Plans for asteroid mining emerge

**tantalus** · 24 Apr 12,, 15:28

Details have been emerging of the plan by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources.

The multi-million-dollar plan would use robotic spacecraft to squeeze chemical components of fuel and minerals such as platinum and gold out of the rocks.

The founders include film director and explorer James Cameron as well as Google's chief executive Larry Page and its executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

They even aim to create a fuel depot in space by 2020.

However, several scientists have responded with scepticism, calling the plan daring, difficult and highly expensive.

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.

The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for asteroid targets rich in resources. The intention will be to open deep-space exploration to private industry.

Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.

The company, known as Planetary Resources, is also backed by space tourism pioneer Eric Anderson, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, former US presidential candidate Ross Perot and veteran Nasa astronaut Tom Jones.

The founders of the venture are to give further details in a press conference on Tuesday.

Long game

"We have a long view. We're not expecting this company to be an overnight financial home run. This is going to take time," Eric Anderson told the Reuters news agency.

The billionaires are hoping that the real financial returns, which are decades away, will come from mining asteroids for platinum group metals and rare minerals.

"If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it's the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land," Mr Diamandis explained.

Water from asteroids could be broken down in space to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. Water is very expensive to get off the ground so the plan is to take it from an asteroid to a spot in space where it can be converted into fuel.

From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft.

"A depot within a decade seems incredible. I hope there will be someone to use it," Dr Andrew Cheng, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory told the Associated Press.

"And I have high hopes that commercial uses of space will become profitable beyond Earth orbit. Maybe the time has come."

Prof Jay Melosh from Purdue University said that the costs were just too high, calling space exploration "a sport that only wealthy nations, and those wishing to demonstrate their technical prowess, can afford to indulge."

Eric Anderson, who co-founded the space tourism firm Space Adventures, said he was used to sceptics.

"Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," He said.

"We're in this for decades. But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning."

BBC News - Plans for asteroid mining emerge

was gonna put this in international economy, but then figured, hmmm might be 50 years premature

**USSWisconsin** · 24 Apr 12,, 17:30

Yep, the only near term effect on the ecomony will most likely be a modest drain to fund this idea. Still I think its a good idea for the future and I'm glad to hear about businesses with more than a single quarter outlook. This is on the extreme far end of it though, my guess is that this might be profitable in a 100 years - and will probably not be about "precious" metals. In space, that water seems much more valuable.

**andrew** · 24 Apr 12,, 18:10

I think it's a useless idea both for the present and for the future.
With the current generation of rocket propulsion based on chemical fuel, the costs of water extraction from asteroids in space will be prohibitively high.
And in the future, when mankind will proceed to the use of a new more advanced technology of propulsion, the issue of the costs of launching water into space will become irrelevant.
The same logic of discrepancy of the technology generations and costs applies to the idea of extraction of precious and rare metals.

**Parihaka** · 24 Apr 12,, 20:32

Decadal long time-lines, robotic, extraction and production occur in space, orbit capture starting of course with a proper prospecting survey of near-earth. I like it and if the uber rich have to have a hobby this one is a hell of a lot better than racing yachts. I wonder which comet they'll go for first....

**Mihais** · 24 Apr 12,, 21:13

It took about 100 years from the moment the first Viking longship left the shore until a network for trade and plunder was formed.Same things with the galleons.Profitable it may be not from the start,but if they introduce competition and entrepreneurship in space,great things can happen.The possible(and probable) benefits of the research might even pay the effort with earthly gains.They could include advances in robotics,energy,AI,medicine,material science and God knows what more.Makind taking a peek beyond the Final Frontier is also a good thing.

**Dago** · 24 Apr 12,, 23:50

Unless there's a new discovery of fossil fuels, that's more effective then anything currently attainable here, then I don't see this plan being very effective at all.

**citanon** · 25 Apr 12,, 00:22

Originally Posted by andrew

I think it's a useless idea both for the present and for the future.
With the current generation of rocket propulsion based on chemical fuel, the costs of water extraction from asteroids in space will be prohibitively high.
And in the future, when mankind will proceed to the use of a new more advanced technology of propulsion, the issue of the costs of launching water into space will become irrelevant.
The same logic of discrepancy of the technology generations and costs applies to the idea of extraction of precious and rare metals.

