First Survey of Commercially Viable Asteroids Estimates Only 10 Are Worth Mining 265
KentuckyFC writes "In 2012, Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt announced the launch of Planetary Resources, an ambitious start up with the goal of mining nearby asteroids for natural resources. Now an academic survey of ore-bearing asteroids estimates that only about 10 are likely to have resources worth mining. The new approach is to create a Drake-like equation that starts with the total number of asteroids and determines the percentage that are close enough to Earth, the percentage of these that contain valuable resources, the percentage of these large enough to pay for a space mining mission and so on. Each of these factors is filled with uncertainty but the bottom line is that when it comes to platinum group metals such as platinum, palladium, and iridium there are likely to be very few worth exploiting. That has significant implications for the future of space exploration. With so few commercially-viable space rocks out there, knowing which ones to pursue will be hugely valuable information, concludes the study. And that means the prospecting of asteroids is likely to become a highly secretive commercial endeavor in the not-too-distant future."
Baseballs... (Score:3)
...someday we'll have the technology to shotgun baseball sized probes at the hunks of rock and figure it out. [Citation needed.]
That said, the real question is what is the intersection of the availability of asteroid mining technology with the obsolescence of the need to mine these asteroids.
Need for materials (Score:2)
You bring up a good point mentioning the "obsolescence of the need to mine these asteroids," but I disagree that we'll hit that point for two reasons.
1) Materials science keeps coming up with fascinating new things that we can do, but often requiring exotic (i.e., rare) elements. Sure, there's tons of things we can do with carbon, but there will always be things where other materials are needed. Unless you're going to argue that it will be cheaper to make elements on demand through nuclear reactions, new
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. (And then there's the environmental advantage of mining asteroids over terrestrial mining.)
What, pray tell, might the advantage be? I dare say that creating a rocket and fuel to launch tones of stuff far enough into space to reach an asteroid is going to be pretty rough on the local environment. Then add the ability to return at least some recovered mass and I'm thinking we are nowhere near an environmental wash for quite some time.
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I dare say that creating a rocket and fuel to launch tones of stuff far enough into space to reach an asteroid is going to be pretty rough on the local environment.
Don't forget that after a handful of mission to metal-rich asteroids and water-rich asteroids, you have all the materials needed to assemble further missions in orbit. Much cheaper than lofting all that stuff out of Earth's gravity well.
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1% more fuel in orbit, equates to a LOT more weight at launch. 1 lb of fuel in orbit, costs many hundreds launch weight. Sure, when you achieve low orbit, most of the work is done, but having to carry 1% more weight in fuel is a substantial price to pay when you figure what it costs in launch weight. Then figure that production of the vehicle and fuel plus the emissions from the launch will have a very significant environmental impact and you have my point.
Making this all return a profit will mean we will
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"You are either overestimating the environmental impact of a rocket, or way, way, way underestimating the environmental impact of mining on Earth."
Not necessarily true. What was the rocket fuel? Hydrogen or hydrazine? What was the oxidizer? Oxygen or something else? If it's a solid rocket, what is the propellant? APCP plus HMX or RDX? Butadiene? These aren't necessarily so environmentally friendly.
"Get to orbit, and you're nearly done. The amount of fuel you'll expend getting to an asteroid is just a few extra percent on top of what it took to get to orbit."
But you're neglecting to account for the fact that the last few % you refer to take a LOT more rocket to get there, not just a few % more rocket. That few % extra fuel, from earth to orbit, is PAYLOAD. Add payload, you need to add even more fuel. Add more fu
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Really bad idea. If you make them baseball sized, they'll inevitably precipitate back to Earth.
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Be careful - The moon is a harsh mistress.
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Mining is the act of removing very small amounts of valuable minerals from large chunks of rock.
Bringing them HERE means the tailings all end up in earth orbit.
We've got enough crap orbiting the earth and taking [cnn.com] out Satellites [huffingtonpost.com] without adding to this mess.
Processing them on the mood might make more sense, but if you have the ability to do that, why not just mine the moon?
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Mining is the act of removing very small amounts of valuable minerals from large chunks of rock.
Bringing them HERE means the tailings all end up in earth orbit.
