
Space mining is going to seriously disrupt Earth's economy - walterbell
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/international-laws-are-not-ready-for-space-mining
======
UncleEntity
Pretty much the whole of human activity is spent on managing scarce resources
in one way or another. Most things that have reduced this "burden" have been
to the betterment of society (on the whole, of course there have been local
winners and losers) so there is no reason to believe that some new form of
scarcity reductions will not also follow this trend.

I think the major flaw most people make in this area is assuming that the
current situation is the optimal and any disruption is inherently bad -- e.g.
gold has always been scarce so it must always be scarce. Bastiat talks about
this phenomenon with his "that which is seen and that which is unseen" theory
one could argue.

\--edit-- Bastiat link --
[http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html)

~~~
tritium
Totally true, but it’s really, _really_ important to stay alert and watch
disruptive economic shifts like a hawk.

The first thing keep in mind when radical improvements arrive is that
spectacular new things have been dropped at our feet before, and killed a
massive shitload of people. Not everybody wins when things get generally
better. Some people lose, and when the individual tales of losers are closely
examined, sometimes they have lost through incredibly bitter narratives no
less.

Some cavemen were probably left crippled only to die a miserable caveman death
by trying to mount horses, some people were gored by non-collapsible steering
columns in early car accidents, some people were smeared across mountain tops
by early planes without hazard avoidance instrumentation.

Things get better, but indivuals still pay for it.

~~~
Nomentatus
Next you'll be saying that computer viruses could exist, or that bitcoin's
blockchain could suck up way too much energy.

------
randomdrake
Study: The politics of space mining – An account of a simulation game

Citation: Paikowsky, Deganit. Tzezana, Roey. Acta Astronautica Volume 142,
January 2018, 10-17.

Link:
[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016)

DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016

Abstract: Celestial bodies like the Moon and asteroids contain materials and
precious metals, which are valuable for human activity on Earth and beyond.
Space mining has been mainly relegated to the realm of science fiction, and
was not treated seriously by the international community. The private industry
is starting to assemble towards space mining, and success on this front would
have major impact on all nations. We present in this paper a review of current
space mining ventures, and the international legislation, which could stand in
their way - or aid them in their mission. Following that, we present the
results of a role-playing simulation in which the role of several important
nations was played by students of international relations. The results of the
simulation are used as a basis for forecasting the potential initial responses
of the nations of the world to a successful space mining operation in the
future.

Highlights:

• The realization of space exploitation will disrupt world politics.

• The simulation highlighted the political tensions and different interests.

• Inclusive international process is needed to reach fast adaptation.

• Creative mechanisms are needed to allow sharing of new global wealth.

~~~
wellboy
Isn't it way too expensive, just like recovering tons of gold from the bottom
of the sea from sunken ships?

~~~
jhbadger
Yes. What these predictions assume is that there will be a massive orders-of-
magnitude reduction in the cost of space transportation. The moon rocks
brought back from Apollo missions are estimated to have cost NASA over $50K
per gram (see [https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-
apollo17.ht...](https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-
apollo17.html)). Gold is only $40/gram currently.

~~~
flogic
I'm not sure Apollo is the best benchmark. The primary goal was to send the
astronauts there and bring them back. Just changing the primary goal should
result in a huge reduction in the cost per gram. You'd just send a tiny
excavation rover and have it fill bins for the return trip. Followup trips
might even skip the rover and just use the one already there. There is a huge
amount of room for efficiency and cost savings especially if you leave the
humans home.

Though, Moon rocks are a bit of an outlier. They don't have much value outside
of science and as a curiosity. You might want to focus on something with more
predictable demand. In which case, it may get more complicated than "shovel
stuff into a bin".

------
mpweiher
Hmm..natural resources are a tiny part of total world GDP, so apart from the
practicalities (actually mining the stuff, getting it here), I don't see how
the world economy could be "disrupted" by changes here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition)

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.TOTL.RT.ZS](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.TOTL.RT.ZS)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Mostly by massively reducing the market price of minerals that are relatively
easily obtained through space mining.

Like, the total worldwide value of gold is $7.5 trillion (at about 187,000
tonnes). If mining thousands of tons of gold becomes super cheap, the price of
gold would crash even without actually doing the space mining, as people try
to exit their gold positions in advance of space miners flooding the market.

~~~
mpweiher
> worldwide value of gold is $7.5 trillion

And what's the total value of worldwide assets? If I look at [1], I see that
Blackrock by itself has $4.7 trillion under management, and the total "under
management" is $139 trillion. Estimates from [2] give guesses of at least $1-2
quadrillion.

