
Asteroid Mining Is Our Best Hope for Colonizing Mars - rbanffy
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5gxa4/asteroid-mining-is-our-best-hope-for-colonizing-mars
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bmcusick
Eh.. right off the bat, you have to doubt "analysis" that comes from an
article that doesn't know the difference between the Falcon Heavy and ITS.

But then it gets really stupid. The idea that you'd transport water from
asteroids to the _surface_ of Mars is bananas. Mars has enough surface water
already. The reason asteroid ice is valuable isn't because it's water, it's
because it's _not on the surface of a planet_. To fly around the solar system
you need rocket fuel _in space_ , and launching it off planets is really
expensive. Landing asteroid water on a planet that already has water destroys
99% of its market value.

Also the idea that water ice is only useful if you're going to Mars
misunderstands why water ice on asteroids is useful in the first place; as
fuel for flying around the Solar System more cheaply (or with more mass) than
you could if you had to launch all your fuel from Earth. That's useful no
matter where you're going.

Anyway, I'm not going to debunk this whole article, but it was basically
written by a very uniformed person. Basically the only thing they got right
was recognizing that launch costs (not engineering ability per se) is the
primary barrier to further space exploration.

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autokad
its not hard to imagine mars needing more water due to increased human
activity. i mean earth is mostly water, and it still has a market value.

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Retric
It could be useful when going from the 10 million people on Mars to the 10
billion people on Mars stage. However, at that point 'colonization' is already
a solved problem.

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autokad
honestly I dont think there is enough (easily accessible) water for 10 million
people.

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Retric
[https://www.space.com/17048-water-on-
mars.html](https://www.space.com/17048-water-on-mars.html)

"The caps are an average of 2 miles (3 kilometers) thick and, if completely
melted, could cover the Martian surface with about 18 feet (5.6 meters) of
water."

So, there is actually plenty of water for arbitrarily large colonies. However,
I assume people would want large lakes for various reasons.

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leanthonyrn
Highly recommended video on Colonizing Mars by Isaac Arthur
[https://youtu.be/kmFOBoy2MZ8](https://youtu.be/kmFOBoy2MZ8)

Equally amazing Asteriod Mining by Mr. Arthur
[https://youtu.be/3-3DjxhGaUg](https://youtu.be/3-3DjxhGaUg)

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philipkglass
Headline: asteroid mining is our best hope for colonizing Mars.

Body text: after people start colonizing Mars, asteroid miners can sell them
water.

It looks like circular hope to me. Hope that asteroidal water will be useful
to people on Mars. And hope that there will be people on Mars who will pay for
asteroidal water.

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legulere
But how to keep water on Mars? The way I understand Mars can't keep an
atmosphere because it lacks a magnetic field and probably lost a lot of water
this way.

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sigstoat
mars has an atmosphere even now. the processes stripping it off work on
geological (or longer) timescales. if you can import (or free) enough water to
make a difference in the first place, then keeping up with the losses should
be pretty easy.

~~~
Symmetry
Also, giving Mars an artificial magnetic field to stop the stripping isn't
easy but it's a lot easier than importing that much water.

~~~
senectus1
throw a bunch of big wet heavy ice rocks on the surface (before we decide to
set up base there) and you'll have a good kick start to an atmosphere.

Also, sounds fun...

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maxander
I had to look pretty closely at that "asteroid miner" concept image to assure
myself it wasn't just a ship from Kerbal Space Program. :)

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doikor
This is just stupid. The value of water in space mined from asteroids comes
from it not being on a planet. Compressing water is just stupid and water
weighs a lot and thus is very expensive to get to orbit. On a planet like Mars
which has water ice available transporting water ice from space is just
stupid.

