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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

#51

Post by pitaj »

shmerl wrote: post #48
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is a high-latency side-chain of authority. When / if we get to mining asteroids, and generally inhabiting space, either personally or via robots, treaties / laws will be remapped to match the reality of the times.

Hopefully no one will remap them to allow owning planetoids. That would be pretty nasty.

It would probably be based on a homesteading system. In the case of a planet, you'd get what you changed. In the case of an asteroid, if you moved it into a different orbit and set up facilities on it that's probably enough to count as a homestead.

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

#52

Post by pitaj »

akhatri_aus wrote: post #29

The next type of pollution: gravitational pollution. Increasing the earth's gravity.

What do you mean? The earth is venting about 50,000 metric tons of mass per year. The addition of rare materials from space probably wouldn't match that. That's not even considering that the vast majority of materials would be used for space travel itself.

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

#53

Post by pitaj »

kashkhan wrote: post #3

how much platinum is there in the earth's core? $ 100 million per ounce is hardly grounds for a gold rush to the asteroid belt.

The platinum in the Earth's core and lower crust is inaccessible. The pressures and temperatures down there are much too high. Compare that to a cold, light asteroid, and you'll see the big picture.

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

#54

Post by pitaj »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #32
zitterbewegung wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: m…

Most rare metals have uses beyond just "pretty."

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

#55

Post by andrewflnr »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #31
bryanlarsen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have references about this solar mirror refining idea? It sounds fascinating.

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

#56

Post by IndianAstronaut »

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...

I mean, even if we got a tenth of that value, it would still be a tremendous amount of money and could spur whole new industries on earth, much like the advent of steel production did.

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

#57

Post by andrewflnr »

pitaj wrote: post #52
akhatri_aus wrote: post #29

The next type of pollution: gravitational pollution. Increasing the earth's gravity.

What do you mean? The earth is venting about 50,000 metric tons of mass per year. The addition of rare materials from space probably wouldn't match that. That's not even considering that the vast majority of materials would be used for space travel itself.

Um, what? If you're thinking about volcanism, I'm pretty sure none of that escapes earth. It doesn't change our total mass.

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

#58

Post by idlewords »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #4
kashkhan wrote: post #3

how much platinum is there in the earth's core? $ 100 million per ounce is hardly grounds for a gold rush to the asteroid belt.

The Platinum in the Earth's core is not accessible, not even a little bit, not even with orders of magnitude improvements in technology.

Not with that kind of attitude!

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

#60

Post by manicdee »

wyager wrote: post #12
moneytide1 wrote: post #5

This will only be profitable at precise times of the year - depending on what prospected material is needed for that time next year when it's had time to wait till the closest location of the parent planet after its had time to mine in that gravity well and slung back when the parent planet has circled around.

No, you could bring the asteroid into an earth orbit. You can ship down some of the expensive metals to cover your cost right away, but leave the bulk materials in HEO for spaceship construction. The easiest way to do this is to find an ice-rich asteroid and use a nuclear-thermal engine to vaporize the ice for propellant.

Orbit is much more expensive than reentry and landing (thanks to our atmosphere).

Crash the asteroid into a convenient desert or shallow ocean, then continue with more conventional mining techniques.

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