
A $20 Trillion Rock That Could Turn a Startup Into Earth’s Richest Company - jpadilla_
http://mashable.com/2012/04/26/planetary-resources-asteroid-mining-trillions/
======
bdhe
Does anyone know of any good hard science fiction that deals with such "first
generation of space exploration" themes?

This might be way off base, but something like the future East India Company
of space, where corporations end up colonizing planets and asteroids and get
immensely wealthy and powerful in the process.

~~~
burgerbrain
Accelerando, by Charles Stross (a HN'er actually!)

Features asteroid mining, expansion through the solar system in the quest to
find more matter to turn into computronium, and some people becoming obscenely
rich in the process.

I wouldn't describe space travel itself as the books primary focus, but it's a
solid theme. Look into it before you dive into it after just reading my
comment, otherwise you'll likely be confused.

~~~
hessenwolf
Also a brilliant, in my humble opinion, imagining of how we would function
with accessible and 'intelligent' autonomous software agents at our beck and
call. I've read tonnes of science fiction, and this book really stuck out in
my head.

------
sad_panda
The price of the metals is based on Earth's supplies. If the expedition was
successful, the supply would increase dramatically and the equilibrium would
shift.

~~~
Xlythe
But having 1 entity control such a large amount of supplies means that entity
can control the market rate (they simply hold on to it or sell it as needed).
National banks, like the Bank of Canada, already do this with their country's
currency.

~~~
jlarocco
First, there's already a ceiling on the price from the current supply. The
price can only go down.

Second, if it works out for them and they're able to start mining these, other
people will start doing it, too.

~~~
lusr
Out of curiosity, what happens if a second company (say, Anglo Platinum) goes
out there and blows up the facilities of these guys? Maybe even murders their
miners (if there are to be any humans out there). What would the legal
protection be?

~~~
jerf
"Out of curiosity, what happens if a second company (say, Anglo Platinum) goes
out there and blows up the facilities of these guys?"

War.

However, the good news is that even on Earth the benefits of cooperation tend
to outweigh the benefits of aggression, in space for the foreseeable future it
will be even more so. It is so, so easy to trash a space facility and so, so
hard to defend against it that in essence all private companies in space will
de facto be in a MAD situation should they decide to go that route. It will be
a long time before anyone will have a position where they can afford to attack
somebody and have a reasonable expectation of survival.

------
guelo
This strikes me more as billionaires wanting to play big adventure games with
their cash then as a real business opportunity. But I can't blame them, if I
had the cash I would want big toys too. Or maybe I'd go the Bill Gates route.
On the other hand, it really feels like we are living in another guilded age
with Robber Barons gracing us with the equivalent of Carnegie's libraries or
Rockerfeller's universities.

~~~
Vivtek
I'm not complaining if this generation's robber barons give us asteroid
mining...

------
evoxed
Sooner or later, this sort of money is just going to become completely
meaningless. There is no "$20tril check waiting to be cashed", there is an
economic bomb in the form of a massive space rock. I'm still very excited and
hope they get results but there going to be some pretty large, unforeseen
consequences if they succeed.

~~~
noonespecial
Before we could use electric furnaces and electrolysis to turn bauxite to
aluminum, it was one of the most rare and valuable metals on earth. I for one
am looking forward to wrapping leftovers in platinum foil.

~~~
ars
The Washington Monument was capped with aluminium because at the time it was
as valuable as silver. 2 years later aluminium became a common metal.

------
nullfinch
Has everybody forgotten that it's REALLY expensive to get into space? Per the
BBC,

They struggle to see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and
gold worth nearly £35 per gram ($1,600 an ounce). An upcoming Nasa mission to
return just 60g (two ounces) of material from an asteroid to Earth will cost
about $1bn.

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347>)

So a back of the envelope calculation: Assuming that it costs as much to haul
gold from orbit to Earth, and the Space X Falcon can haul 6.4+ tons per
flight, we could bring down $167,116,800 of gold per flight. Since each launch
costs $80M+, we're down to $80M of profit. However, this assumes we're just
plucking gold out of orbit, not hauling asteroids to orbit, harvesting and
processing the gold, and dealing with all of the logistics of this operation -
which are bound to be very expensive. It's ambitious to be sure, but we're
very far away from platinum as the new aluminum.

Price of gold per ounce: <http://goo.gl/htL7b> Falcon launch costs:
<http://goo.gl/SWZlw>

~~~
gliese1337
> Assuming that it costs as much to haul gold from orbit to Earth

It doesn't. Coming down is way cheaper than going up.

