
Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled - peteforde
http://www.space.com/15395-asteroid-mining-planetary-resources.html
======
jaysonelliot
My inner ten-year old is leaping up and down with excitement right now. I've
got visions of OMNI magazine illustrations from the 1980s in my head, with
watercolors of mining ships and stylish orange-suited astronauts.

It's been so long since the future felt like it would match up to the
optimistic sci-fi of a few decades ago, that I'd nearly forgotten. I know this
is just one announcement of an intention, but I don't care, I'm going to go
ahead and start dreaming again about seeing space elevators and terraformed
moons and planets in my lifetime.

Great story to read before bed.

~~~
infectoid
Totally with you man. Let the nay sayers nay.

It's activities like these that inspire the Human race as a whole. I don't
even care if it's successful. Just to attempt such a grand idea is a great
achievement.

~~~
pjscott
I definitely care if it succeeds. If they're successful, then not only will
they make a lot of money and make some materials much cheaper, but it will be
the thing that funds the commercial space industry and makes large-scale
investment in space economically viable. That's huge.

------
necubi
This NY Times article has a lot more information:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/science/space/in-
pursuit-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/science/space/in-pursuit-of-
riches-and-travelers-supplies-in-the-asteroid-belt.html).

It's wonderful to see people spending huge amounts of money to expand the
reach of humanity instead of our capacity for narcissism. Startups like these
give me hope for the future.

~~~
cloudwalking
"'The company is cash flow positive, already,' Mr. Anderson said."

How is this possible?

~~~
guscost
It sounds totally insane, but I read somewhere that the backers just bought a
bunch of platinum puts and then announced their plans to mine it from space...

~~~
joejohnson
An article that mentions the put options scheme:
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/23/planetary-resources-
astero...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/23/planetary-resources-asteroid-
mining-2/)

It says that Diamandis (the founder of Planetary Resources) may have been
joking when he made these plans to buy options.

~~~
guscost
Yep, that's it. But why wouldn't it work? There are orders of magnitude more
platinum-group resources out there than there are down here.

~~~
joejohnson
Yeah, that's true. Maybe it will work if they keep their plans secretive until
right before they are able deliver large amounts of platinum-group elements?
They're only going to make a significant amount on these options if very few
people buy these options, otherwise a large rush would shift the market
prematurely.

------
ericd
I'm surprised at how invigorated this news is making me feel, like a weight
has been lifted. SpaceX is great, but until now they've mostly been talking
about missions that would have to be paid for by the government and subject to
the agonizing budget-cutting that seems to happen every time an exciting
mission is planned. If these guys succeed, it will emancipate the future of
space exploration from congressional budget meetings forever. I don't think I
realized how depressed I was about that whole situation until now. This is
almost absurdly audacious and I love them for it.

~~~
redthrowaway
The interesting thing is, we have those budget cuts to thank for this. In the
50 years since we landed on the moon, we've put a massively expensive and
questionably valuable series of tubes a few hundred kilometres from the
Earth's surface, and sent a couple robots to Mars. These are both notable
accomplishments, but they're hardly enough to give humanity any permanent
presence in space. Space exploration has languished under the management of
the federal government, and it has only been since the cancellation of the
Shuttle that we've seen private enterprise truly step in with any sort of
sustainable mission.

I have long argued that the cuts to NASA are short-sighted and a net loss for
humanity; perhaps it's time to re-evaluate that notion. They may well have
been short-sighted, but the hole left by the fading government monopoly is
opening up some incredibly interesting opportunities.

~~~
kamaal
All it would take to get governments back into the game is some private firm
proving the value of resources that can be mined there.

If governments get a clue of how valuable space real estate, energy and
resources can be. Expect a space race, like weapons race.

In fact you can expect wars on the basis of who controls which asteroids and
who gets to stay where on mars.

~~~
redthrowaway
I can see perhaps the Chinese and _maybe_ the Russians looking to own
asteroids, but that would require they pull out of several international
treaties (not that big of a deal). For the West, their model has always been
government-backed private monopolies (Hudson's Bay Company, East India
Company, United Fruit, modern oil companies, etc). The American government
would be more than happy to let Planetary resources do their own exploitation,
while throwing its military weight behind them "to protect American
interests". I'd be surprised if Europe makes much of an effort.

~~~
Shivetya
Two words : United Nations.

Given the ever growing need for money I can bet a tax would be put in place to
where it might not even be profitable after all the regulation and such got
put into position.

Think about it. They can lay levies for everything from managing the movement
of objects in space to the environmental damage and insurance against such for
returning materials gained in space. Then comes the whole "it belongs to all
and none" type spiel that will surely follow.