That would only be true if we brought the entire asteroid to earth orbit and then began mining it. If and when it is ever practical to mine asteroids, we would process them in place, bring the valuable stuff to earth surface, and leave the tailings in the same solar orbit they're already in.
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I guess a jeweler doesn't need to know what other industrial uses platinum has. It is an extremely common catalyst in the chemical industry (not just in catalytic converters in cars) and it is used in electronice (e.g. Pt100 resistance thermometers).
I haven't heard about its use in bomb fuses. What's it used for in a bomb?
Compared to Platium-group metals, gold has very few industrial uses.
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Cold hearted orb that rules the night.
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You are assuming the OP meant "mine in orbit". Nothing in the requirements stated that. So the best thing might be to slam them into Australia then send in earth movers etc. to scoop up the rubble and send them through the processing mill. You could also do potassium cyanide leaching to remove heavy metals from the tailing. Hmmmmm.... maybe we should offshore this to China...
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Also, getting the stuff (whatever it is) from the Moon to Earth would require climbing out of Moon's gravity well, which, while much lesser than Earth's, is still significant.
However, there's a delta-v cost for getting to/from the asteroid, not just getting to/from the surface. That was the point of TFA, there are few worthwhile asteroids with low delta-v requirements.
Also, given that space-worthy robots tend to suck, there's a large human component in their control and guidance. So the short time-lag to the moon allows near real-time teleoperation, greatly simplifying work. The time back to Earth is days, instead of months at best and years probably. This particularly matters i
Uncertainty (Score:5, Interesting)
This kind of estimating may have an order of magnitude error. So it could easily be only 1 asteroid worth mining. Let the asteroid war begin!
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Recent measurements estimate that 10 +/- 20 asteroids may be commercially viable to mine!
Re:Uncertainty (Score:5, Funny)
Recent measurements estimate that 10 +/- 20 asteroids may be commercially viable to mine!
so there could be -10 asteroids worth mining? Somebody has to make the 10 asteroids first?
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Somebody has to make the 10 asteroids first?
Oh for MOD points! LOL..
I think you hit the problem square on. There is a LARGE chance that mining asteroids will never be viable.
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First you need to split up larger asteroids. The most effective strategy is to position your ship in a corner.
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The problem is that once you get them split up small enough, they're all whizzing around and there are a lot more that can hit you. And even if you get them, eventually some alien flying saucers get pissed off and start shooting lasers at you.
The only way to win is not to play.
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so there could be -10 asteroids worth mining?
These are the Soviet Russia asteroids.
Because in Soviet Russia, the asteroids mine you!
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I've heard of of an asteroid in near earth orbit, filled with oxygen and useful industrial materials. It's apparently called "ISS" which must be some sort of ancient Babylonian goddess or something.
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so there could be -10 asteroids worth mining? Somebody has to make the 10 asteroids first?
Think of the tax write-offs!!! Negative Revenue! Negative Profit! Negative Inventory! Tax attorney Nirvana!
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All of which will make a WOOSH sound as they pass over your head.
Re:Uncertainty (Score:4, Interesting)
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More to the point, they are basing this judgement on what is commercially viable FOR INVESTORS ON EARTH to mine. Asteroid mining has never been about how commercial competitive it would be versus mining the same materials from the Earth. Rather, asteroid mining has always been suggested as a way to kick-start space industry, because Earth-to-orbit fuel costs are so amazingly high. Sure you could grab some huge chunk of platinum from deep space and drop it down into Earth's gravity well to be harvested by p
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This kind of estimating may have an order of magnitude error. So it could easily be only 1 asteroid worth mining. Let the asteroid war begin!
Four guys doing back of the envelope calculations does not justify any mad rush to start mining.
Even the summary ends with a totally unwarranted suggestion:
With so few commercially-viable space rocks out there, knowing which ones to pursue will be hugely valuable information, concludes the study. And that means the prospecting of asteroids is likely to become a highly secretive commercial endeavor in the not-too-distant future."
The submitter suggests that since there are so few valuable asteroids and since its (currently) impossible to mine them, that a commercial mad rush to do so is bound to start any minute now.
That is just daft.
Drake (Score:5, Insightful)
And much like the Drake equation if even one of the inputs is a WAG the final result is meaningless.
