
$10 Quintilian Asteroid to Stay Out of Reach of Space Miners - saeedjabbar
http://60secondstatistics.com/asteroid-worth-10-quintilian-may-stay-out-of-reach-of-space-miners-due-to-the-cancellation-of-nasas-arm-mission/
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arbuge
Reminder: any such numbers are purely theoretical, and based on an infinite
market capable of absorbing infinite amounts of product at current pricing
levels. That is not the world we live in.

~~~
olegkikin
The important thing to note here is that "precious metals" and "rare minerals"
really aren't. Given advanced enough technology, they become abundant.

That happened with aluminum - they used to make very expensive jewelry out of
it, till we learned how to mine it efficiently, and now it's $1.9 per kilo.

I expect the same to happen to gold, silver, platinum. Diamonds are already on
their way.

~~~
tn13
Obviously. Same goes for fossil fuels and water.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Water is already abundant. And much less than $1.90 per kilogram.

~~~
danieltillett
Not in the restaurants around me.

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kr7
16 Psyche is far to big to move anywhere.

16 Psyche's mass is 2.27·10^19 kg and its orbital speed is 17.34 km/s.

Earth's orbital speed is 29.78 km/s.

So a perfect orbital transfer (not even possible) to get 16 Psyche into
Earth's orbit would take an impulse of at least (29780.0 m/s - 17340.0 m/s) ·
2.27·10^19 kg = 2.82388·10^23 kg·m/s.

A Saturn V rocket produces 3.51·10^7 N of thrust.

So it would take one Saturn V rocket 8.0452·10^15 seconds to move 16 Psyche,
or 2.5511·10^08 years.

If we had 1 million Saturn V rockets, it would take just over 255 years.

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dzdt
What rubbish! A commodity only has value in a form and location where it is
under demand. There is no way iron will ever be delivered to the surface of
the Earth from an asteroid in a way cost-competitive to terrestrial mining. So
the effective value with existing markets is zero.

~~~
AlexCoventry
The article suggests that the metals would be useful for construction of
orbital structures, so the comparison to terrestrial mining costs doesn't
relate to their argument.

~~~
cftm
I would argue that actually it does - in order to bring the world commodity
market crashing, as is suggested by the article, it requires iron coming down
to earth and bringing mass down the gravity well, safely, requires either a
great deal of energy or something like a space elevator.

Under the assumption that no space elevator exists, then this argument is spot
on. The iron outside of earth's gravity well would be cheap for building in
space, the iron on earth would be "cheap" for building on earth.

Commodity movement in either direction wouldn't make sense, so two distinct
markets for iron would exist.

~~~
candiodari
Gravity is a conservative force, so bringing the metal down with a space
elevator will release exactly the same amount of energy as just crashing it
into the surface. The rate may be different (though how would you dissipate
that energy ? Note that there is essentially zero thermal contact with the
athmosphere or anything else on a space elevator except at the bottom 20km or
so)

That's one of the reasons why space miners are proposing to just crash the
asteroids into desert areas.

~~~
hedora
Put another way, we should use a space elevator and electric generator to slow
useful commodities down as they fall from space to earth.

If only rockets had regenerative brakes!

~~~
transposed
I thought of a pulley for some reason, and on the off chance it wasn't a
completely ridiculous idea googled it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator#Cross-
Sec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator#Cross-
Section_Profile)

------
danjoc
Or just drag it into orbit under the guise of space mining, then drop large
chunks of it on governments you don't like. Unstoppable once nudged into a
drop. Completely annihilate your enemies.

~~~
nine_k
The US had a military program like that: orbital "arrows" that would hit a
target on surface in an unstoppable way. But a few literal kilotons is a
different deal.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
We called it "Project Thor", or "Rods from God". Seriously. Phone poles made
of tungsten. In orbit.

~~~
candiodari
Why tungsten ?

The idea of warfare using "mass drivers" has been studied for quite a while.
It means that the first nation to do this is essentially unstoppable and can
destroy whatever they want. Including all life on earth.

By contrast, for nuclear weapons, lots of people seem to believe that they can
destroy all life on earth, or at least all animals, and they most definitely
can't. They release lots of energy, but not enough. Mass drivers, however, are
in fact capable of doing it.

~~~
M_Grey
>Why tungsten?

Dense. Great thermal properties, unlike say lead, steel, or iron which would
burn up on re-entry. Kind of the ultimate fuck-you to the life when you think
about it...

...First because of the obvious utility for anyone who has them, and is
willing to use them as you say.

Second, because it would cost _sooooo much_ to lift those heavy bastards,
their casing, and the fuel to keep them up there into orbit.

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bpodgursky
Don't get me wrong -- I liked the asteroid recovery mission concept.

But this asteroid has radius of ~250km, so getting that into earth orbit was a
bit out of the scope of the mission to begin with.

~~~
astrodust
Getting it into orbit is harder than not getting it into orbit and
accidentally the apocalypse.

~~~
sova
That is a fantastic parable for greed and endless hunger if I ever imagined
one: that tasty asteroid looks so good, let's just bring it a little closer.