~~~
Symmetry
You've outlined why the Secretary General of the UN might like this idea, but
why on Earth would any of the space capable nations go along with this plan?

------
jacques_chester
It really bugs me when billionaires do the same thing I would do with billions
of dollars before I have billions of dollars to do them with.

Seriously. Space mining and pressure from environmentalism is going to turn
this whole field into rivers of gold ... in the sky.

~~~
daeken
Agreed. I've been pondering ways to bootstrap space-based mining and
manufacturing for a long, long time and while I believe that I have some solid
ideas, I just don't have the capital to do anything about it in the least.

~~~
vibrunazo
They'll probably be looking to hire engineers in the next few years tho. If
you've got some skills and knowledge that could be helpful. Then there's still
time. :-)

------
guynamedloren
Cannot explain how much this excites me... but can somebody familiar with the
matter please elaborate on the economics of this? How, exactly, do they intend
to make money?

I was under the impression (from previous articles) that the raw minerals from
the asteroids were worth tens or hundreds of thousands $$, while the process
of bringing them to Earth would be orders of magnitude higher (millions or
billions). Wouldn't it be more economical to use the materials for space
ventures/stations/etc? Or are the asteroids composed of some high value
materials that can be hugely profitable?

Edit: this is not to say that the venture isn't utterly amazing - but there
does seem to be quite a bit of focus on profit, and that confuses me.

~~~
nlh
FTA:

"A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the
equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human
history, company officials said."

Quick Wikipedia/Google math:

1 cubic foot of Platinum = 1330 pounds [1]

Total platinum mined ever = ~25 cubic feet [1] * 1330 lbs = 33250 lbs =
532,000 oz

Current price of platinum = $1,560/oz [2]

Total value of platinum in an asteroid = $829M

And that's just the one metal, which is not the only thing they're mining.
Throw the water in there for the space station(s) and it's not impossible to
assume that one asteroid can gross well over $1bn -- we're not talking
$trillions yet, but I bet they've modeled this out to make it a profitable
venture...

[1] - <http://www.gold-eagle.com/analysis/platinum.html> [2] -
<http://www.kitco.com/market/>

(of course this doesn't account for the fact that if you suddenly double the
worldwide supply of platinum overnight, the price likely won't stay at
$1560/oz....but still...)

~~~
njharman
Wow! I can't believe we've only ever mined 25 cubic feet of plat. Reading your
source I'm not sure it's right, "The annual supply of platinum is only about
130 tons" "one cubic foot weighs a little more than 1,330 pounds"

23*1330lb = 13,875kg ever

130tons = 117,934kg per year

"basement of less than 25 cubic feet" Maybe them meant basement of 25 square
feet or 250cuft which is still tiny basement.

~~~
intractable
It's definitely wrong.

According to [1], 614,631 kg were mined in South Africa (which accounts for
about 80% of world production) between 2002 and 2009.

Density of platinum = 21.45g/cm^3 = 21.45 * 10^6 g/m^3 = 21.45 * 10^3 kg/m^3

=> total volume mined 2002 - 2009 = 614631 / 21450 = 28.65 m^3 approx.

So that's about 28.65 * 35.29 = 1011 cubic feet, JUST in South Africa and JUST
between those years.

Other estimates visualise the total ever mined as a cube of 20 feet per SIDE
([2]), which sounds a bit more like it, given the numbers above - but still
feels a little bit low.

[1]
[http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?country=za&product=p...](http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?country=za&product=platinum&graph=production)

[2] <http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm>

~~~
adavies42
people screw up "x cubed" and "cubic x" so often....

------
alinajaf
Wow. Second the comments about feeling about ten years old again. I hope
beyond all hope that this is actually happening in my lifetime.

Questions for those in the know:

1\. Is there any legal precedent on whether or not they're even allowed to
mine the asteroids? From what I understand the Moon can't be exploited by any
one country or corporation. Does any similar law apply to asteroids?

2\. How are they going to get the platinum back to Earth? Re-entry strikes me
as needing a really effing big parachutes for the hauls they're going to be
bringing back.

~~~
gaius
Who's going to stop you, the Space Police?

~~~
maxerickson
If you're trying to make some dollars, you sort of have to take into account
the firm grip that governments have on earth-side markets.