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Synaesthesia
This is assuming we can even get a person to mars, which has not been
demonstrated as feasible. Let alone a whole community. It would be better to
colonize the moon, but equally pointless IMO. It’s a massive waste of
resources which could go towards making earth better, where we’re all stuck
anyway.

~~~
bmcusick
> This is assuming we can even get a person to mars, which has not been
> demonstrated as feasible. Let alone a whole community.

Landing per se shouldn't be impossible. We landed people on the Moon a long
time ago. Recent advances in magnetic shell aerocapture are really exciting
and make landing on Mars more feasible. The real question is whether we can
learn how to do it in an economic and sustainable way; unlike Apollo.

> It would be better to colonize the moon

I agree with this. Going straight for Mars seems unwise. We should expand
slowly out into the Solar System, step by organic step. Even better than the
Moon would be Low Earth Orbit. A colony in LEO would have same-day access to
Earth in either direction, and would benefit from being inside Earth's
magnetic field, which would allow the designers to cut the mass needed for
shielding significantly. Big savings.

A LEO colony would be close enough to Earth that people on Earth could
teleoperate robots in the colony in real time with minimal lag, allowing it to
circumvent the bootstrap question of "Where do people live while it's being
built?"

A LEO colony would also have to built using bulk physical resources from the
Moon or the Near Earth Asteroids, building up our manufacturing base there,
and serving as a "shore leave" destination for people working further up in
Geosyncrhonous Orbit or elsewhere Cis-Lunar space.

Once we have a basic torus capable of holding, say, 10,000 people, it could
serve as a staging area for venturing deeper into the Solar System, such as
Mars. But personally even then, I wouldn't advocate for Mars. After all that
work of moving humanity out of a deep gravity well, why climb into a new one?
Space is where all the solar energy is, and all the resources of the asteroid
belt and the moons are (gravitationally speaking) close at hand.

> It’s a massive waste of resources which could go towards making earth
> better, where we’re all stuck anyway.

Now here's where I disagree with you.

1\. In no way did colonizing Australia or North America prevent England from
improving the homeland. You can do both! Heck, Elon Musk is already doing
both. The whole point of Tesla/Solar City is to move humanity off fossil
fuels.

2\. Space colonization can be part of the solution. Imagine industrial
processes that have very polluting intermediate steps; they could be done on
the Moon where you don't have water or air to worry about polluting. Earth
could be cleaned up by exporting those industries to space. The Moon could
also serve as a much better repository of high-level nuclear waste than Yucca
Mountain.

And of course in the very long term, the Solar System has the energy and
material resources to support a human population 10,000x bigger than Earth
does. As much solar energy as Earth receives, space receives a lot more. As
much iron and PGM and carbon and water as Earth has, space has more. Europa
alone is estimated to have 2x as much water as Earth. And so those resources
can support more people who have more ideas who solve the very problems you
want solved.

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Synaesthesia
The difference is that, despite being a long trip, sailing to Australia and
South Africa and the USA was fairly routine, and did not involve enormous
costs, both in material and to the environment (how much CO2 does lifting a
person to orbit release to the atmosphere?) How much did it cost to put a
trifling amount of men on the moon?

In colonial times for example it was common for a woman to go home to Europe
to give birth. Will that really be feasible in mars or the moon?

~~~
bmcusick
SpaceX is already 10x cheaper than the Space Shuttle. Reusable rockets will be
another 10x or more cheaper. Access to space will be cheap and routine.

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iancmceachern
My alma mater, the Colorado School of Mines, has had a department focused on
this for over a decade, the center for space resources:
[http://spaceresources.mines.edu/index.htm](http://spaceresources.mines.edu/index.htm)

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Nokinside
Asteroid mining would be necessary for colonizing Mars.

Getting into Mars is technological problem. Colonizing Mars is more economical
and sociological problem than technological problem.

Everyday living in high-tech place where everything is safety critical (like
in a nuclear submarine or ISS) is extremely expensive. Productivity would have
to be beyond everything that has ever existed for that becoming possibility.

If Elon Musk can crack Mars colonization economy, he has also invented
something that can be used to drop F-35 fighter, nuclear submarine and
aircraft carrier maintenance costs to level where they are negligible.

There is always counterarguments that are based on post-scarcity economy. I
accept that argument. But we get faster into Mars if we first develop post-
scarcity economy here on earth first. Then those who want to leave just move
there. Those who want to go Mars now are thinking it wrong.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
I think there’s a bit of tail wagging the dog involved, in a good way.

You are correct, mining asteroids would be necessary for colonizing Mars. But
mining asteroids would also bring Earth much closer to post-scarcity (maybe
even as necessary!).

