Asteroid Mining Company's First Satellite Launches From Space Station 35
An anonymous reader writes: Planetary Resources, the company trying to jumpstart an asteroid-mining industry, has launched its first spacecraft. Its 90-day mission is to boldly... test avionics, control systems, and software. The Arkyd 3 Reflight craft was launched from the International Space Station after being delivered there in April. (They had intended to test earlier, but their first craft was lost in the Antares rocket explosion last October.) "The spacecraft is small, but mighty: At just 12 by 4 by 4 inches (30 by 10 by 10 centimeters), it will test key systems and control schemes that will allow later craft to land on asteroids to extract water and minerals. Eric Anderson, co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, said in the statement that the mining technologies could also help monitor and manage Earth's valuable resources. Later this year, once the satellite completes its 90-day mission, Planetary Resources will send up another satellite: the Arkyd-6, which will be twice as large and will test even more systems needed for the asteroid-mining process, representatives said."
HRMPFF! (Score:2)
Has anyone done an environmental impact study on this brain fart?
Would be interesting to see if they aren't too ashamed.
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Notice governments of Earth are already chomping at regulating who gets to mine asteroids.
Power gots ta power.
don't look now (Score:2)
Re:don't look now (Score:4, Insightful)
commodities in general, and precious metals in particular, suck.
In space, all metals are precious. It costs $5k to put a kg of steel into LEO. Even more for GSO or deep space. The trick is to keep the mined materials in space. They are worth far, far less on earth's surface.
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The cost of commodities in space is currently driven by the cost to put it on a rocket to put it into space. A kilogram of steel? $5000. A kilogram of water? $5000. A kilogram of oxygen? $5000.
If a company can mine asteroids and prepare usable materials (water, steel, etc.) in space, they can basically sell it all to customers for $4990 per kilogram. The alternative is for the customer to pay for a rocket to get it off of Earth at $5000 per kilogram.
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http://howmanypeopleareinspace... [howmanypeo...ghtnow.com]
As of this post, there are Three people in space. Sometimes it's nine.
It doesn't take a rocket science to realize that there is not enough current demand for anything to make it cost effective.
Even if we increase demand 100 fold, it still isn't going to be worthwhile.
And I don't think they're going to do that. Frankly, having even three folks up there is a bit of a waste.
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I take it the point is to use the materials in space to first build something. Only once it's built will people actually come. The reason why our space programs are stuck in first gear is that we don't know how to build things in space from materials that are there. This will change soon, because many of the lessons of automated production techniques on Earth can be applied (with modifications) in space. The problem will be one of sourcing the raw materials from which to manufacture something useful. So tha
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Monetize space (Score:5, Insightful)
The asteroid belt contains the galaxy's low hanging fruit of available rocket fuel (hydrogen and oxygen), and quite probably some metal groups we find necessary on planet, as well.
This is the next logical step. Monetize space. Get behind it... or get out of the way, so that others might not trample you.
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I haven't quite figured out the economics yet.
If you consider minerals, I would imagine that asteroid mining will certainly be less cost-effective than mining them on Earth. So there's no way they're going to be able to compete with Earth-bound mining. Short of some kind of unobtainium deposit, you're losing money. You could conceivably sell the minerals in orbit for building things up there, but that technology doesn't really exist yet and that's going to be pretty tricky to come up with.
If you consider
Re:Monetize space (Score:4, Informative)
asteroid mining will certainly be less cost-effective than mining them on Earth.
It depends what you are mining. If you are mining a lithophile mineral like uranium or thorium, that readily oxidizes, you are better off digging into the earth's crust. But if you are looking for a siderphile mineral like gold, platinum, or iridium, you are better off looking in the asteroid belt. Gold readily dissolves in molten iron, and nearly all terrestrial gold sunk into the core eons ago.
To decide where to mine, look at the Goldschmidt classification [wikipedia.org] for the element you need.
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This is the next logical step. Monetize space. Get behind it... or get out of the way, so that others might not trample you.
Problem: To the rest of the galaxy we'll end up pigeonholing ourselves as being too 'Ferengi like'
Dog whistles... nice! (Score:2)
nutter butter [twitter.com]
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Escaping the earth's gravity well is the millstone about the neck of the exploration of the rest of the Universe for the Earthling humans.
Really? I woiuld have thought, by any measure, the sheer size of the galaxy, let alone the universe, is the actual millstone. The delta v required to reach orbit (11.2 km/s) is only a quarter of the size needed to escape the gravity of the sun (42 km/s) and thus escape the solar system. Even then, you will get nowhere, the delta-v required to travel anywhere is measure in fractions of the speed of light, and any practical speed (for the purposes of travelling) is measured in units far above what we can hope
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How do you deorbit a million tonnes of ore without blasting out a huge hole on earth.
You don't deorbit anything. That's the idea - get materials into space by using the materials that are already in space.
Asteroid mining isn't meant to provide raw materials for Earth.