------
Eliezer
The next space race will be between Google and Paypal.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Perhaps we'll see "Google Moon", the first settlement requiring a Google
Account to live in...

~~~
chii
I would totally apply for a beta. I also expect it to be free, inline with all
the other google services, in return for giving away all my data about my
personal life, so they can put ads on my walls.

------
kamaal
I think this sort of stuff is natural progression in the time scale of
evolution of a species. Its called exploration.

People in the middle ages got equally excited when somebody invented a ship
that could sail the seas and a compass that could point where they wanted to
go. And then when they actually went there, they found some surprises. They
figured that they are not the only ones to exist.

Space exploration will be similar. We have gone from a boat to sail in a small
lake, to making ships that can sail and mine resources for surviving a
prolonged exploration campaign.

The only thing that can throw spanner in the wheels now is this things going
down and projects like these getting dropped. We are on the right track and
give the direct and a little more speed. Privatization in this domain is the
way forward.I think permanent space colonies very much look to be practical
realities in some decades to come.

~~~
loceng
I agree, I just hope we don't let quality of life and health here on Earth
diminish more and more. Imagine if everyone was healthy, happy, and being as
productive as they can be, doing what they enjoy most - imagine how much more
energy could go into projects like these from productivity that won't be lost
due to crime, too much turmoil from transition periods, etc.. Everyone would
be able to on a daily basis have as much excitement as OP has. Exciting.

------
htf
> Planetary Resources wants to identify and characterize these top targets
> before it does anything else. To that end, it has designed a high-
> performance, low-cost space telescope that Anderson said should launch to
> low-Earth orbit within the next 18 to 24 months.

Wow, they are not wasting time. Last week, the idea of an asteroid mining
company was still in the realm of science fiction. Today, an asteroid mining
company announces that they are launching a survey telescope within two years.
It feels like we are entering a new era of technological progress. It makes me
wonder what other surprising announcements are coming over the next few years
in other fields.

------
WalterBright
I'm a little surprised that billionaires haven't already done things like
launched a couple more Hubble telescopes. The design is already done and
debugged, just clone it, and launch it.

The same for several other successful interplanetary probes - build a
(relatively) cheap fleet of clones of successful designs, and send them out to
explore the solar system fully.

Heck, you don't even have to come up with all the money yourself. Sell
advertising on the mission. Having a logo on the rocket, and logos on the
returned pix, etc., are all fantastic opportunities for advertising.

~~~
WalterBright
In fact, a lot of the exploration journeys of the 1800s were financed by
advertisers and newspapers looking to sell newspapers.

~~~
philwelch
It's hard to imagine that newspapers were once that rich.

~~~
lukifer
Is it? Being society's primary information nexus is pretty damn profitable;
just ask Google.

~~~
philwelch
Well yeah, it makes sense when you work it out; every fact makes sense once
you work it out. And there's a certain pleasing symmetry in that control over
information, and the business model of attaching advertising to that
information, has made the Google execs rich enough to invest in mining
asteroids. I was just reflecting on how big a change it was.

------
yaix
As much as I dislike Goog for it's terrible costumer service, but these kind
of investments make Goog as a company -- as well as it's founders -- so
different from other corporations. Autonomous cars, Google
earth/sky/moon/mars, Google glass, asteroid mining. Having some crazy idea and
just doing it, even though it could fail, but at least trying it.

------
aresant
And two credible co-founders behind the giant names:

\- Peter H. Diamandis (Founder of the X PRIZE)

\- Eric Anderson (Founder of Space Adventures,

Rounding out the entire list of backers:

\- Larry Page (goog)

\- Eric Schmidt (goog)

\- James Cameron (goog)

\- Charles Simonyi (Billionaire via MSFT, oversaw creation of office)

\- K. Ram Shriram (Billionaire via goog)

\- Ross Perot, Jr (Perot's son)

via <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources>

~~~
yohui
> \- James Cameron (goog)

I don't think Cameron is involved in Google, is he?

~~~
dustyreagan
No. This is James Cameron the director. Same guy that funded Deepsea
Challenger. This guy is doing some pretty cool stuff with his money.

~~~
flyt
Funded AND piloted the Deepsea Challenger to the deepest point on Earth.
Cameron is legit.

------
tylee78
Now seriously, as a software developer, what would be the best skill set to
help these guys... As soon as I can afford it I would knock at their door and
work for them for free. What would be most usefull for them (or spaceX)... A
lot of C, C++, knowing NASA's open source repos in and out, doing MIT online
courses on robotics and astrophysics... ?