So even if you manage to find so much gold that the existing value goes to
zero, the impact seems limited to me. And I severely doubt you'd easily get
that to zero.

> (at about 187,000 tonnes)

That's a lot of weight to (a) mine and (b) get to earth, and gold is certainly
among the highest value-density you're going to get. Just theoretical
availability does very little to prices, see _Gold in Seawater_ [3]: "Ocean
waters do hold gold – nearly 20 million tons of it."

Currently, returning things to earth is sufficiently expensive that it is
uneconomical to return satellites (costing on the order of $300m[4]) to earth,
for example for repair.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_assets_under_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_assets_under_management)

[2]
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836AAnbTnr#)

[3]
[https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html)

[4]
[https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite10.htm](https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite10.htm)

~~~
candiodari
Minerals, however, do not decompose. A 100 block of gold you could just throw
at a specific location and then re-"mine" after the somewhat violent landing,
nothing will be wrong with it, aside from significant melting at the edges.

(and in the "nothing wrong with it" assessment, the same cannot be said of the
landing site, but there are plenty of places where that wouldn't be a great
issue, e.g. one of the huge deserts like the Sahara, Inner Russia/China or
Australia). Note that to an extent you can control the blast. So a 100 ton
"mining ball" would not nearly have the same impact energy as a 100 ton
asteroid, and even compared to the average meteorite it would be on the
extreme slow end. There's a "minimum" blast that's essentially unavoidable,
but it's not that huge, only a few square kilometers, and slowing things down
to that speed is not hard if you take your time. Only if you want to return
things intact do you need to go through the expensive process. Obviously doing
the above method with an astronaut would be frowned upon.

It's also been studied what happens if you want to go further. If you're
willing to wait ~10 years, returning near-earth things to earth by crashing
into it is incredibly cheap. If you're willing to wait ~100 years, from almost
any point in the inner solar system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network)

In the longer term I would argue that the economy will move to space. For most
production processes weightlessness, and vacuum environment (not to mention
infinite expansion space and infinite energy) would help a lot.

------
sologoub
Mining/refining is a significant source of pollution on earth. It’s
interesting that in talking about economic impacts, we don’t talk about the
reduction in “expense” to our environment and health.

If the current mining industries could be replaced with those that do not
pollute our living space, there are significant gains to be head in the form
of more usable land and better ecological environments.

Additionally, a number of much cleaner technologies are currently very
expensive because of the scarcity of resources and pollution involving mining.
Lithium for batteries is one example. Disposition of used batteries would
remain a problem, but perhaps similar off-world approach could be used there.

~~~
SubiculumCode
The counter argument is that increasing heavy metal load on the Earth's
surface from space Mining could be very bad.

~~~
Nomentatus
Not impossible, but most of the heavy metals that end up in the environment
get spewed out during the mining and refining processes that would no longer
take place on the earth.

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technofiend
I'd argue space-based energy collection and redistribution to Earth would be
equally disruptive. China and the US are still heavily dependent on coal for
energy as a single example. Nuclear's dream of "too cheap to meter" never came
to pass and I'm sure that would be true of extra-planetary power as well but
it would still put huge pressure on fossil fuels and if cheap enough could
help further drive the switch to electric vehicles. It also has the added
benefit of not requiring trips to the Kuiper belt like in system mining could.

~~~
ben_w
Orbital power is either beamed to Earth, or connected to a supercomducting
space elevator. Beamed power is problematic, because it’s either as diffuse as
sunlight, or concentrated enough to be a weapon in its own right. And if you
can make a space elevator length of superconductor economically, it’s easier
to make a ring of PV and superconductors passing through the world’s deserts
(and connecting them to each other and to all the cities) — it’s always
daylight somewhere in the world.

~~~
technofiend
Absolutely dude, I wasn't trying to hand wave and claim these are solved
problems! I was just saying if we're having a thought exercise about
potentially disruptive space-based technology that energy would be another
interesting one to discuss.

------
philipkglass
_It’s 2035 and Earth’s population has grown dramatically. People are desperate
to find alternatives to the dwindling natural resources needed to keep the
global economy functioning. We have bled the Earth dry._

...

 _In January 2035, a US company becomes the first to successfully mine
minerals from space and transport the cargo back to Earth. The haul contains
huge quantities of gold and platinum, although it is only a fraction of the
resources from the asteroid. The price of gold falls by 50 per cent._

That's anticlimactic. If you were to make a list of "dwindling natural
resources needed to keep the global economy functioning" I don't believe that
gold would make the top 20. Neither doubling its supply nor halving it would
have much impact on the aggregate provision of goods and services within the
terrestrial economy.

Platinum group metals are more interesting from an industrial standpoint.
Though automobile exhaust system catalysts currently account for the lion's
share of industrial palladium demand, and I expect that demand driver to
already be past its peak by 2035. There are no doubt other things we could and
would use PGMs for if they were significantly less expensive and more
abundant. Fuel cells, though they will always have certain disadvantages
compared to batteries, would probably be significantly more widespread by now
if the cost of platinum were comparable to e.g. silver.

------
Jeff_Brown
The sorts of disruptions we should worry about are ones that disemploy a lot
of people who need a job. Certainly self-driving cars will do that. But how
many people work in the production of precious metals?

Once upon a time, asteroid mining would have been highly disruptive to
monetary policy, but today currency values are not tied to metals.

------
maxxxxx
How do they want to bring their stuff back to earth? Is there any technology
on the horizon that allows us to bring heavy masses to Earth in an affordable
way?