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And much like the Drake equation since nearly all of the inputs are WAGes the final result is meaningless.
FTFE (Fixed that for everyone)
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Course I did a little wikipedia reading and even the SETI folks say the Drake equation shouldn't really be looked at as a real equation that produces a real result:
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What does "WAG" stand for? The only thing I can find is "wives and girlfriends" which doesn't seem to make much sense in context.
Re:Drake (Score:4, Insightful)
Wild-Ass Guess.
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Ah. Thanks,
Why just look near Earth? (Score:2)
Why just look near Earth? Won't we want to build stuff far away from Earth too? Seems like having building supplies near Jupiter might be useful and a lot cheaper than bring them with.
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Exactly, they seem to only be looking at it in terms of bringing materials down to Earth's surface. The biggest boon of this kind of work is that it will finally mean having access to inexpensive, relatively speaking, materials for construction in space and possibly on other planetary bodies.
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I don't know, but there's a lot of solar energy in space that doesn't get reduced by an atmosphere. That said, why not fusion - Voyager was powered by a little plutonium, so its not like we can't send the required materials up there.
Chances are we'll be needing a moonbase before we get to the asteroids for anything other than science.
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The amount of available solar energy decreases fast the further away from the Sun you get. This is why most of the planets are cold and lifeless. Jupiter only receives 1/27 the amount of sunlight that the Earth does.
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If you're going to build an industry, think in terms of an entire industry, not just the pieces.
Just for clarity, from Juipiter -> Neptune are gas giants and most likely wouldn't have life even if they were warm.
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I That said, why not fusion - Voyager was powered by a little plutonium, so its not like we can't send the required materials up there.
Oh yea, that's a great idea. Let's put a nuke power plant into space. Do you know how much these things weigh when you add the necessary shielding so that humans can approach the thing? You don't have to shield the whole thing, like here on earth, but it's still going to be a lot of mass.
BTW, Voyager 1 &2 are powered using HEAT which is produced by radioactive decay, which is really not fusion in the chain reaction sense.
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Not really. There are designs out there for pretty darned light reactors. The soviets had some designs specifically intended for space that were pretty light, TOPAZ-2 was half a ton, and I read about a Los Alamos design that was half that. Current nuclear reactors are generally not optimized for weight. Naval reactors are optimized for size.
Also, why would you want or need to approach a nuclear reactor in space? Shielding wouldn't be light, but you don't need to fully shield the reactor. You put shielding t
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The reasons for not using nuclear power in space are political, not technological.
I wouldn't say that, the reasons are environmental and economic, with political coming up last on the list.
But don't downplay the technical issues either. Sufficient shielding for even the crew and work areas for a reactor that can produce enough energy to smelt metals won't be light. TOPAZ-2 was about 1,000 Lbs for 2 Kw of power and was NOT built for flying next to humans. Getting a pound of mass out of earth orbit is an expensive thing to do in terms of pounds of fuel needed and the vehicle to launch
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The reasons for not using nuclear power in space are political, not technological.
... Sufficient shielding for even the crew and work areas for a reactor that can produce enough energy to smelt metals won't be light...
Umm. What crew and work areas?
Asteroid mining is going to be done by robots, or it won't be done at all. The enormous cost difference between putting a robot probe in space vs putting a man who is pretty much dead weight is well known. A robot can operate for a decade unattended (Opportunity, still operating on Mars, will hit this mark in three weeks time). Asteroid mining is tailor-made for robots who have no use for a stinking atmosphere or gravity.
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With fission and fusion. Why are you excluding them?
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With what energy? Short of fission or fusion, how exactly do you plan on smelting ore in space (let alone forge it)?! Perhaps fusion in zero-G might make it easier, but who knows at this point. It's not being done now.
Solar panels. Solar energy is quite efficient in space, especially when you don't have to worry about things like the Earth getting in the way of the sun. Granted, solar panels are less effective out in the asteroid belt, but it's still a viable method.
Re: Why just look near Earth? (Score:4, Informative)
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For smelting metals, I'd figure some mirrors would be more efficient than solar panels. Let's you do away with the inefficiencies of converting light into electricity and then into heat. I'm guessing that mirrors would be lighter too.