~~~
wtn
Read up on Armadillo Aerospace…

------
mukaiji
Here's to the crazy ones.

As a scientist, I am so thrilled about this idea.

------
javajosh
Finally, extraordinary concentration of capital has an upside.

~~~
DennisP
Apparently, billionaires who made their money by inventing things people want
have a tendency to do other cool things that benefit people.

Billionaires who got there by, say, making giant bets with the downside backed
by the public purse, tend to be absent from these sorts of ventures.

~~~
javajosh
It's too soon to tell - so far it's all pie in the sky. And a pie in the sky
upside is not enough to counterbalance the quite obvious, very real downsides
to enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of private individuals.

(My suspicion is that I'm happy with wealth concentrated into the hands of
people who agree with me.)

------
swalsh
Reading through this thread makes me realize there is no shortage of people
who want to contribute either financially or through engineering talents.

Prior to now, I didn't even realize it was conceivably feasible to do asteroid
mining... but if it is, why doesn't someone start a massive open source track?
A classic space race, though it would between a private company, and a non
government public effort. I'll contribute money and time :D

~~~
Symmetry
I wouldn't normally post song lyrics to HN, but this just seemed too
appropriate:

    
    
      *And I want it so much.
      Close my eyes, I can taste the Mars dust in the air.
      In the darkness the space stations shimmer in orbits that I will not share.
    
      But I'll teach the student
      Who'll manage the fact'ry
      That tempers the steel that makes colonies strong.
      And I'll write the program that runs the computer
      That charts out the stars where our rockets belong.
      It will never get easy to wake from my dream
      When the future I dream of is so far away.
      But I am willing to sacrifice
      something I don't have For something I won't have
      but somebody will someday.*

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
You should probably mention that this is the song Somebody Will by Sassafrass.
You can find more info and purcahse it here:
<http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?page_id=15>

------
Tichy
What will be the shovels of the future gold rush? Maybe it would be a good
time to develop mining robots? Rockets are completely out of my reach...

~~~
allenp
How about prospectors maps?

------
waiwai933
I hate to admit it, but my brain initially processed the headline as:

"Google execs have backed an asteroid mining venture. In other news, James
Cameron has been unveiled."

Then, after that horrendous attempt at comprehension, it came up with this,
which was only slightly better:

"James Cameron has unveiled an asteroid mining venture that is backed by
Google execs."

~~~
hdevalence2
Replace "," with "and".

~~~
lucianof
This is actually one thing I've always been wondering about as a non-native
speaker when reading English headlines. Is there any reason newspapers prefer
this style? It sounds weird to me.

~~~
damncabbage
It's weird for us native speakers too, don't worry.

My guess is that it puts the information in the title in order from the most
eye-grabbing to the least. (The more readable _"Google Execs and James Cameron
unveil Asteroid Mining Venture"_ puts the _holy shit_ part of the title at the
end.)

------
sabj
I am tremendously excited to hear about this project; it's exactly what I
want(ed) to do, these billionaires have just gotten the jump on me by a few
(dozen) zeroes of net worth.

If any of them are reading, or anyone here knows them, I would do anything to
get involved in this effort; the development and exploration of space is the
most important mission in human history, and I'd love to put to work my
business expertise, youthful energy, and eagerness to contribute... I'm well
credentialed but more importantly extremely passionate!

~~~
eru
> [...] I would do anything to get involved in this effort; [...]

Have you applied for a job at SpaceX, yet? That's one way to get involved with
modern space faring.

~~~
sabj
It's an interesting proposition, but my intention has always been to find
where I can be of greatest leverage. SpaceX is at a place in time / life /
hiring that I think I wouldn't really be able to contribute to its mission
(and mine) as much as I might by doing something else first. That plus I doubt
I'd be of terrible appeal. The following are also true:

a) SpaceX appears more specifically to be looking for rocket engineers, etc, a
background I do not have. (Good business / analytics / etc, but, a rocket
engineer I am not). This problem likely applies to Planetary Resources as
well. However...

b) Planetary Resources is more directly aligned with the mission I find most
important - SpaceX is doing great things, and Elon Musk is super cool for
insisting on his goal of making humans a multi-planetary species, but that's
still a ways out. I don't know that I'd have as much ability to contribute.
It's for this reason I've been trying to gain skills that would be of greater
value down the line (business ones, in particular) in order to do what's
necessary to help run and grow a commercial space venture.

c) I actually asked Elon Musk something on the subject - 'What advice do you
have for people interested in getting involved early in these kinds of
capital-intensive but world-changing businesses' and his answer was that, of
course, it's helpful to have a few $100MMs from something like an internet
company first :)

~~~
eru
Indeed. I guess I just took the "I'd do everything." a bit too literal.