So if building a private beach on Mars for Musk and Richard Branson and Taylor
Swift is what it takes to get an asteroid mining economy rolling, then cool,
that's a plan…

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Nokinside
As others have pointed out, asteroid mining does very little to Earth. In a
large scale it's only for use in space.

Most rare-earth minerals are not really that rare. Mining them on earth will
be more cost effective. If we need larger quantities than can be found on
surface deep sea mining is still more cost effective than asteroid mining.

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senectus1
Flow of events: See article in Feedly -> ooh that looks interesting -> click
it -> See the link is vice.com -> oh :-( -> notice lots of chatter from fellow
HN readers -> things improve immensely!

Please HN dont change :-D

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perilunar
Why colonise Mars at all once you're mining asteroids?

Build colonies in free space instead and avoid the time and hassle of
terraforming.

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senectus1
Gravity, Atmosphere, Aesthetics (for population expansion), research... all
sorts of reasons.

But yes, once you've gotten reliable mining operations the pressure will be
less. But the novelty will always be in high demand.

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jlebrech
why not just drill down once we get there and put a roof on the hole?

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ghostbrainalpha
They are talking about mining for water not precious metals, which there may
not be enough of on Mars to sustain the colonies.

But I think you are right about what they colonies will look like.
Subterranean for the most part with some farming glass domes on the surface.

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bergoid
What advantage does living in the Martian underground have compared to living
in a free flying space colony somewhere in the asteroid belt?

With the latter arrangement you have lots of minable resources at hand, only a
small delta-v away from you. Ik you are ok with long delivery times,
transporting them around doesn't cost you much energy.

Whereas on Mars, everything is much more energy-intensive, both mining raw
materials and moving them through your industrial processing chain.

Space-based manufacturing is still an alien concept to us and while it comes
with its own challenges, the vacuum and zero-gravity of space offers a lot of
advantages too:

[http://www.permanent.com/space-industry-
environment.html](http://www.permanent.com/space-industry-environment.html)

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I agree overall, but living in a hole on Mars does offer at least somewhat
better shielding against radiation, and people are strangely fondly of
gravity, too... (not that you couldn't tackle those both in your hollowed-out
asteroid).

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deepsun
Yep, but how about colonizing Antarctica first? It's way easier.

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deadmetheny
There are dozens of research bases in Antarctica. Establishing a research base
on Earth isn't comparable to an off-world research base anyway, if you're
looking to study said remote world or establish a lifeline for humanity in
case the Earth is devastated.

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bryanlarsen
Asteroid mining for use on Earth is pretty silly. Take the example in the
article, Platinum. According to Wikipedia, platinum is 0.005 ppm of the
earth's crust, which is 2.3 x 10^22 kg. So there's about 1.1 x 10^14 kg of
Platinum on earth, and we mine 200,000 kg per year. We're not going to run out
any time soon.

But as the article implies, mining asteroids for use in space makes a heck of
a lot of sense. That's a very different market.

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jessriedel
The risk isn't "running out", it's that the cost of extraction becomes
prohibitive. As a rule of thumb, asteroids are generally much richer with
heavy metals than the Earth's crust because heavy things sink on Earth but
they have no where to go on asteroids. These metals persist in small
quantities in the crust mostly when they are bound to light elements. So the
density and types of ores on asteroids are completely different, vastly
changing extraction costs.

Whether the benefits of asteroid composition outweigh the costs of space
mining is complicated and time-/tech-dependent, and cannot be guessed by just
noting that in principle there are sufficient atoms in the Earth's crust.

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bryanlarsen
"the cost of extraction becomes prohibitive"

You're implying that the cost of extraction is going up. It's not, it's going
down quite steadily because it's tech-limited, not resource limited.

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jessriedel
I'm not implying that at all. Everything is on a supply and demand curve, and
the claim is that the extraction price increases, not with time, but with
_amount extracted at a fixed time_. So the question is if we hit a point where
the 1st ton of asteroid platinum is cheaper than the millionth ton of
terrestrial platinum.

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nradov
There is no actual evidence that the extraction price of precious metals will
increase with the amount extracted at a fixed time. This is entirely
speculative, and it seems more likely that extraction prices will decline as
extraction technology improves faster than demand increases.