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Solar panels are foolish for that application. Use a large curved mirror. If you spin it right, it could be quite thin, so even aluminized mylar would work, until the radiation destroyed it. Aluminum foil would work indefinitely. (You need weights around the rim, and some weak springs, to ensure that it folds out into the right shape. Not difficult. IIRC, it's already been done to test out a solar sail.)
Note that the mirror would be a bit better if it were thicker, and you could use a half-cylinder an
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Note the big ball of light in the sky.
It develops about 1.3 KW/m^2 above the atmosphere. So a parabolic mirror 2km across should give you ~4 GW at the focus.
If you can't melt an asteroid with that much heat available, you've got no business going into space.
Re:Why just look near Earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's no benefit to Earth based investors in resources with delta-v requirements effectively locking them to the vicinity of the Jovian system. Nor is there any ROI on resources even from NEOs that isn't in the Platinum group. Even in iteration 2 we'll still be looking at NEOs as the resources will be required for Earth orbiting projects.
This is because you humans wasted forty fucking years not putting a space habitat on the moon, mars, etc. A big chunk of iron might be pretty damn useful off-world without Earth's gravity tax or the prospecting / mining task of the moon or Mars. When you consider the military applications of an arsenal of asteroids (Chelyabinsk was 20-30 times Hiroshima, just didn't touch ground), it pisses all over your valuations. Compare this to valuation of radio-active substances pre-nuclear bomb.
Whomever sets up ba
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Yeah, but to profitably get materials back from the moon you need a catapult. Or, possibly, a beanstalk. Neither of those are cheap to build. And the moon seem not to have many readily accessible minerals. (It's got other advantages, and I can see building an industrial plant there to support a colony established for other reasons, but not to ship things back to Earth. At least not this decade, and probably not the next. But it would be a great place for a radio telescope, and also for a regular teles
Pure speculation on their part (Score:2)
As anyone in mining can tell you, 'ore' is defined as mineral resources that can be mined at a profit. Binghman Canyon mine, for example, ran out of ore a few years ago, but then regained ore after they build a conveyer belt that let them move material more efficiently.
The number of asteroids that are 'ore' depends on the cost of mining and the price of metal, both of which are subject to change. The cost of mining, especially, is basically unknown at this point, given that we've never done it.
Star Wars economy (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need for this to work is essentially the Star Wars economy. Wonder how they built the Death Star and all those massive ships? Droids. If we can launch something up there that can harvest enough materials and build what it needs up there to keep going, then it just takes one launch. It sends robots to the right asteroid. They extract metals, build more robots, build space ships, go to other asteroids, and keep repeating the process. Occasionally they send shipments back home.
We're a long ways away from that level of technology, but I don't think there's anything preventing us from getting there.
For energy, the robots could either build nuclear or solar power systems.
For manufacturing, 3-D printing is likely an enabling technology. It needs to advance way beyond where it is now, such as making full computers.
Refining the raw materials found on the asteroids is another obstacle.
I would guess it's 50 to 100 years out.
Re:Star Wars economy (Score:5, Funny)
You do realize that there was not really a Death Star or massive ships, right?
It was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. You couldn't be expected to remember that from your non-AP History classes.
Bad Assumptions (Score:4, Informative)
These numbers are highly speculative and reflect bad assumptions.
The main bad assumption: That one would mine an asteroid for any one resource. Platinum/water etc.
Much more likely is mining whatever is there and refining it into things useful in space, at least at first. Particularly obvious is making fuel from water, but any asteroid with ice will likely also have useful metal.
Re:Bad Assumptions (Score:4, Interesting)
Just the sheer mass of an asteroid is valuable, first for radiation protection and also for reaction mass. Strap a small nuclear reactor on a big ingot of whatever you've mined, feed slag into a NERVA-type engine, and let the resulting plasma propel your product to its destination.
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Yeah, that was my base assumption. Just the $/kg to get anything into orbit makes it more valuable if it's already out of our gravity well. There just aren't that many things on earth that we value at greater than $1400/kg, and most of those don't count for a lot of the weight being sent up. Of course, you have to factor in the transportation cost to get it where you want it, but there are a number of options in that area, too (painting one side of an asteroid a different color can change its orbit). Im
Profit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Profit (Score:5, Funny)
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Not only that, the yield of such intrinsic metals on these asteriods may literally be a thousand times higher than current yields here.