------
ricardobeat
This is so unreal my brain has trouble deciding it's not a prank.

------
andyjohnson0
If we suddenly have large amounts of previously expensive (rare or difficult
to extract) metals available, what will this do to commodity markets? Would
prices be driven down?

If the price of $mineral goes down below a certain level, demand has to go up
for continued asteroid mining to be viable. What future activities (apart from
the obvious, like catalytic converters) might provide this demand?

~~~
Retric
It's just a question of efficiency, if the cheapest way to get platinum is
asteroid mining then once it starts it can out compete traditional platinum
mining.(1) Generally speaking as the price for a commodity drops the market
for that commodity increases more than the price drop. AKA, if gold costs X,
and you can produce gold for 1/2 the price then expect to sell more than 2x as
much gold. With Oil being a classic example, it's used to make roads because
it's so cheap vs. being a better road surface.

1) Not that anyone directly mines for just platinum it tends to be a byproduct
of the refining process for things like nickel, copper or gold. Even
'platinum' mines end up producing _platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium,
iridium and osmium_ rather than just platinum. Still, it significantly
influence the profitability of such mining operations to the point where if
the price drops many mines will slow down production.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Thank you. Very interesting.

 __ _Generally speaking as the price for a commodity drops the market for that
commodity increases more than the price drop._ __

I know almost nothing about economics. Is there a general mechanism that
explains this?

~~~
Retric
Substitution. What materials you use to build something is a function of their
property's and their costs. AKA, you can use timber frame or steel to build a
house which one you chose depends on their costs not just their inherent
property's because either one will meet the same basic needs (strength,
durability, toxicity, etc.)

Also, economy's are complex enough that there are a wide range of cost/benefit
trade-offs going on. Electrically silver is a better conductor than copper
which is better than Aluminum. While silver costs to much to be used for most
wiring copper and aluminum tend to trade off based on weight strength issues.
So, high tension power wires tend to use aluminum due to it's physical
property's outweighing electrical issues after costs are taken into
consideration.

Again this is just the size of the market in nominal value. AKA if the price
drops to 1/2 and you sell 2.1 times as much the total market increased even if
everyone's margins where squeezed.

------
masenghi
Who do asteroids belong to? Can they just claim them and sell the material
they extract?

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have my own asteroid mining company. Just
need a couple billion dollars first. But what happens once there are two or
more competing corporations? Who has the power to say which part of space
belongs to whom? Will there be space battles?

~~~
Symmetry
Nobody owns or can own any celestial body according to the Outer Space
Treaty[1]. Basically you can do whatever peaceful activity you want but you
don't get to own anything in space except what you brought there. There is
some legal question as to whether you _own_ what you bring back, but you can
certainly do whatever you want with it, including selling it.

Corporations operating in space are still subject to the laws of whatever
national flag they're flying under, so I presume that the court system can
come to some decision if more than one company wants to grab the same hunk of
rock and metal. It'll probably be based on who launches their mission first,
or something like that.

------
bane
This has so much potential. Could this be the proper bootstrapping of us up
there? (Thanks NASA for all the early scouting!)

------
lmarinho
I'm curious about how they plan to bring these materials here. I assume
changing the trajectory of the asteroid towards Earth wouldn't be a very good
idea, considering the potential risk of impact. Maybe small chunks of material
brought by numerous cheap reentry capsules are the way to go.

