
Company backed by James Cameron & Google founders may mine asteroids - jen_h
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/18/2957585/planetary-resources-space-exploration-company-james-cameron-google
======
bradleyland
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.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I know more rich people than i care to admit on the internet. Long story
short, they're mostly useless human beings busy investing in whatever makes
the next dollar, dying, and handing off their treasure to their spoiled
children and grandchildren who will squander it or continue to do the same.

You're cherry picking a handful of nerd billionaires who are getting into,
lets face it, a pretty big gamble right now. SpaceX is the only success story
of all the commercial space companies and the whole "The rich will find a way
to become immortal and sell us the serum" scenario is this weird opposite of
classism.

I'd also add that this mentality is why we had kings and dicators in human
history. We're just too prone to thinking a few alpha males will Fix
Everything and pesky things like division of power, politics, just get in the
way of our Ayn Rand heroes. I think you can figure out in the lifecycle of
kingdoms and dictatorships that the endgame is never paradise. Its usually a
long ongoing nightmare of cronyism and human rights violations.

Weird to see a western person dismiss the incredible priviledge he has and
free speech rights and lack of obligations of serfdom/slavery suddenly take up
the mantle of 'let the alpha males fix everything you stupid bureaucratic
peons.'

Just out of curiosity, do you think these gentle nerds would have thrived in a
environment like the one you're applauding? Imagine Bill Joy or Wozniack or
Bezos born into a crony capitalistic environment. Something tells me without
the nannying of the western enlightened nanny state with its safe streets and
cheap public education, would any of these guys have had the class mobility or
opportunity to move upwards? Makes me wonder how many geniuses are being
pissed away in places where the alpha males rule harshly. The world has
probably lost hundreds of north korean and somalian genuises.

~~~
kajro
Just a note: Isn't the mindset that "thinking a few alpha males will Fix
Everything" exactly what Ayn Rand was condemning?

------
bane
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.

~~~
pm90
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
There's a great idea I read once (can't remember the book), where space mining
smelters inject nitrogen into the molten metal creating a foam. This
drastically changes the thermal and density characteristics of the material
and allows tons of the material to be dropped from orbit into the ocean
without causing an accidental extinction event.

Here's some links on it

<http://dailyreckoning.com/foam-technology/>

A better question is that this seems to only make economic sense for
relatively rare materials, but the sudden flood of material would lower their
market price potentially pushing them too low to be economically viable to
support space mining.

------
InclinedPlane
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
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."

------
tgflynn
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
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. :)

~~~
tgflynn
_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?_

No, but I'd like to see some hard analysis showing that these concerns are
actually valid and, even if they are, that less radical alternatives have been
considered before huge amounts of resources are devoted to such radical and
expensive ideas.

The Earth's crust is very large, and this wouldn't be the first time that
natural resource limitations have been blown out of proportion because people
couldn't see relatively near term technological or organizational solutions to
them.

Consider these two cases : fossil fuels and Solyndra. In the first case the
experts have been saying for decades (at least since the Arab oil embargo of
1973, but maybe before, since my memories don't go back farther) that the
planet will soon run out of fossil fuels. Now this is true for some definition
of soon but based on what I was hearing 30 years ago I never would have
expected US oil production to be growing in 2010.

The Solyndra case is an example of an unsuccessful business decision being
based on the assumption that a resource (refined silicon) that is scarce at
time t would remain scarce at time t + <a few years>.

Now of course hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not saying I could have predicted the
development of fracking 30 years ago or Chinese improvements in silicon
processing technology 5 years ago but sometimes keeping in mind some really
simple ideas can help to keep perspective. For instance when someone says
natural resources are scarce so maybe we should mine asteroids I tend to
think, "... but the Earth's crust is really big, hmm...". Or when someone says
refined silicon is really expensive so we can make a lot of money using this
new technology for making solar cells, I tend to think, "...refined silicon ==
sand + X, now why is X so expensive and can something be done about it, hmm,
...".

I've actually often wondered why billionaires haven't invested their money in
truly world changing ideas (being able to do that has always seemed to me to
be the only meaningful motivation for becoming a billionaire) but there are so
many technologies that could radically transform the world and human existence
in the next 20-50 years that I think mining asteroids can and should wait.

------
drawkbox
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
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
_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)?

~~~
warfangle
Why send the raw minerals down to earth? Many items could probably benefit
from zero-gravity manufacturing facilities. Then you air-drop the finished
products.

~~~
bdunbar
If we can ship iron to Cleavland cheaper than we can ship it from the Iron
Range then we can stop strip-mining the countryside.

Which - whoops - puts guys out of work in favor of robots and technicians who
operate them. I think that's another HN thread however.

Of course ... you _could_ make tractors and cars in space, but that's somehow
mind-boggling to me.

~~~
warfangle
We'd have flying cars finally ;) granted, they'd only fly 'til they landed for
the first time...

~~~
bdunbar
And bring new meaning to the term 'drop shipping'.

------
jboggan
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
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>

~~~
jen_h
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/>).

(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.)

------
keenerd
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>

------
RandallBrown
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
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.

------
jbattle
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.

~~~
smhinsey
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.

------
waterlesscloud
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
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.

------
OzzyB
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...](http://www.ted.com/talks/phil_plait_how_to_defend_earth_from_asteroids.html)

------
DanBC
Rare earth minerals?

I guess Google's feeling the pinch from Chinese supply blocking.

~~~
Roboprog
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
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
> _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/>)

------
redthrowaway
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
_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
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.

~~~
jessriedel
> 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.

~~~
bdunbar
I was assuming you'd have parachutes to avoid vaporizing the rocks when they
hit the ground.

And if we have parachutes then we can wrap an ablative capsule around the
rocks.

Add a guidance system to make the lawyers and citizens happy.

~~~
jessriedel
I think parachutes would be a waste, but a cheap, spray-on ablative layer
could make sense.

~~~
bdunbar
Think of it this way - with parachutes and a guidance system you can land the
stuff wherever you want.

This might not be so important for tons of raw metal. Could be a good tech to
have around when you want your orbital factories to compete with terrestrial
concerns.

------
zipdog
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
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.

------
trefn
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
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.

------
wtvanhest
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
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.

~~~
wtvanhest
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.

~~~
prawn
Storage on long time frames would mean more expensive, long-term bets for the
companies responsible? I'd assume that they'd already be gambling in the early
stages setting this stuff up and looking for a pay-off within a reasonable
time frame.

~~~
wtvanhest
I'm not sure if it would cost much to store or not. They might be able to use
carbon fiber boxes (built in space) and get it in to high orbit. Satellites
can stay up there for a long time with limited/no additional expense.

------
malay
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.

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

------
tocomment
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?

------
buu700
_James Cameron_ is mining space? I have a feeling that the sequel to _Avatar_
will be a documentary...

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

------
loverobots
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.