Of course, very high yields of such metals can be very detrimental to the market because t he whole premise of mining is to have low availability to make extreme mining ventures viable.. Why continue spending billions of dollars in mining palladium, iridium, if the value drops to that of gold prices?
Survey of my garden says... (Score:3)
... most rocks have little commercial value.
Just because they have yet to get trapped by the earth's gravity well doesn't mean that most asteroids (especially the ones with the right orbits to mine) are fundamentally different in composition from what we find in the earth's crust.
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Exactly. I'm commenting on the "only" being some kind of discovery, when there was so much hype about trillions in ore value just waiting to be thrusted down to us by space pioneers.
The Gold Rush redux.
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...There's great speculation that Mars may be geologically dead... it's great news for mining---if it's completely dead, there's absolutely nothing that would prevent us from drilling right through it---right to the center core that (according to "dead planet" scenario) would just be a ball of iron and lots of other heavy metals)....
I am pretty sure that the hydrostatic pressure of 5 million PSI at the center, about 20 times the yield strength of the strongest known metal, is not "absolutely nothing".
Ignore the most precious mineral (Score:2)
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most precious? space is full of that shit, a comet is just a dirty iceball.
the oort cloud goes from about 0.08 lightyears to .8 light years out, and contains trillions of water blobs larger than 1 km in diameter (also various ammonia and methane and other hydrocarbon ones)
Interesting economics (Score:2)
The value of information is going to be, at most, the value of the materials contained on the asteroid minus the cost of mining them. That means if there's a 5% ROI mining asteroids and you can get $100 million return out of the asteroid, then the value of information is going to be at most $100 million to mine a $2 billion asteroid.
Then subtract the risk. Let's say that, accounting for mission failures, failure to properly assess the asteroid's value (both finding more than expected and finding much l
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It's interesting enough that I might read it without a plot. I think if you just were to start writing about the possible future world stuff and the progression from now to then, you would have a plot. Think about the likely conflicts that might arise, the corporations that would take advantage of new technologies, and the likely response of governments and society to these changes and it could write itself.
I find this far more interesting Sci-fi than some of the crap you see on TV now a days with alien
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... I want to be a sci-fi writer; I can world-build fantasy and sci-fi, but I can't come up with plot. They've all been done; I'd feel like I'm copying someone else--anyone else--everyone else!
Welcome to literature. The "novelty story" phase of SF could not last forever - eventually writers will be judged solely by the quality of their writing in whatever genre the write. Just like the rest of literature - where all plots have also already been done. But that does not mean someone cannot write a better version with better characters and prose, and use the SF gimmicks in new and better combinations.
Consider Patrick O'Brien. Hadn't all the "sea tales" already been done by C. S. Forester and predec
Like any mountain range (Score:2)
If you think of asteroids as widely scattered mountains scattered through the solar system, they are going to vary as mountains do on Earth. Most are heaps of ordinary rock and ice. Some have more minerals, some less. A very few might have a lot of resources. But even the richest asteroid is very hard to get to compared to any mountain on Earth.
Speculation (Score:2)
Did we Learn Nothing from the Drake Eq.? (Score:5, Informative)
In many ways, these equations are almost worse than useless. For years, the Drake Eq. gave everyone the impression there were 1 or 2 other planets in the whole universe that could support life, and reinforced the whole contingent for which space exploration is never a "cost effective" endeavor. Then we found out "oh, wait, all our guesses were wildly pessemistic." They get filled with extrapolated numbers about a place we've only begun to tip-toe into and then make dire predictions.
Some are also just wrong. For example, he uses 4.5 km/s delta-V but that doesn't even cover the maxima for Liquid Fuel Rockets (7 to 9 km/s). If you start to approach tech like Electrostatic or Hall Effect (Ion) Thrusters you get up into numbers more like 50-100 km/s, which would probably multiply his 10 number by a bit (most of the Oort Cloud becomes available over time).
There's just so much fuzziness here its hard to find the use in it.