~~~
raldi
I'd crash them into the moon (no atmosphere, so they wouldn't burn up on
entry) for about a decade, then send ore-processing robots to smelt them down,
then figure out later how to bring the results back.

~~~
Nick_C
Good idea at first look, but it would be tricky to get the trajectory right,
though. The Moon's sphere of influence is tiny compared to the Earth's. You
would need a guidance package and, perhaps more importantly in terms of cost,
onboard rockets to change delta-v (and only one-use because they would be
destroyed on impact).

------
joshontheweb
How do I get a job as a space miner?

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think the comment about becoming a robot is accurate in its way, the 'pick'
of a space miner is likely a semi-autonomous front loader equivalent which can
process for a particular mineral/substance.

However, if you read the article (either the parent or the NYTimes one) you
will see that there is some thought about bringing an asteroid to one of the
Lagrange points or into a Lunar orbit (something that would make the chance of
it getting away and hitting Earth unlikely). In that scenario one could
imagine living in one of those inflatable habitats where you worked while you
operated your remote mining pick.

Getting to and from that point would probably involve a 'loan' from the mining
company, which you could pay off by mining the asteroid. Of course while you
lived up there you would need things like food and stuff but you could get
that at the company store. And rather than actually charge you for it they
will just put it on your tab. You know, you load 16 tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt. :-)

As part of one of the lunar exploration projects I was looking at various
ideas for processing lunar regolith into something more useful than just dirt.
Water is pretty straight forward, basically it sublimates off stuff in a
vacuum and you collect it and store it. Platinum is a different story, some
sort of chemical/catalyzing process is required that does _not_ require re-
charging the chemical packs either at all or very often.

~~~
wtracy
If you're bringing an object that close to home, I don't know why you'd need
someone up there just to teleoperate the equipment. At that distance, the
lightspeed delay gets low enough that the person with the joystick could work
from earth.

~~~
gmaslov
It might be worth having someone up there to fix the equipment when something
goes wrong... unless by that time we've developed teleoperated robots with the
flexibility and dexterity and sensitivity needed to make arbitrary on-site
repairs. You might remember from the Hubble repair missions [1] that these
relatively simple tasks you might expect to take a few hours in an Earth-based
lab took /days/ of EVA time. Imagine how much more difficult such things would
be when you have to squint at the job through a camera (not as good as an
eyeball), use clumsy manipulators instead of your fingers (you'll have force-
feedback if you're lucky, but forget about feeling textures), and with some
lightspeed delay on top of that. Don't underestimate the value of other human
senses, either; often the first indication of a machine failing is that it
sounds or smells wrong.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125#Extra-
vehicular_activi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125#Extra-
vehicular_activity)

~~~
ChuckMcM
I suspect this would be the likely case, and there would be repairs /
refueling / retooling. If asteroid mining was anything like planet mining the
ability to adapt tools on the spot and evolve quickly was a huge boon.

One of the places I like to camp is Plumas-Eureka State Park [1] which is the
site of an old gold mine. The stamping mill is kind of still there. One of the
things the blacksmith docent talked about was that there was a competitive
advantage at a mine to having a creative blacksmith, since they could build
tools well suited to the kinds of rock and conditions rather than relying on
'off the shelf' sort of designs.

[1] <http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=507>

------
Roboprog
I love the first picture of the drum about to "eat" the rock. Reminds me of
the furnaces in the book "Higher Education"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Education_(novel)>

~~~
njharman
[http://en.memory-
alpha.org/wiki/File:Planet_killer,_remaster...](http://en.memory-
alpha.org/wiki/File:Planet_killer,_remastered.jpg)

------
melling
We've had discussions on HN before about NASA and man vs robotic space
exploration. It's really hard to convince people that NASA should not be going
to Mars and not be going back to the moon with people at this time. The best
way for NASA to spend its money is to build LOTS of robotic
explorers/surveyors and learn as much about the solar system as possible. When
we find something of value then it'll be time to send humans, which should
take more than 15-25 years once we survey the solar system. At that point
we'll have a VC bubble with people trying to extract whatever resources we
find.

------
ajlburke
This sounds awesome, but I couldn't help but think that once they've built a
fleet of robots capable of moving entire asteroids around, there's another
viable backup business model to which they could easily 'pivot':

1\. Assemble several dozen (hundred?) of the non-platinum-bearing asteroids
with your robots and aim them on a slingshot-accelerated path towards Earth.

2\. Threaten the entire world (or at least rich countries) with massive
kinetic orbital bombardment.

3\. ... profit!

Brought to you by the guy who coined "Nuke them from orbit - it's the only way
to be sure."

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
Wouldn't it be cheaper/easier to just buy/steal some nukes?

------
tylee78
I almost upvoted all of your comments - its incredible - as if someone was
reading our mind and finally said, let's just do what all of us ever wanted to
do!

------
dhughes
If this becomes commonplace in the future I wonder how much it will affect the
Earth, wouldn't more mass cause changes in the Earth's rotation or orbit?

I know tonnes of crap from space falls to Earth each day or year, whatever the
number is, but mining may bring more material back possibly denser metals
rather than just rock dust and in a shorter period of time.

Interesting to ponder.