But that may not even be particularly relevant, as there's a good chance that
a lot of the material may be sold in space. After all, we want to launch more
stuff into space, and that's expensive, so why bring it down if you're just
going to shoot it back up again?

Of course, not all of it's going to be sold in space. A tonne of aluminum or a
tonne of water would be very valuable in orbit, but, at least for now, a tonne
of platinum is going to do much more good down here on the ground in catalytic
converters and electronics than it would up there being used in... I dunno
what. But the stuff that stays in orbit could still be a pretty hefty chunk of
the bottom line.

~~~
chii
Or that those mined from astroids become ships. I.e., industrial complexes
built in space, for large scale manufacturing of more ships, with the intend
of eventually conquering/colonizing a planet.

------
allenp
I'm seeing lots of comments talking about how they will bring all this
platinum down and it won't be worth anything but not very many people talking
about using platinum as a raw material for something worth far more than just
platinum.

What if Planetary Resources creates a lab to have the world's best researchers
across a variety of fields be able to invent with a nearly unlimited source of
free platinum?

Could they make a product that is worth more than the raw platinum (or
whatever else they pull down)?

------
cletus
Firstly, this isn't the first time Amun 3554 mining has come up [1].

Look, I'm a sci-fi fan like so many other HNers but the economic reality just
doesn't add up.

Amun 3554 has a highly eccentric orbit [2], even though it does cross Earth's
orbit. JPL has data [3].

You need to consider that:

1\. It's expensive to get into orbit. Even at SpaceX's prices, you're talking
~$1000/kg for LEO insertion;

2\. You need to get equipment to the asteroid;

3\. You need to get to the asteroid. Proximity to Earth isn't the problem
here. The problem is the delta-V required to match velocities;

4\. You either need to bring back the entire asteroid, which would require a
massive amount of delta-V, or you need to mine the asteroid, which would take
a massive amount of equipment;

5\. If you get raw materials back to Earth orbit, depending on the
application, you may then need to get them back to Earth, which granted is
significantly easier than escaping Earth's gravity; and

6\. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the
economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.

I am assuming this would be an automated operation as the cost of manned
spaceflight is significantly higher and automated systems should hopefully
improve in the intervening years.

Now, compare this to some other materials we have on Earth. Iron is pretty
abundant (both on Earth and in the universe, due to it's energy relationship
with fusion). On Earth, we dig up iron for under $30/ton and can ship it
anywhere on Earth for another $50-100/ton (IIRC).

For the cost of a single SpaceX launch you'd need to bring back about a
million tons of iron to be on the same scale.

Obviously that's why they're targeting much more valuable materials like
platinum but I hope that puts things in perspective.

Our society is built on cheap and plentiful resources (fossil fuels, metals
and minerals). As abundant as they might be in space, increasing the cost of
iron 1000 times is going to have profound implications for our entire species.
At some point of course recycling makes more economic sense but that's just a
temporary cushion (eg you lose materials through corrosion).

I believe we're coming to a resources-crunch within the next 100-200 years
that will result--one way or another--in a massive drop in population and a
fundamental change in our society. Let's just hope we survive it.

As much as I'd wish otherwise I have a hard time envisioning space mining or
even prolonged living in space as being economically viable in any way, shape
or form.

[1]:
[http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/27/technology/business2_guideto...](http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/27/technology/business2_guidetospaceintro/index.htm?cnn=yes)

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3554_Amun>

[3]: <http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=3554+Amun>

~~~
donw
I agree with you on the issues regarding the orbital mechanics of getting to
the asteroid and getting the goods back to Earth, but I think you've missed
one important idea regarding how these materials could be used.

Assume $1k/kg for LEO insertion. That means a metric ton of iron, in space,
would cost a million dollars if you had to ship it from Earth.

Let's now say that you wanted to build a large space-based manufacturing
facility, focused on producing high-value goods like zero-gravity metals and
pharmaceuticals. Shipping the raw materials from Earth to build the facility
would cost around a half-billion dollars, and then afterwards, you'd need to
ship them the additional materials from which to produce the goods.

Or, you can do something crazily ambitious -- figure out how to get the
materials from somewhere in near-earth-orbit, and use that to bootstrap both
interplanetary travel _and_ space-based industry.

It's crazy. I know. It's crazy enough that it just might work.

Personally, I'm excited. This kind of ambition is what we need as a species
right now, and I'd rather see the money spent on this than on yet another
collection of mega-yachts.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Honestly asking here, are zero-gravity metals and pharmaceuticals 'real'?

