-group metals, which are extremely valuable. So if you have a market for the iron and the nickel in space, that would liberate the precious metals to be brought back to Earth. So the scheme is not based on the idea of retrieving platinum-group metals—that is simply gravy."
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John S. Lewis On the Space Commodities Market More

John S. Lewis On the Space Commodities Market

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  • I hit every system looking for platinum and other metals.
    I was addicted...
    Perhaps someone should come up with a MMORPG for space mining/colonizing.

  • Precious Metals? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Saturday August 22, 2015 @12:02PM (#50370417) Homepage
    One of the reasons metals from the Platinum Group are precious is that they're scarce. If we recover as much of those elements as he's talking about, they won't be scarce any longer, which means that they won't be that precious. Of course, that's not a bad thing because there are lots and lots of other uses for them besides jewelry.

    • Exactly right. Same thing happened when the Spanish brought lots of gold from the Americas. It was particularly interesting because gold was also money at the time so they had a pretty bad inflation as the new money made its way into the economy.

      • From TFI:

        The transportation and extraction costs are sufficiently high

        This may be half-true if the vision is mankind going out there and mining and refining, but if it's done the sane way, the way it of course will ultimately be done -- which is by solar-powered robotics with self-repair capabilities along or incorporated -- the initial (and total) cost will be irrelevant due to the profits maintenance-free, zero ongoing-costs, self-repairing operations will continuously produce.

        As for "transport costs",

        • There is a point in economics of scale where it currently becomes cheaper to send humans into space than robots. The real problem is that robots that do heavy complex work like mining will tend to need constant servicing.

          Its the same as the general argument as against Strong AI (which I work on). An advanced humanoid type robot might have a base cost of $500,000 to $2 million, and for versions certified for space expect to at least double that cost. - The shear delicacy and complexity of such robots means t

    • Records, for instance.

    • You're assuming we'll go from the current scarcity to kilotons of the stuff raining from the sky. While it will gradually lose value, there will be a window where plenty of money can be made. And of course with an abundant supply of a substance come new uses and demand.

      • You're assuming we'll go from the current scarcity to kilotons of the stuff raining from the sky.

        No. I was pointing out the long-term effects of finding new sources of platinum group metals on both the price and the ability to use it for something other than jewelry.

        • If you read my comment again you'll see the part where I said "there will be a window where plenty of money can be made" without denying the long term effects on the value of platinum.

        • Some chemical processes / factories already have to have everything made out of platinum. If they work with chemicals like fluorine gas or hydrofluoric acid platinum is sometimes about the only option.. If there were more of it the metal has a vast potential number of industrial and tech uses...

          • Yes, I know, which is why I pointed out that there were a lot of other things it could be used for if the price weren't so high.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsotha ( 720379 )
      We'll just have De Beers run the mining operation. Platinum Group will always be scarce no matter how much is mined.

  • You buy food at Lave and sell it at Diso.
    You buy drugs at Diso and sell them at Lave.

    Or was it the other way around?

  • Lewis's interview doesn't touch on the primary economic killer of asteroidal resource retrieval:

    The time value of capital.

    The equipment you need to do all this is a capital investment. You start paying interest (at a high rate due to risk) on that capital the moment you start constructing it. But more importantly, the amount of time it takes to get to the asteroids and back builds up interest payments that raise the quality of ore required to break even. There is some speculation that the quality of ore

    • Well, as a space systems engineer who does do cost calculations, the math goes like this:

      Some asteroids, the Carbonaceous Chondrites, are up to 20% carbon compounds and water. These can be reformed to hydrocarbons and Oxygen, providing high thrust rocket fuel. An asteroid tug consumes about 2% of the returned mass as propellant. So the "return on fuel" is 10:1. It takes 2-3 years for the tug to do the return to cislunar space (near the Moon's orbit). 3 years gives a 115% rate of return. A tug is typic

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Baldrson ( 78598 ) *

        DanielRavenNest writes: "It takes 2-3 years for the tug to do the return to cislunar space (near the Moon's orbit)."

        That sounds like a round trip is going to be 4-6 years plus the dwell times at the ends (which may not be significant in low-hanging-fruit scenarios).

        What is the rate of interest you're using for the amortization? What does the tug cost up front? What is the price charged for the hydrocarbons and oxygen produced? What price elasticity of demand are you using?

        PS: Thanks for not being "not

  • Here's the thing about space mining. Let's assume they figure out a way to gather and process whatever material they are mining into a commodity. I think it will be very difficult and won't happen within my lifetime most likely but let's just grant that we figure out the engineering. Let's further not worry about inflation or other economic issues for now. There is one HUGE problem with space mining that doesn't get enough attention.

    Unless you are able to use that material in space you have to return it

    • A space elevator would solve that problem pretty quickly: for the elevator to work, you need to send as much mass down as you send up, so you'd be able to send a steady stream of valuable stuff safely down to Earth once it's operational, at the same time you're sending people, supplies, and less-valuable materials up.

      • for the elevator to work, you need to send as much mass down as you send up

        Not at all. Sending stuff up the elevator just slows the Earth down slightly.

        Matching the orbit to bring material safely down sounds expensive, too.

        • "Not at all. Sending stuff up the elevator just slows the Earth down slightly."

          No sending stuff up the elevator slows the top of the elevator down strongly. This creates an extra unwanted motion 'backwards' and increases the strain on the cable. Send enough up and you can wrap it around the Earth and even push it out of orbit.
          In a lot of ways space elevators are not actually a very good idea. - A much better solution is large scale nuclear rockets, probably using Gas core Closed cycle engines which don't pu

          • Which just means their is a limit to how rapidly you can send stuff up. Stay under that limit and you're fine.