~~~
averagewall
You seem to imply that there's something bad or dangerous about greed and
endless hunger. Without those, there would be no life. You could almost say
they're the meaning of life. Perhaps a more direct parable would be "A poor
person starves to death by not trying hard enough to find food."

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saagarjha
Is there some kind of joke I'm missing with the "Quintilian"?

~~~
pierrec
I particularly liked how they capitalized it in the middle of sentences. The
spellchecker was just doing its job, forcing the capitalization of a notable
Roman historical figure.

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lifeformed
There's $118 quintillion of unmined iron on earth right now.

~~~
nine_k
Including the core?

~~~
lifeformed
Just in the crust.

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danbruc
_[...] many others were worried about the absolute collapse in commodity
prices that would have occurred if it were suddenly easy to get all the iron
and nickel we’d need for centuries._

Worried? Because of falling prices? Looks like someone didn't pay attention
during economics 101 or is afraid of going out of business.

~~~
danharaj
Funny how econ 101 doesn't predict the systemic damage that a precipitous
price drop can inflict on an economy.

~~~
danbruc
What kind of systemic damage could asteroid mining cause?

~~~
M_Grey
Well lets see... are there any economies that depend on mining? It seems like
it would cause quite a stir.

~~~
danbruc
What does dependent mean? There are 8 countries with more than 10 % of their
GDP from mineral resources. They are in order of decreasing share Togo,
Suriname, Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mongolia, Chile, and Zambia. Togo has
the largest dependency with 16.1 %. Chile is by far the largest economy with a
GDP of 240 billion Dollar followed by Congo, Zambia, and Mongolia with 35, 21,
and 11 billion Dollar.

So depending on the exact composition, some countries might experience some
pain. But space mining would not arrive over night, missions have to be
planed, infrastructure must be build, and long distances have to be traveled.
So there would almost certainly be some time to get prepared for the arrival
of cheap cheap metals from space.

~~~
M_Grey
The countries you've listed... do they strike you as likely to "get prepared"?
Even if they did, what could they do?

~~~
danbruc
Shift the economy towards other sectors? That happens all the time. A prime
example are oil states currently trying to lower their dependence on oil. What
would be the alternative? Not innovate? No, let's not invest in renewable
energy, that will hurt coal, oil, and gas producing countries, let's just keep
burning fossile fuels? That's just the way it is, the world changes
constantly, adapt or fall behind.

~~~
M_Grey
I don't think some of those places have "other sectors" that can be shifted
to. I'm not arguing for burning fossil fuels, but shrugging and telling people
already past the edge of desperation to "adapt" is cruel and unreasonable.

~~~
danbruc
The highest dependency on mineral resources is 16.1 % and it seems unlikely
that the entire sector would get killed, i.e. if the asteroid contains mostly
iron and nickel, then only those parts would be affected. Without running the
actual numbers it's hard to tell if some countries would get hit unreasonably
hard. But even if, we could still opt to support them. We could have a tax on
space mining operations and spend the proceeds on support for affected
countries. So this should at best be a question of how, not if.

By the way, I don't think space mining will be of any practical relevance in
the foreseeable future. I would also much prefer if we would learn to operate
economically with the resources we have instead of just reaching for more
resources. So I have no real skin in the argument, I just found this position
against space mining unjustified.

~~~
M_Grey
I understand where you're coming from, I'm just enjoying the discussion as
well. I think you're right, it's definitely feasible that we could ease the
impact of such mining, but I worry that we wouldn't. The countries you've
listed are ones that most people shrug and feel badly for, but don't really do
much to change. They've been basket cases for longer than most have been
alive, and the reasons why are complicated and largely older than anyone
alive.

I worry that it would be cheaper and more profitable for some to simply write
them off. You're right however, that it's not a problem with space-mining,
it's a problem with people.

~~~
danbruc
In the end it is always a people problem. If you leave them unchecked, the
most ruthless ones will prevail and things will go south from there.

------
Animats
What, is someone suggesting moving a 200KM asteroid closer to the earth? With
what? A really big H-bomb?

It might be nice to go take a look, and it may be useful someday, but short of
fusion drives, we're not going to be moving asteroid-sized hunks of iron
around the Solar System.

~~~
averagewall
Maybe with a solar powered ion thruster. One has already been run for 6 years
non-stop. [1]

Also, an asteroid is made of reaction mass. That's not in short supply like it
is with a normal rocket.

Don't forget Newton's 2nd law says that if you even touch it with your little
finger, it'll keep going somewhere else forever. You don't need a lot of force
to move large distances in space.