As in things that can't be made much cheaper (or at all on Earth) and that
companies would jump to create if there was a platform for them?

~~~
daeken
So, I don't know about zero-gravity metals and pharma, but space-based mining
and manufacturing is absolutely essential for producing large-scale stations,
spacecraft, and other things. It costs a ton to put things into space and
during that time they're subjected to a considerable amount of force. By
building in space, you don't have to build for gravity (look ma, no support
structures!) and don't have to concern yourself with the cost of launches.

Imagine building a massive spacecraft for long distance travel. It'd never
land on a planet, just go between them; you'd take a shuttle from your planet
up to the craft and leave from there. This is possible with space-based
manufacturing.

~~~
brazzy
Putting millions of tonnes of material into orbit is an absolutely trivial
problem compared to actually making that massive spacecraft travel anywhere
meaningful.

~~~
wtracy
Well, once you're already in space, you can use nuclear pulse propulsion
without leaving a giant radioactive crater on the earth's surface:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion>

------
rbanffy
> You couldn’t offload all those metals on the world market at once, for fear
> of crashing their prices

If you have a disruptive innovation (such as cheaply bringing tons of Platinum
from space), prices will just settle at the new equilibrium. You wouldn't be
able to sell a million tons of Platinum at US$ 1500 an ounce, but, as long as
you make a profit, you're good.

But how about the Moon? It's nearby (making remote operation feasible) and
bringing back stuff doesn't require more than a large railgun that can be
built and powered locally. There is gravity and vacuum (a combination that's
very good for working with metals - they fall towards the ground and they
don't react with the atmosphere). And we already have soil samples. Plus,
people can live there and repair equipment that breaks down.

And for the science types, the far side is an excellent place to put a
radiotelescope.

~~~
RandallBrown
using a moon as a base for asteroid mining is so Ender's Game. I love it.

------
read_wharf
"Of course, there’s a catch. You couldn’t offload all those metals on the
world market at once, for fear of crashing their prices. But the company would
still own that much in equity, which would allow them to borrow against it.
They would be that wealthy, to all intents and purposes. That’s just how
capitalism works."

You don't have equity to borrow against unless you can liquidate and transfer
to the lender.

You can't liquidate and transfer to the lender unless you can bring it all
down here (destroying the market and making the equity worth much less), or
transfer any on-going and steady operation that is bringing it down little by
little (show me the money), or by bring us up there in the form of widespread
operations across multiple companies.

If we go up there in a big way, well, precious metals aren't so precious.

~~~
RandallBrown
It doesn't really matter though does it? The people backing this company have
billions of dollars they can throw at this until it makes money.

------
bceagle
I think the comments here have a lot of logical, well thought out ideas. The
thing is, who cares whether they will ever be able to do it or what the
implications would be if they succeeded? The fact that someone is seriously
thinking about this type of thing is just awesome. Regardless of whether they
succeed or fail, the most valuable output of this won't be the precious
metals. It will be the technical innovations that would be created in order to
attempt to achieve the goal.

It's sort of like how the value of going to the moon was not just the PR and
historical significance, but all of the technical innovations like satellites
that ultimately came from that effort.

------
ajays
How do they know what's under the surface of these asteroids?

~~~
gliese1337
They assume that it's probably pretty similar to the surface, which is a good
assumption as long as the asteroid hasn't undergone geological processes to
cause differentiation. If it's spherical, it has enough to gravity to have
made itself that way, and stuff probably melted and floated and sank and it's
probably not the same on the inside as the outside. If it's not spherical,
it's probably a pretty uniform blob of stuff all the way through.

They know what's on the surface by looking at IR and radio spectra. This is
complicated by overlapping spectra from different minerals, but you can still
get a pretty good idea of what range of minerals are there. And since we know
the elemental compositions of the minerals on Earth that produce the same
spectra, we can use that to predict how much of any particular element the
asteroid contains.

~~~
phreeza
In addition mass and therefor density are known so they can probably be used
to cross verify this?

------
ema
I'm skeptical about this. Lets see in 8 years[1] if i was right.

[1]<http://predictionbook.com/predictions/6696>

------
girishw
If a huge supply of platinum became available, its price would plummet. If one
company figures out a way to mine asteroids, competition would soon follow. So
they won't be able to control the supply and hence price of platinum. So even
if they do succeed in mining and transporting the metal, they are not going to
make anywhere near the money they're claiming.

~~~
chii
i say worth doing even if they only break even. The tech and new injection of
resources will give the world something to hope for.

Plus, i dont think the price will "plummet". It will at most reach some
equibrium, and that new equilbrium ought to still be profitable. More
plentifyl resources can only be a good thing.

------
geon
> You couldn’t offload all those metals on the world market at once, for fear
> of crashing their prices.