~~~
Nick_C
The mass of the entire asteroid belt is only about 0.05% of the Earth's, and
the metallic (M-type) ones only 10% of that, so not much effect.

Interestingly, Ceres alone is 1/3 of the total mass, and the big four make up
half.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Characteristics>

------
alinajaf
Has anyone considered that this may be PR for the upcoming Prometheus? They
have a TED talk on youtube, so it wouldn't surprise me.

~~~
a_m_kelly
This seems unlikely as Prometheus is being directly by Ridley Scott, not James
Cameron.

------
eliben
Incredible, and kudos to everyone involved. I wish I'll live long enough to
see the fruits of such efforts harvested.

------
sown
Neat.

So I wonder where this puts us on the hockey stick curve of space exploration?
Are we at the point of the spinning jenny or more towards the cotton gin in
humanity's space timeline? Probably doesn't matter if you are sufficiently far
enough into the future and have to squint backwards.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Still way, way over on the left side. We don't even have off-Earth colonies
yet. We're on the cusp of being able to support cities in orbit, colonies on
Mars, the Moon, and asteroids, etc. It'll be a fun ride.

------
prawn
If mines are such ugly, destructive things, why is it that I find this
development so beautiful?

~~~
SamReidHughes
Is it because asteroids are already ugly?

~~~
prawn
I'm not sure that's it. I don't hear of wrecking crews smashing up a derelict
corporate wasteland (arguably far uglier than any natural shape) and feel some
peaceful, "all is right" sensation.

Maybe something to do with the serenity of the void.

But probably more related to this being a step forward? A sense of
progression? Could come from growing up reading and imagining anything to do
with space exploration.

How many people on HN want to grab their colleagues right now, shake them, and
yell "Why aren't you currently amazed? We're going to be mining IN FRICKIN'
SPACE within our lifetimes?"

~~~
nosignal
I'm supposed to be teaching a class on introductory Python (students are doing
their exercises now) and I want to scrap the rest of the day to talk about how
phenomenally awesome this news is.

I'll settle for a strange, quiet sense of elation.

~~~
prawn
"strange, quiet sense of elation" - good way of describing it. Pretty similar
to how I felt after reading the article.

------
kfk
Are they considering also sources of energy (gases for example) to mine? I
mean, metals are good, but we will need more energy too. Also, what metals can
they mine? Can they mine lithium (maybe we can ship 'batteries' to charge on
the moon or asteroids?)?

Cool stuff anyway.

~~~
dstorrs
Solar is a better bet for energy in near earth space as opposed to batteries.
That changes as you go out to the Belt and Mars, but even then a radio thermal
generator (RTG) is probably better.

If you want to ship energy to Earth surface you want solar again. Generate
electricity from panels, convert to microwave, beam to receivers on Earth,
convert back to electricity, problem solved. And no, the beam density would
not high enough to cook anyone.

Google "space based solar power" for more.

------
geetee
Get Bruce Willis involved and put up the Kickstarter page. Take my money.

~~~
ericd
I wouldn't say that there's much of a funding barrier in this, many of the
people involved have more money than has been transmitted over kickstarter in
its entire history :-). I think if you want to really help with this, you
should offer to work on the project with them. I'm sure they're going to need
a large amount of code written, research done, mechanical widgets made, and so
on, depending on your specialty.

------
MatthewPhillips
What are the property implications? Does a company "own" an asteroid simply by
being the first to land on it, or do companies need to bid on asteroids to
mine from (and who is in charge of that)?

~~~
PerryCox
I would assume space is just like the Wild West. Whatever you claim is yours,
so long as you can defend it.

------
es20641
Link to their live public announcement :: Tuesday April 24 at 10:30 AM PDT ::
<http://www.spacevidcast.com/live/>

------
godbolev
> "at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news conference at
> Seattle's Museum of Flight."

I'm not in America. Does anyone know where I can see this live online?

~~~
es20641
<http://www.spacevidcast.com/live/>

10:30 AM PDT.

------
bitwize
_Build yourself a rocket ship,

Blast off on an ego trip.

Can this really be the end?

Back to work you go again._

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I>

------
GlennS
If sci-fi has taught us anything, it's that this can only lead to a dystopian
future where mankind is ruled by warring mega-corporations. Also, space
pirates.

------
peteforde
I can't help but feel that Asimov would be proud.

