
The Dawn of the Space Mining Age - protomyth
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-dawn-of-the-space-mining-age/
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InvisibleCities
I know that SV seems to have abandoned the idea of good unit economics, but
the concept of asteroid mining seems to take that to a whole new level. The
cost of developing autonomous asteroid mining equipment, finding asteroids
suitable for mining, getting this equipment to the asteroid, operating it,
maintaining it, and shipping the mined product back to earth must be in the
billions of dollars, if not more. This article talks about moving an asteroid
into lunar orbit to make this easier, but it seems to me that the amount of
delta-v needed to do that would be staggering, not to mention that even if we
had engines capable of generating that amount of thrust, we would still need
to somehow get them out of the Earth's gravity well and to the asteroid in
question. Plus, even if we could somehow do any of the above, is there any
evidence that asteroids like the article's $50 billion platinum asteroid even
exist? As far as I am aware, less than 10% of the asteroids in the asteroid
belt are metallic in nature (most are composed of carbon and silicon), and the
metallic asteroids we do know about are all iron and nickel based, not exactly
high-value metals. I'm all for space exploration, both by governments and by
private enterprises, but this whole thing seems completely far-fetched and
impractical.

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DavidSJ
There are many asteroids in so-called near-Earth orbits, with nearly zero
delta-V (beyond Earth escape) to reach them and return to Earth. The delta-V
is even less than an insertion into lunar orbit.

Mostly it's just a matter of being patient and letting the orbits phase, given
the right nudge.

(Also, note that delta-V is not thrust. Delta-V is a change in velocity,
thrust is force.)

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InvisibleCities
>Also, note that delta-V is not thrust. Delta-V is a change in velocity,
thrust is force.)

Thanks for the condescending reply. Seeing as I have a degree in Physics, I am
well aware of the technical difference between thrust and delta-v. However,
when talking about rocketry, it's hard to have delta-v without corresponding
thrust, and my usage of both terms was more for rhetoric than a desire for
absolute technical correctness.

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DavidSJ
Wasn't trying to be condescending, but the reason I mention it is that in
rocketry, the required thrust is _very_ different (not linearly proportional,
I mean) from required delta-V, especially in deep space missions where you
have lots of time to do your burns.

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golergka
TL;DR: Congress signs law about space enabling people to profit, journalist
excitedly retells current state of space mining.

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rektide
Nation that can't launch (human-carrying) rockets launches paperwork.

Potentially illegal violation of international law paperwork, at that.

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peter303
Ironically space mining may have been the first mining method of early humans.
Before smelting was discovered, the occasional iron meterorite provided raw
iron for tools and jewelry.

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lawpoop
Pedantricly, wouldn't that rather be space-harvesting? They did fall from the
sky.

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ro_sharp
Space.. foraging?

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viola11
"Who would have been foolish enough to squander the money, lives and resources
needed to travel to and explore the New World?"

You can only argue that the exploration of the Americas was a good affair if
you ignore the cost of all the pillaging and killing and deaths and slavery...
If you include the inhabitants of the Americas when you judge the benefit of
the "exploration of the new world", I'm not sure it ends up being a net
positive for several centuries.

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DavidSJ
Maybe, but there are no intelligent natives on asteroids.

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Mtinie
For someone interested in the future of the...err...space, what type of
technical background is required to be hired today to work at a company with
plans to attempt this type of mining?

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ChuckMcM
Personally, if I were doing this, and I might still, I would focus on the
challenges of actually mining. The reason is that rockets and probes etc are
pretty well plowed areas but while Curiosity, the mars rover, can drill a
small hole and using non-replacable reagents look for certain compounds, these
things will need to process _tons_ of material from an asteroid to try and
extract _kilograms_ of materials. That is a very unsolved problem and a very
under funded one.

A lot of current extraction techniques use liquid water (not available on an
asteroid), all extraction techniques depend on the raw ore being transportable
by buckets or belts with gravity keeping things in place (also not available
on asteroids). And many refinement techniques are very energy expensive
(challenging to ship to an asteroid). So if you can figure out how to solve
even one of those problems and asteroid mining company that hires you will be
ahead of the game.

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Hockenbrizzle
Do anyone know of research groups involved in this?

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Expez
None of these estimates seem to take into account that dumping huge quantities
of precious metals on the free market will move the price by a substantial
amount. Asteroid mining might only be profitable for a short while...

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creshal
That depends on the amount and time scale. The quoted $50 billion platinum
asteroid would contain around 2500 tons – the equivalent of 15 years worth of
terrestrial production –, and most certainly not in a pure form. Mining all
that and returning it to Earth safely is likely a long-term project.

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lsaferite
I guess what should really be considered is, why would you return the raw ore
to earth? The dawn of space mining will trigger the dawn of space refining and
manufacturing I think.

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creshal
You'd still have to return the final products. And with something like
platinum, which is used in tiny traces, stuffing half a ton in bars into a
Soyuz and sending it back would probably be more profitable than, say,
building whole exhaust catalysts in space and returning those.

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lsaferite
Well, I did say 'refining' in addition to manufacturing. In some cases refined
raw material makes sense to deorbit. But if you consider the costs of lifting
objects to orbit, the ability to manufacture large mass components in orbit
would be a huge win. Sure, the initial costs of getting to the point where you
can manufacture in orbit are large. But, if space mining becomes profitable
they'll need more and more gear to do this. If they have to lift all that gear
off earth then it is prohibitive. Hence space manufacturing is a self-help
path for mining.

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JulianMorrison
Space mining concept: an in-vacuum absolutely enormous mass spectrometer as a
way to naturally sort plasma-ified asteroid matter into buckets of 100% pure
elements. Which can then be pushed with small ion engines onto slow orbits
that will eventually deliver them to Earth.

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Lambdanaut
Why sort them in space? That work can be done on Earth.

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jerf
A: You've got access to a lot of solar power, on a completely predictable
schedule. Especially convenient since in this particular case you don't need
to convert it to electricity first. B: Anything you release as a gas flies
harmlessly out into the universe, so your environmental restrictions are a
great deal less. (Also, this is not "cheating regulations" or anything... this
is _truly_ an environment with fewer restrictions. If you can vaporize it, it
can be made to truly go away forever.) C: You've got zero G, and this sort of
"massive mass spec" plan, while I question the numbers in general, is probably
a great deal more practical in zero G than not zero G.

And it would all tie together; if the exhaust is in excess of escape velocity,
which it probably is by an order of magnitude or two, you can just let
anything you don't care to catch fly into space.

I'm not saying this is practical or necessarily a good idea, just pointing out
that you _do_ have some options in space that you don't have on Earth.

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sslayer
If one wanted to invest in this($100-$1000's - not millions), what entry
points would they have?

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waterlesscloud
Get your ass to work.

What other "entry point" do you truly expect for emerging worlds?

#kidstoday

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clock_tower
> What other "entry point" do you truly expect for emerging worlds?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-
stock_company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company)

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fit2rule
Well, it makes complete sense: we save planet earth by moving all our industry
to space.

I'm all for it. Close every factory that we can down here, as fast as we can,
and put the iPod-assembly 'bots up in sk. I'd happily spend my days remotely
managing a small fleet of robot miners on the Asteroid#71238, work comfortably
on the beach while remotely hunting valuable commodities some 1,000,000 miles
away, or at least have a harvest of asteroids parked within our reach at any
part of the planet, so .. in the end, anywhere any time can just dial the #
and down from the sky comes a little edible parachute with the latest iDevice.

Earth returns to paradise, kids get to play with robots in space, everyone
wins. Whats not to like?

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chishaku
Does this make anyone else nervous?