So instead of lowering the price of gold and palladium, metals that have
innumerable uses in technology, revolutionizing the industry, you should
create an artificial scarcity?

~~~
gaius
You have it backwards. Without scarcity where the demand? Without demand where
the the money? Without money, where is the expedition? Lather, rinse, repeat.

~~~
geon
> Without scarcity where the demand?

Iron is hardly scarce, but it is in high demand. There are a thousand uses for
cheap gold. It's not like if the asteroid would be made of rare postage stamps
that become worthless without the scarcity.

Let's say the huge chunk of gold would drop the market price to 10% of it's
current value. If they earn $ 2 trillion at once instead of $ 2 trillion
slowly, is it really a problem? It should still be enough to finance the next
run, and earn even more.

------
wisty
Could this work?

A large mirror planted on the astroid focuses sunlight onto a small point. The
heat from the mirror blasts off (ionizes? vaporizes?) bits of rock. Over a
long time period, the rock gradually sails into a more accessible orbit.

~~~
tlrobinson
It just detonate a nuclear bomb on one side.

------
cma
The $20 Trillion valuation is dubious.

Platinum has industrial uses, but it is also a Veblen good--the price decrease
due to increased supply wouldn't be the only factor; the abundance of a Veblen
good affects the _demand curve_ itself.

------
mrich
I wonder how exploitation rights are handled. Can any company just send robots
up there to mine it? Or will there be a remote war fought on the asteroid over
the resources?

------
jeffool
Crazy question for hobbyists probably not otherwise suitable for Hacker News:

Could a large body like an asteroid be used to clean up space junk? Or would
that just be way too risky?

~~~
pm90
I don't quite understand...how exactly do you intend to use an asteroid to
clean up space junk?

~~~
user24
I'm guessing via gravity, but I think drawing something big enough to attract
space junk close enough to attract space junk will be too dangerous for earth.

~~~
Thrymr
That's not really how gravity works. In low earth orbit you have thousands of
objects moving at high relative velocities, which is why they are dangerous.
You can't just "attract" them with the gravity of a large object, all you
would do is deflect them a little. They are moving fast enough that the
gravity of a large nearby planet (Earth) is only bending their path enough so
that they don't escape completely. An asteroid in LEO would do pretty much
nothing to change that. You just might be able to deflect some (very small)
fraction of the objects into different orbits, maybe enough so that they
reenter the atmosphere. But most of them wouldn't interact at all.

~~~
jeffool
I was actually thinking deflection. Assuming they're going to bring it near
Earth anyway, why not, say, slowly circle the ISS? Sure, it wouldn't do MUCH
good... But it's the biggest space squeegee we're going to have access to for
the near future...

Why not?

------
MrJagil
See, why is it that the mining companies are seemingly keeping quiet as some
new innovative entrants are gonna wreck their market, and why is it that the
music/film industry cry like babies when a "similarly" technologically
inventive disruption happen to them? I'm not trying to twist this into an
argument against the MPAA, just observing how differently capitalism can
unfold itself.

~~~
danssig
Not a fair comparison. MPAA has been losing sales for years already. This may
never even happen.

~~~
MrJagil
Fair enough. Do you expect the mining companies to pursue a similar path as
the MPAA once they actually start losing money?

~~~
danssig
Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of money on the line, right?

------
ksec
Can you really just bring back the whole Asteroid? I mean without even knowing
what exactly is inside and extraterrestrial hazard? But As somebody pointed
out the operation cost does not yet make this feasible. The RAW materials
inside are priced by supply and demand. While the cost of mining is pretty
much fixed for a long period of time.

~~~
jerf
The idea that there could be something bizarre and dangerous is basically a
Hollywood science fiction idea. In a Hollywood movie, sure, the inside of this
rock would house an alien space fleet that was just waiting for us to mine it
and attack and try to wipe out humanity, only to be stopped by the plucky
scientist who was skeptical about the operation all along and warning about
how dangerous it is.

In reality, it's a rock with some metals running through it, and that's
basically a full description. It isn't covered in deadly deadly viruses; if it
were, Earth would long since have been exposed to them, we're hit by space
rocks all the time. It isn't housing an alien fleet. It isn't anchoring a
wormhole to a dimension of Cthuluian horrors. There isn't any bizarre
chemistry that will cause a chain reaction that will turn all the oceans into
gel if it so much as orbits. It's a rock, except it's in space.

Everything that could go wrong in such a scenario did, a long time ago, over
and over again.

------
kayoone
Sooner or later these gigantic resources will be the reason for armed
spacecrafts and intergalactic conflicts :)

------
tocomment
I've wondered if we could simply controlled crash asteroids into deserted
parts of earth and then cheaply mine them?

I'm wondering if you could build some kind of shock absorbing device to
"catch" the asteroid and prevent a crater, or other adverse effects?

I don't see why it wouldn't work in principle.