~~~
jholman
Asimov would probably start kvetching about how long it took, but otherwise,
probably.

The one who'd really be chortling, though, would be Heinlein, who was (almost)
always a terrific proponent of privatized (almost) everything, especially
space exploration.

------
whalesalad
Ads like this in the center of the article really detract from the read =(

<http://wsld.me/G4q5>

------
evoxed
I heard Mr. Cameron is already suiting up for the mission. I wonder where is
secret door is this time...

------
tocomment
So what happened at the press conference at 1pm? Were more details released?

------
gouranga
Genius idea. It'll be like playing Homeworld again :)

------
wtn
I wouldn't drink water from a heavy-metal rich asteroid.

~~~
freehunter
Right now, here on Earth, heavy metals are being extracted from water to make
it drinkable. If you've ever drank water that wasn't straight from a well,
you've had water that has had heavy metals filtered from it.

------
chubot
How much is the Unobtainium gonna go for?

------
gavanwoolery
ALL HAIL OUR NEW OVERLORDS.

------
chj
Wow, wow, wow, wow, what can I do to support this adventure? Buying more
android phones?

------
kator
I love the optimism I naturally want to jump on the band wagon and I doubt my
comment will get a single up vote but here it goes:

What about:

1) Biological issues (space viruses etc.)

2) Accidents (opps the orbit changed it's heading for Chicago)

3) More AI for robots, Skynet finally has a good resource base

4) "Today in the news global markets failed as PRI announced capturing a 1
billion metric ton astroid with 80% gold and platinum content"

I am actually super excited just thought it was interesting to think about the
counter issues.

~~~
johngalt
#1 'Andromeda strain' I'm sure that scientists will the first to study
anything returned from the first mined asteroid.

#2 The asteroid they are returning will weigh less than the ISS and be parked
further away. Tackling the control/direction of asteroids is something we want
to learn anyway.

#3 We are a long way from strong AI. If strong AI is created, asteroid mining
would be the smallest footnote in its capabilities.

#4 There are abundant industrial uses for PGMs so there is a high floor price
and continuing demand. Markets have established systems for dealing with
periodic resource delivery (futures).

------
Keyframe
Probability of PR stunt rather than truth - 99%, but if it is true we can
definitely say we are in a new era.

~~~
peteforde
Larry Page doesn't really strike me as someone that needs to do a lot of PR
stunts.

~~~
Keyframe
Time will tell, my money is on PR stunt.

~~~
mryan
The calibre of the backers leaves me certain that this is not a PR stunt. Does
the founder of one of the world's best known companies need any additional PR?
How about the director of one of the all-time top grossing movies?

Seriously, the chances of this being just a PR stunt are practically nil. If
they _did_ want to get some individual PR, there would be cheaper ways to do
it - e.g. buying a popular TV network and broadcasting PageNews 24/7, while
paying people to watch it.

~~~
peteforde
Safe to say that we agree. Best not feed the conspiracy trolls. :)

------
samstave
What is the math behind mining resources on asteroids?

Assume it takes 50 billion to get to the point where you can mine your first
asteroid, how much of what resource is in that asteroid that they can resell
to terrestrial earth dwellers who need it for profit?

Or does this not matter at this point?

Further, what will the harvested resources be used to build? Military
hardware? If so then I am very unimpressed with what this would mean to our
civilization.

While I think it is "cool" - there are so freaking many problems with humans
on earth that I feel we largely ignore our core issues and focus on shiny
objects.

Every government on the planet is broken, we a a slave species to debt and we
kill, exploit and oppress ourselves.

Now, what would be interesting if the took these resources to build a huge
floating city-state in the middle of the ocean (or orbit) however, this would
just be future-feudalism as it would be living in the corporation.

EDIT: I love how people on HN downvote without any comment. My point is
completely valid, it is also my opinion - you don't need to agree, but it
would be nice if you attempted to address my question regarding the economics
of this effort.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
OK I'll feed the troll. You got downvoted because your comment makes it seem
like you didn't read the article, or any of the supplemental articles linked
to in this thread. A few quick examples of why I think this - Why did you
assume 50 billion - that is not supported at all by the article. Why are you
asking what resources are in the asteroid when the article answers that? Why
are you assuming they want to resell those to "earth dwellers" when the
article mentions applications involving resupplying other space missions?
TL;DR - if we criticized every poorly researched post in detail instead of
just downvoting, we'd have no time left in our day to do anything else.