      • A properly designed space elevator (see my class notes for details: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/... [wikibooks.org] and slides: http://imgur.com/a/cCTY5 [imgur.com] ) carries on-board propulsion for orbit makeup. It doesn't look anything like the pictures you usually see in the media, though. The continuous ground-to-GEO concept can't be built, even with carbon nanotube cables. It would be inefficient even if you could build it. More modern designs based on much shorter *rotating* cable systems are more efficient. Even an eff

        • That's weird, all the stuff I read about it before said that the problem with the space elevator was that we didn't have a material that could sustain the tension necessary for a cable from ground to GEO, that it was beyond our current materials, however carbon nanotubes were much more than strong enough for it, so the only limiter was getting nanotubes out of the lab and into mass production. They even said that super-long nanotubes weren't necessary, just ones a few centimeters long or so, made into a co

      • A space elevator would solve that problem pretty quickly:

        So would a star trek transporter. Care to keep the discussion to technology that isn't science fiction?

    • There's no possible way that it could ever make economic sense to mine the asteroids for iron to be used here on Earth. Considering how much of it we have, and how good we are at recycling it, it's always going to be cheaper to use what we've got than to get more from space. No, if and when we start mining space for iron, we'll be using it up there because that way we won't have to boost it up into orbit.

    • > Unless you are able to use that material in space

      That's the intent for early asteroid mining. Space industry is already $323 billion a year total, and a major consumable for all space missions (mostly satellites in Earth orbit) is fuel. Any future Lunar or Mars missions would add large demands for fuel to the existing traffic. But even just existing commercial satellites need fuel to get to their operating orbit and maintain position. If they run out of fuel, or parts break, the satellite has to b

  • am i the only one thinking this ?

  • The thing is, to do anything in space you need propellant. Launching it from the ground is a mugs game; it costs ~$1000 per kg to get it even to LEO, even more to higher orbits.

    No, if you can mine propellant, then you can get ROI on any propellant you can return to LEO (or higher orbits).

    The thing is, we know for pretty high probability that (for example) Ceres has huge deposits of water.

    You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and use that for propellant. Once you have propellant you can set up cyclers that take about 15 months to deliver a load to LEO, and then go back and get some more. The amount you return each time can potentially grow exponentially each time, because you're using propellant to deliver propellant/"mining" equipment.

    The thing about Ceres, it looks like there's ice volcanos there, so "mining" water may be as simple as putting a funnel over the stream coming off Ceres, and bring it to a halt and pumping it into a tank. You can then use some of the water to send the rest of the water back towards Earth.

    And water in LEO is TREMENDOUSLY useful. Want to go to the moon? You need propellant to go there. Want to go to Mars? You need propellant and radiation shielding. Guess what- what is brilliant radiation shield as well.

    I'm not against other types of mining; but propellant mining is the one that all the other things rely on- it's the equivalent of oil in space.

    • > The thing is, we know for pretty high probability that (for example) Ceres has huge deposits of water.

      The Carbonaceous Chondrite type asteroids contain up to 20% carbon compounds and water, which can be converted to hydrocarbons and oxygen, which is high-thrust rocket fuel. There are 13,000 known "Near Earth Asteroids", and we are finding 1500 more a year. NEA's are a lot easier and faster to return to Earth orbit, since we can use a Lunar gravity assist in both directions for our mining tug. Yeah,

      • NEOs can have much lower deltav but have much worse Synodic periods. That's because the orbital periods are similar, and they take longer to line up each time. And for a near Hohmann transfer which most travel is likely to use, they have to line up.

        So opportunities to travel there or back are few and far between. This makes them surprisingly useless as a propellant source, because unless the mining operation is unreasonably quick to perform, for orbital mechanics reasons you have to wait for multiple synodi

        • Really great arguments for mining from Ceres. Another thing is that with a small gravity well mining is probably a lot easier than doing everything in true zero gee.

          A great method I remember for mining water /ice on large scales is to use giant bags. The bags are filled with lumps of ice (up to 100,000 tons, ~50m diameter). Then a nuclear rocket platform is strapped to each bag to push the material into an Earth return orbit and to decelerate it at the other end. The rocket system gets its reaction mass by

          • Yes, steam rockets, delta-v is a bit marginal though, ion drives might be better for the return to earth burn for the propellant.

            And actually, space elevators are extremely easy on Ceres, you can even build looped elevators that can lift stuff up into orbit. You don't need anything special, just some pulleys, long rope or metal cables, no carbon anything is needed.

    • ...but propellant mining is the one that all the other things rely on- it's the equivalent of oil in space.

      Oh, NO!

      Why!?!?

      Why, oh *why* did you have to say *that*!?

      Good grief man, did you *have* to use the "O"-word!?

      You *know* what's coming now, right?

      Right!?

      "Ehrrmahgerhdd!! Ehrmahgehrdd!!

      Now Big Space Oil is gunna cause Orbital-Warming CO2 Terrorists In Spaaaace!!"

      Way to go, man. Way to go.

      j/k

      Strat :P

  • Because as others have noted, if he gets platinum in quantity, dumping it on the earth would drive the price through the floor unless his group can carefully control the rate of insertion into the marketplace, or find industries that could use platinum but don't because the current price is too high.

  • The first I read was The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe but at the time that was considered to be the one that should first be read. I know that some people prefer to read them in publication order, but I now like to read them in chronological order (i.e. with The Magician's Nephew first)

    • For the benefit of UK readers, there is also a joke in there somewhere about his ideas never knowingly being underblown..

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