~~~
bohm
Gravity

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> How do they want to bring their stuff back to earth?

> Gravity

Quite. I not an expert at all, but the question "how do we bring it down" is
better put "how do we bring it down _safely_ and so that we can easily recover
the material".

Throwing rocks down the gravity well is easy, keeping the velocity low at
bottom end, or low enough plus aiming accurately at an empty spot, is hard.

------
excalibur
Everyone is aware that the Crypto bubble is headed for a big crash, we have a
derivatives bubble looming that dwarfs all others, the Dow is climbing to
ludicrous heights at a rate of 1,000 points a week (which is definitely not
ominous at all), society has grown hopelessly dependent on information systems
that never cease to amaze with their fragility, and international politics has
once again devolved into a game of Nuclear Chicken (only with more players
this time). So yeah, let's worry about the economic dangers of space mining.

~~~
ThatBannedDude
Way to be pessimistic. Let us focus on the awesome things of our time, like
complete eradication of some illnesses through vaccination, information
systems connecting us with latencies and speeds never seen before, the
availability of knowledge was never better, child mortality down and life
expectancy up to levels never seen before. C'mon. I wanna see some enthusiasm
for our time and human achievements!

------
based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-
REx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_\(spacecraft\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche)

------
wazoox
Energy is our most obvious problem. Mining in space requires much more energy
then mining our sublunary world, just at a time when energy is about to become
scarce. This simply doesn't add up.

~~~
philipkglass
Solar power in the inner Solar System is abundant and always on.

~~~
wazoox
Yes, but strangely enough, we didn't tapped into it. There may be some
difficulties, not even mentioning EROEI.

------
whoopdedo
What about the other kind of mining? The cost of running a mining rig is
electricity and cooling. Solar panels for one and the vacuum of space for the
other. Looks like the cost to launch a small satellite starts at $10,000 (or 1
bitcoin). The cost of the electricity required to mine 1 coin in the US is as
low as $3224 (as of Dec. 2017). What would be the hash rate and lifetime to
make a microsatellite a cheaper mining platform than terrestrially?

~~~
ben-schaaf
Cooling in a vacuum is a lot more difficult than with an almost endless supply
of cooler gas to run over your hardware. The ISS runs liquid ammonia cooling
to large sets of radiators in order to keep the station and solar panels cool.
I'd imagine you'd need a similar setup if you're putting your cubesats far
enough out that they won't need active propulsion to stay in orbit, and if
you're using similar consumer hardware.

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jadell
This assumes the mined resources would be brought back to Earth. Why would we
bring resources back down the gravity well? The real value is mining and
manufacturing in situ. The real race is to become the first person to build a
manufacturing facility in orbit.

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bluedino
Imagine sending a Caterpillar 797 dump truck into space? 13 semi trailers
worth of truck that needs boosted into space, landed on another planet, and
then re-assembled.

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ribble
because all asteroids are simply clumps of gold and platinum. -eye-roll-

~~~
nkoren
You're rolling your eyes, but you're not that far from wrong. Earth's
geological processes have buried most of the heavier elements in the core,
where it's beyond reach. The concentration of platinum-group metals is far,
far higher in metallic asteroids than it is in the Earth's crust.

~~~
HarryHirsch
For ruthenium, rhodium and palladium we are probably better off reprocessing
nuclear waste. Especially rhodium is rare on Earth btu formed in fairly high
yield during nuclear fission.