[1]
[https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html)

~~~
sbierwagen

      Also, an asteroid is made of reaction mass.
    

An asteroid is made of physical matter, yes, but it's not made out of the
noble gas xenon, which NEXT used. Skimming the electric propulsion doesn't
reveal any high-isp thrusters designed to use powdered asteroid.

    
    
      Don't forget Newton's 2nd law says that if you even 
      touch it with your little finger, it'll keep going 
      somewhere else forever. You don't need a lot of force 
      to move large distances in space.
    

This is... true... but your intuitions as to the forces involved are badly
off. Let's run the numbers for 16 Psyche real quick. Assume you're putting
together an asteroid tug that has an array of a thousand NEXT thrusters, and
the 10 megawatt solar array you need to power the thrusters. Assume they're
making a solid 50km/s exhaust velocity, the top end for ion propulsion. And,
just for fun, include 10,000,000,000,000 metric tons of xenon. This is a
pretty big spacecraft, but it's a thousandth the size of 16 Psyche.
(2.27×10^19 kg)

Light off the thrusters, and run them until they use up all the xenon. It'll
take a while. 63,218,390,804 years, in fact. (870 tonnes per 5.5 years) But,
good news! After that burn, you've added 0.05km/s to 16 Psyche's orbital
velocity. Delta V between the belt and Earth is around 5km/s, so you'll need
to do that about a hundred more times.

There are better candidates for asteroid capture than 16 Psyche.

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rckrd
Relevant might be Paul Krugman's college thesis at Princeton, "The Theory of
Interstellar Trade"[0]

[0]
[https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf](https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf)

~~~
sova
"It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest
charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel close to the
speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will
appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary
observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true
theorems are proved."

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deepnotderp
Imagine how powerful whoever controlled this would be. In one stroke they
could decimate economies that either have a lot of gold or whose central bank
has a lot of gold. I'm just surprised the military, Cia or some other deep
state agency isn't already on good.

~~~
runeks
We haven't really used gold for the past 100 years or so, except that we
pretended the US Dollar was backed by it from ~1950-1971.

By which process will bringing back large amounts of gold "decimate
economies"? And which economies, specifically?

~~~
deepnotderp
India. Even China to some extent. Large amounts of savings would be negated
overnight. Rival economies like the US could benefit from such incidents.

------
sova
Okay I have an important question about mineral rights. If something is in
space, who do the mineral rights belong to? Whoever nabbed it? Or is that just
uncharted and untested?

~~~
mkempe
John Locke answered that question centuries ago, his answer remains valid.

~~~
sova
Could you remind me what his conclusion was?

~~~
mkempe
I have property in my own person, hence the labor of my body and the work of
my hands are my property. What I remove from a state of nature and mix my
labor with, becomes my property. That's how asteroids and planets ought to and
will become property.

See Chapter V of Locke's Second Treatise of Government, Of Property.

------
Balgair
Oh hey, I know that mission. A family member of mine is making the rad-
detector for it.

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eloff
Let's hope Elon Musk doesn't find out about this. With his ambition and
penchant for moon(mars?)shots he might just try redirecting this asteroid.
Plus he owns a rocket company, so he's got more means to pursue such a goal
than anyone else. But I'd sleep better knowing there isn't a 200km wide chunk
of solid iron being redirected in our general direction by programmers who
maybe fat-fingered a critical part of the data/algorithm somewhere.

~~~
darpa_escapee
The cost and risk associated with such a task is way out of SpaceX's scope.

~~~
mabbo
Is it? The IPT can theoretically go anywhere inside Saturn's orbit (maybe it
was only Jupiter?). It's entirely possible to reach some pretty valuable
asteroids in that range. Send an IPT with mining equipment, leave the
equipment behind and fill the ship with the processed or semi-processed
precious metals. 50 tonnes could be turned into a cool billion dollars[1]
without absolutely destroying the market (ease them in slowly).

There's risks, but that's sort of Elon Musk's thing. And the money would help
cover this Mars colony plan.

[1] ballparking using the going price of gold and platinum of around $1200
USD/ounce.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don't think Elon Musk's thing is risks... his thing is goals. He's not
building rockets because it's risky, he's taking risks to make humankind
multiplanetary. He's not starting a car company because it's risky, he's
making cars to accellerate the transition to sustainable energy.

What's the goal for getting 50 tonnes of gold and platinum to Earth? Cash?
Musk is just raised $1.2 billion for Tesla this week, no asteroid required.

~~~
mabbo
He _borrowed_ $1.2 billion. He took on an incredibly large debt. No one ever
got rich applying for credit cards.

The purpose of getting 50 tonnes of rare earths is to pay back those debts,
and pay for the next big project that needs a billion dollars.

Lowering the cost of rare metals would also be a big boon for humanity. Mining
in Earth is not an industry known for its safety or cleanliness, and lower
prices of those metals would bring down the cost of many technological
innovations to levels that more people can have them.

I see asteroid mining as not just a profitable thing, but a project worthy of
doing at a level beyond finance.

~~~
geezerjay
According to Bloomberg, Musk sold 250 million dollars worth of Tesla shares
and emitted 750 million dollars in convertible debt. That's not exactly the
same as borrowing 1.2 billion dollars.