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Commercially viable (Score:3)
Didn't they learn anything from... (Score:2)
Good luck sneaking a rocket launch... (Score:2)
>> And that means the prospecting of asteroids is likely to become a highly secretive commercial endeavor in the not-too-distant future.
Given the large numbers of even hobby astronomers, the chances of sneaking a payload into space are pretty small. (See also: X37).
Asteroid mining is interesting in physics thinking (Score:2)
Once you can get a hold of an asteroid, you have a place from which you can exert a force. So 2 things can happen:
You can use force to chuck little pieces of asteroid back towards Earth to be collected "somehow"
You can jump from asteroid to asteroid.
All this would take precise calculations, but it doesn't suffer from "weak thrust ion drives", "weak solar sails", or "limited conventional thrusters." If you do your math calculations correct to jum
Missing a big point (Score:2)
When companies and research teams look at things like asteroid mining, or space exploitation in general, they tend to look at thing purely from an monetary perspective. So, the "economics" if you will.
This, by and large is the outlook most folks have. Indeed, it is our nature to take the low hanging fruit without any thought to future ramifications.
The conversation should not be one of strictly money though. Instead, they should look at the long term effects of striping our planet of natural resources.
In th
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Look at them this way, their "economics" simply replaces currency and goods with their personal wonderment and almost religious zeal for natural "purity". So, like some (not all) CEOs, anything tha
Just a guess - (Score:2)
I'm going with Ceres and Vesta. You guys can have the other ones.
Launch economics (Score:2)
A space elevator would change the economic equation quite a bit and make a lot more of them viable.
I stopped after they said drake equation (Score:2)
Its garbage equation that has ZERO scientific value.
End of discussion.
Some asteroids are worth mining? (Score:2)
Why? Do some of them contain bitcoins?
The answer is obvious (Score:2)
Let the government mine the least desirable asteroids for the public good. Leave the most profitable ones for the corporations to mine. I am sure the corporations would be happy to chip in to help pay for it with taxes...
Cost is relative to location (Score:2)
The problem with this study is that it presumes that the materials collected will be used on earth. The idea behind Planetary Resources is that they would be used in space.
A bottle of water costs what? $1 maybe $2. The cost to put that bottle of water into space can range from $1,000 to $10,000. If Planetary Resources can find some asteroids with ice, extracting the water is not that difficult a task. The problem is getting the machine for mining into place because putting things into orbit is so crazy ex
Re:Gold and California. (Score:5, Informative)
Gold created a short term spike of activity and created all kinds of damage for which we are still paying. California is all tech, agriculture, and movies now. None of that stuff runs on gold, but gold ran on mercury which still contaminates many of our bodies of water. Fish from Clear Lake (terrible misnomer) are almost inedible because of Hg contamination.
Mining sucks in the long run. Sustainable forestry, fishery, and agriculture are the true key to prosperity. That's not just California greenie hippie bullshit. It's the dogone truth.
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That, however, might be expecting too much. I have actually had an environmentally concerned person ask me "What about that environment?" This will probably be the bigger inertia.
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I think you're wrong. Import/export between Earth and Space is going to be extremely expensive until we build some form of skyhook (personally I favor starting with a PinWheel). We can't do that until we start moving asteroids. So that's not an early stage of the process.
And that means that stuff made in/obtained from space is going to be sufficiently expensive that it won't have noticable effect on local pollution.
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All very interesting, but not at all relevant to space, which is already hostile to life.
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Uhm, but the Comstock Lode [wikipedia.org] in now what's Virginia City, NV did make a lot of people rich. Also California has a lot of other resources to be sure, too bad it's lost its magic. I can say that to since I'm an expatriate born and raised in So Cal. It's a nice place to visit but I no longer want to go there.
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The Chinese are like Debian. Low risk, and slow to move to new versions. That's why you keep using it.
Mostly you keep using it because you've already invested all that time compiling, and you're convinced that it's *this close -> - to being done.
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Indeed.
So kids, what do we learn from this?
Nothing!
And that is just the point
But maybe just maybe that your time is too precious to waste it in front of a TV.
Just chuck it. I did years ago and have't regretted it one single moment.
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Too good not to call well writ.