~~~
ahelwer
Heh, this was the plot of a second-series Tom Swift novel. Ah, childhood.

Anyway, there are a lot of problems with the idea, most having to do with risk
and resources required.

------
firefoxman1
There isn't any real claim to ownership of that asteroid though, so it really
sort of a land-grab? Couldn't China build a system to go retrieve the asteroid
first?

------
deepGem
Well, may be the USS Enterprise will become a reality.

------
jonnycowboy
The main problem with this 'rock' is that Planetary Resources' plan only
allows for ~10m diameter asteroid. This one is over a mile large!

------
havemurci
It's a cute concept, but apparently the visionaries have little sense of
supply and demand. The high prices on rare earth metals are dependent on their
extreme scarcity. If the supply is bolstered (in this case, to the tune of
$20,000,000,000,000), the selling price will decrease. It's simple economics.

I'm not saying it's anything but amazing. However, if the founders think
they're going to get today's prices for every last ounce, as the article seems
to imply, they are in for a realization.

~~~
Tipzntrix
I really think it's just the article authors that are trying to hype this
innovation up too much. I doubt the actual CEO is going around presenting this
potential revenue to investors if he wants to be taken seriously.

~~~
tlrobinson
“There are $20 trillion checks up there waiting to be cashed,”

~~~
Tipzntrix
mmm. You're right. I wonder how much he believes that himself.

~~~
RandallBrown
he doesn't. It's just a great quote to give to journalists.

------
ImprovedSilence
An interesting thought I just had: Suppose we did bring back voluminous
quantities of raw material back to earth, what could the environment impact of
this be over hundereds of years? Could we bring back so much that we change
the weight of the world to shift to a different orbit? or to wobble more or
less (the cause of seasons) What forms of energy do we loose by importing
these new forms (assuming conservation of energy applies) Ie fuel for
material.

~~~
zopa
The earth is ~ 6*10^24 kg. So if you bring back a billion kilograms, you'd
increase the Earth's mass by around 0.000000000000017 percent. You get
variations in surface gravity well over a trillion times larger just by
traveling from Ecuador to Antarctica. (The Earth is flattened a bit at the
poles, so you're a bit closer to the center of the planet there, and 'g' is a
bit bigger.)

I wouldn't worry about that one.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Yeah, but I'm sure the first person to find oil spurting out of the ground
didn't have to worry about it running out anytime soon. Ingenious peoples
cutting down the first tree on Easter Island never saw the trees running out.
We a humans tend to underestimate our impact as it scales and grows over time.
But as growth goes exponential, industries scale, and population explodes, the
story, elapsed over time, changes dramatically. Look how far technology has
advanced in 100 years. Who knows what crazy shit will go down in the next 300.
A billion kilograms might just be "one truckload" out of hundreds being
imported daily. We have no idea how big it could scale.

You're right, it's a metric shit-ton of material to make any difference, but
to say we'll never have done that much is just impossible.

~~~
zopa
By all means worry about environmental problems. Like the various suggestions
on this page to crash-land a mining asteroid on Earth---let's not do that.

But at the moment the possibility of changing the mass of the earth has to be
really low on the list of environmental worries. When we're moving a billion
kilograms an hour, net, to Earth, I will sign your petition and donate to your
campaign.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
I think you took me the wrong way. I'm not trying to be
political/environmental. I'm curious on the broader scheme "sci-fyi-ness" of
what the future could look like, and how we would get in such places. And the
Sociological causes/effects of such futures.

That, and the theoretical thought of what would happen should we impact the
weight of the world to the point of it having a noticeable impact on earths
astronomical characteristics intrigues me.

~~~
zopa
Fair enough, and sorry. Sci-fi version: once you're moving that sort of
tonnage, logarithmically speaking you're closer to Ringworlds and Dyson
spheres than you are to near-future asteroid mining.

------
negamax
This much extra metal will surely crash the markets. Remember the Ducktales
episode of "soda caps in the valley".

------
Tipzntrix
EVE is coming to real life. Watch out for space pirates out there man.

"2mil ISK OR PODDED"

------
fbailey
Do we trust some billionaires with a massive asteroid in earth orbit?

------
rsanchez1
This is what is needed to finally get real private money into space
exploration. With those kinds of resources waiting out there, private
companies have significant incentive to pick up where NASA left off.

