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There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

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Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#31

Post by Turing_Machine »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #22
bryanlarsen wrote: post #21

By comparison, there's $956 quintillion of platinum in the earth's crust, and similar amounts of other precious metals. 5 ug/kg (incidence of platinum in crust) x 6x10^24 kg (crust size) x 32 USD/g (price of platinum) Asteroid mining is crazy silly. We're not supply limited for any element on earth, we're demand limited. If the price of platinum rose substantially, so would supply. It doesn't matter how much of anyth…

Additionally, the production cost of most rare metals is very highly correlated with the cost of energy. It seems likely that space mining may have to compete with metals produced at a price an order of magnitude cheaper than the current price because cheap solar energy appears to be coming.

Solar power is going to be way, way cheaper in space than even the most optimistic ground-based solar technologies.

For instance, it'd be practical to build a multi-kilometer diameter mirror out of thin plastic, and just melt the entire asteroid and distill off what you wanted.

To expand a bit: a mirror for a solar furnace on Earth has to be strong enough to hold itself up against the force of gravity and handle wind and precipitation loading. A mirror in space doesn't. It can be one molecule of plastic thick, with a few atoms of thickness of aluminum as a coating.

Plus you don't have to worry about cleaning off dust, bird poop, and whatnot.

You're going to need some station-keeping so a large, flimsy mirror doesn't drift with the solar wind, but even the purest asteroid is going to have some slag that will make dandy propellant.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#32

Post by bryanlarsen »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #27
bryanlarsen wrote: post #21

By comparison, there's $956 quintillion of platinum in the earth's crust, and similar amounts of other precious metals. 5 ug/kg (incidence of platinum in crust) x 6x10^24 kg (crust size) x 32 USD/g (price of platinum) Asteroid mining is crazy silly. We're not supply limited for any element on earth, we're demand limited. If the price of platinum rose substantially, so would supply. It doesn't matter how much of anyth…

You really wouldnt' want to bring it back to the Earth's surface. You would keep in in orbit and make a satellite(s) out of it.

Low Earth Orbit is still fairly close to earth, cost wise. (yay SpaceX). A gram of platinum in LEO is only about 20% more expensive than a gram of platinum on Earth.

It's the stuff that's cheap but bulky like iron, water & rocket fuel ectrolyzed from water that you'll want to mine in space for use in space.

Platinum and other rare metals will simply be waste products that are profitable to ship back to Earth.

edit: my original comment used "titanium" instead of "platinum", which made it nonsensical, since titanium isn't a rare metal.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#33

Post by BurningFrog »

wyager wrote: post #13
shmerl wrote: post #11

> That’s because the value of many asteroids are measured in the quintillions of dollars Doesn't abundance of certain material make it cheaper? So the value isn't necessarily linearly dependent on the amount. Reminds me "The Laxian Key" by Robert Sheckley[1] (read it, if you haven't yet). [1]. https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-11/Galaxy_195...

Even after completely saturating the market, a large asteroid would easily fetch tens of trillions over the next hundred years. The first person to bring in a large metal- and ice-rich asteroid would dominate the space production market for decades to come.

Depends on when the second person brings in a similar rock.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#35

Post by bryanlarsen »

jfoutz wrote: post #26
bryanlarsen wrote: post #21

By comparison, there's $956 quintillion of platinum in the earth's crust, and similar amounts of other precious metals. 5 ug/kg (incidence of platinum in crust) x 6x10^24 kg (crust size) x 32 USD/g (price of platinum) Asteroid mining is crazy silly. We're not supply limited for any element on earth, we're demand limited. If the price of platinum rose substantially, so would supply. It doesn't matter how much of anyth…

But we're using a lot of the crust. No one will be mining under Atlanta. There are plenty of places we aren't using, but the crust is also thick. A mile down sounds really deep, much less 20 miles. I mostly agree with you, but it might wind up easier to nab an asteroid than dig a mile under the ocean.

"But we're using a lot of the crust."

39% of the surface area is used by agriculture, and 3% by urban areas. That excludes oceans & Antartica. Including those, the number drops to less than 10%.

Mining takes up less than 0.05% of the surface area of the earth.

I think we're good.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#36

Post by mooreds »

kchoudhu wrote: post #25
mzw_mzw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space is big. I mean, really big. The orbits that are most useful for our current-day satellites are crowded, of course, but you could stash your asteroid booty anywhere you like. Putting it in orbit around the Moon might not be a bad move.

Why bother bringing it home at all? Set up orbital factories as well, and ship the finished goods back to Earth via space elevator. Get rid of mining and dirty manufacturing on earth once and for all.

This book captivated me as a child and explains many interesting possibilities about manufacturing in space: https://www.amazon.com/third-industrial-revolution-Harry-Sti...

All kinds of interesting processes become feasible in weightlessness. For instance, some kinds of alloys just aren't possible on earth because the metals' densities are so different that they don't mix properly. No so in space.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#37

Post by gizmo686 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #33
wyager wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even after completely saturating the market, a large asteroid would easily fetch tens of trillions over the next hundred years. The first person to bring in a large metal- and ice-rich asteroid would dominate the space production market for decades to come.

Depends on when the second person brings in a similar rock.

Does it? By "bring in", I assume we are talking about placing into a convenient orbit, because I do not see a reasonable way to bring a large asteroid down to the surface in the forseable future.

However, my (non laywer) understanding of space law is that it is prohibited (by treaty) to own celestial objects. You can own samples you minded from them, but not the objects themselves. If this understanding is correct, it means that after you park the asteroid in orbit, you are allowed to mine it, and sell the ore. However, so is everyone else; despite the fact that you invested the money in moving the asteroid.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#38

Post by adlpz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #21

By comparison, there's $956 quintillion of platinum in the earth's crust, and similar amounts of other precious metals. 5 ug/kg (incidence of platinum in crust) x 6x10^24 kg (crust size) x 32 USD/g (price of platinum) Asteroid mining is crazy silly. We're not supply limited for any element on earth, we're demand limited. If the price of platinum rose substantially, so would supply. It doesn't matter how much of anyth…

The earth crust is estimated to be in the order of 10^19 kg. The 6x10^24 figure you mention is the mass of the whole earth. So your calculation if off by 5 orders of magnitude.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#39

Post by mooreds »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #24

The comments on the article by Tom Billings are far more interesting than the article itself was.

Did a bit of research on Tom and seems like he knows his stuff.

Thanks for the pointer, otherwise I wouldn't have checked out the comments section.

Re: There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining

#40

Post by jfoutz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #35
jfoutz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're using a lot of the crust. No one will be mining under Atlanta. There are plenty of places we aren't using, but the crust is also thick. A mile down sounds really deep, much less 20 miles. I mostly agree with you, but it might wind up easier to nab an asteroid than dig a mile under the ocean.

"But we're using a lot of the crust." 39% of the surface area is used by agriculture, and 3% by urban areas. That excludes oceans & Antartica. Including those, the number drops to less than 10%. Mining takes up less than 0.05% of the surface area of the earth. I think we're good.

Because it's easy. Digging a hole even a mile deep is hard. It might be worth it, but again, it might be easier to just grab an asteroid.
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