I think the idea of rubber wheels is useless for both the future and the present. With the cost of rubber production from tree sap sky high, using them on carriages will be impractical. In the future, when wheels are no longer used, the issue of vibration isolation will be irrelevant.

See what I did there?

Seriously, if you look at the history of technology development, basic technological foundations will be retained for a long time. We are still using the wheel today even though it was invented in pre-history. We are still using axles and gears, we are using chemistry developed in the 1800s and electromagnetic motors developed in the 1900s. People are still going down tunnels to dig up dirt from the earth for resources.

Chemical rockets will be with us for a long time, and despite popular perceptions, the key cost barrier for LEO is not the chemical fuel but the cost of throwing away the rocket. Even when we move to nuclear or plasma propulsion we will still need propellent.

Mining asteroids is not a bad idea. You can take an asteroid and nudge it into heliocentric orbit between Earth and Venus, then reap enormous amounts of energy via solar thermal plants (a big piece of metal with a working fluid that gets hot on the solar facing side of the asteroid and dumps waste heat from the dark side). Those can power automated industrial facilities built directly on the asteroid for production of refined products in situ. Then you take the cargo, slap on a solar sail and let solar wind carry it back to Earth and drop it planet side from orbit, and the mass you consume will never once have to fight a strong gravity well without some sort of assistance.

Doing this sort of thing with extensive automation we can harness a substantial fraction of the Sun's energy, even though the factories will still be based on the thermodynamic principles and similar production techniques we use today in the chemical industry and in manufacturing.

I wager that by the 2100s a large fraction of our GDP and 90% of heavy industry will be in space, and most of it will be recycled into sustaining and expanding the space economy.

**Monash** · 29 Apr 12,, 09:24

Originally Posted by citanon

Mining asteroids is not a bad idea. You can take an asteroid and nudge it into heliocentric orbit between Earth and Venus, then reap enormous amounts of energy via solar thermal plants (a big piece of metal with a working fluid that gets hot on the solar facing side of the asteroid and dumps waste heat from the dark side). Those can power automated industrial facilities built directly on the asteroid for production of refined products in situ. Then you take the cargo, slap on a solar sail and let solar wind carry it back to Earth and drop it planet side from orbit, and the mass you consume will never once have to fight a strong gravity well without some sort of assistance.

Doing this sort of thing with extensive automation we can harness a substantial fraction of the Sun's energy, even though the factories will still be based on the thermodynamic principles and similar production techniques we use today in the chemical industry and in manufacturing.

Nice summary. With the possible exception of a few really rear elements/metals there is little to be gained from returning any raw materials to Earth as we can mine and/or recycle it here much more cheaply. So if space based mining does take off the mineral ores and chemicals extracted by the miners would have to be used for spaced based construction projects first. Given the infrastructure needed to conduct spaced based mining on a commercial scale any project will most likely have to "bootstrap" itself to economic viability (initially at least) by using everything it produces to construct its own infrastructure - with assistance from Earth in the form of "seed" rescources.

I actually think if we start mining operations in space it will be on the Moon first and for similar reasons. Given the cost of getting materials there a base on the Moon will need to be as self sufficient as possible, so finding water ice and other essential materials that they can scrounge locally will be a big priority.

**diablo49** · 29 Apr 12,, 21:21

Originally Posted by USSWisconsin

Yep, the only near term effect on the ecomony will most likely be a modest drain to fund this idea. Still I think its a good idea for the future and I'm glad to hear about businesses with more than a single quarter outlook. This is on the extreme far end of it though, my guess is that this might be profitable in a 100 years - and will probably not be about "precious" metals. In space, that water seems much more valuable.

Near term profit will come from surveying near earth asteroids and selling the info I believe.

Next step is designing minisats or something like that to travelt o these asteroids to survey them up close.

Next step would be to fit whatever equipment is needed to these mini sats (I think)

The end goal is mining asteroids, but there is more emphasis on mining for water, so as to have an abundant source of rocket fuel already in space (apparently the rocket fuel it takes to get to orbit and the lack of supplies already up there is a huge factor in the cost of space flight). Mining for actual minerals is actually less emphasized overall, but its more flashy to the media.

This is what I understand to be the road map.

A great source of information on the company and spaceflight in general is the nasaspaceflight.com forums should anyone have an interest in what Planetary Resources is thought of by knowledgeable amateurs along with professionals in the industry.