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The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

wsj.com

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Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#41

Post by y04nn »

sxp wrote: post #20

This article is mostly fluff. It doesn't get into any interesting technical details. The core bits are: > Mr. Kokorich, 44, is one such entrepreneur. In 2017 he founded Momentus, a California-based company that seeks to revolutionize transport in space by developing in-space transfer vehicles that use water as a propellant. These would “complement low-cost gigantic rockets, like Starship from SpaceX and New Glenn fro…

From https://momentus.space/development/ it looks like they are using a microwave generator with water to generate a plasma thruster. The technical name seem to be microwave electro-thermal thruster (MET). There is more info on the thurster in the abstract here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1420619

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#42

Post by PeterisP »

gibolt wrote: post #35
teruakohatu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold and diamonds are common enough on earth, we have as much as we need for industry. Articles often talk about rare-earth minerals but don't specify exactly what is desperately needed that can't be found or made on earth cheaper.

Technological leaps happen when something new or uncommon becomes widely available. How many cost prohibitive applications become possible when the cost of any available raw mineral drops by at least one order of magnitude?

This is a non-sequitur - there's absolutely no expectation that space mining would result in the cost of any available raw mineral dropping by at least one order of magnitude; it's not a solution for "cheap mass mining" solution, it's a solution for very expensive targeted mining of something that we need very much.

The parent post argument is that we can get as much gold as we need on earth with techniques that aren't used because they're too expensive, but even those would still be far cheaper than space mining.

Space mining can be solution to prevent the price of some rare earth material skyrocketing in the future because we're running out of it, or to get something that's very rare and expensive (it's just that nobody has a clear proposal on what it's going to be) but at the moment gold is too common and cheap to justify the expense of mining it in space.

At current costs it would be a waste of money to pick up gold bars orbiting Earth; after (if!) SpaceX Starship cuts down cost of bulk transfers to orbit ten times, then it may become economic to bring down certain exceptional cases of highly concentrated rare materials - but it certainly will not be cheaper than the price of any raw minerals that exist on Earth in reasonable quantities, such as gold ore (alluvium ores, which aren't that valuable by weight due to low concentration in gold)

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#43

Post by vermilingua »

082349872349872 wrote: post #15
walrus01 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all fine and good until the orbital computer rehabilitates a disgraced ex-console jockey currently selling drugs in chiba city to retrieve the hardware crypto key required for a wintermute/neuromancer merger.

Just what was the colour of the sky above Chiba, anyway? I used to think a stormy grey turmoil, and now people seem to think it was a uniform brilliant blue.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/163304/what-color-...

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#44

Post by supernova87a »

sxp wrote: post #20

This article is mostly fluff. It doesn't get into any interesting technical details. The core bits are: > Mr. Kokorich, 44, is one such entrepreneur. In 2017 he founded Momentus, a California-based company that seeks to revolutionize transport in space by developing in-space transfer vehicles that use water as a propellant. These would “complement low-cost gigantic rockets, like Starship from SpaceX and New Glenn fro…

I am really surprised that this story got the weekend interview slot of the WSJ, no less.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#45

Post by dodobirdlord »

PeterisP wrote: post #42
gibolt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technological leaps happen when something new or uncommon becomes widely available. How many cost prohibitive applications become possible when the cost of any available raw mineral drops by at least one order of magnitude?

This is a non-sequitur - there's absolutely no expectation that space mining would result in the cost of any available raw mineral dropping by at least one order of magnitude; it's not a solution for "cheap mass mining" solution, it's a solution for very expensive targeted mining of something that we need very much. The parent post argument is that we can get as much gold as we need on earth with techniques that aren…

AFAIK the rare earth metals aren't actually particularly rare, just uneconomical to mine. It will probably eventually be cheaper to mine heavy metals like gold in space to feed manufacturing in space than to send them up from the surface of the Earth.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#46

Post by DavidSJ »

y04nn wrote: post #41
sxp wrote: post #20

This article is mostly fluff. It doesn't get into any interesting technical details. The core bits are: > Mr. Kokorich, 44, is one such entrepreneur. In 2017 he founded Momentus, a California-based company that seeks to revolutionize transport in space by developing in-space transfer vehicles that use water as a propellant. These would “complement low-cost gigantic rockets, like Starship from SpaceX and New Glenn fro…

From https://momentus.space/development/ it looks like they are using a microwave generator with water to generate a plasma thruster. The technical name seem to be microwave electro-thermal thruster (MET). There is more info on the thurster in the abstract here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1420619

So in a sense it’s a steam engine powering a space ship.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#47

Post by PeterisP »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #45
PeterisP wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non-sequitur - there's absolutely no expectation that space mining would result in the cost of any available raw mineral dropping by at least one order of magnitude; it's not a solution for "cheap mass mining" solution, it's a solution for very expensive targeted mining of something that we need very much. The parent post argument is that we can get as much gold as we need on earth with techniques that aren…

AFAIK the rare earth metals aren't actually particularly rare, just uneconomical to mine. It will probably eventually be cheaper to mine heavy metals like gold in space to feed manufacturing in space than to send them up from the surface of the Earth.

Yes, mining materials in space to avoid the fuel cost of bringing them up to orbit is a perfectly feasible use of space industry. But it's not going to make any industrial resources cheaper for us down there.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#48

Post by mrtksn »

d_silin wrote: post #11

I have the privilege of being the space startup founder. If you have any specific questions - I am happy to answer them. P.S. Going offline now, but send questions anyway - I'll to reply them later.

Is there something drastically new besides the change in the economics? From layperson's perspective, SpaceX so far has done nothing new that hasn't been done 50 years ago. Yes, robotic rockets landing on robotic ships is cool but that's not core space tech that changes everything IMHO. It's nice that there's a new way to go to ISS but Soyuz was doing it since ever and very reliably. There was a buzz about how the new ship docks automatically but Soyuz was doing it too for decades AFAIK?

What I am missing here? Is there a new frontier or is this simply a business opportunity to fill a gap?

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#49

Post by callamdelaney »

sxp wrote: post #20

This article is mostly fluff. It doesn't get into any interesting technical details. The core bits are: > Mr. Kokorich, 44, is one such entrepreneur. In 2017 he founded Momentus, a California-based company that seeks to revolutionize transport in space by developing in-space transfer vehicles that use water as a propellant. These would “complement low-cost gigantic rockets, like Starship from SpaceX and New Glenn fro…

There's a Romanian space company trying to make first stage boosters out of super heating water..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKHI5VXisEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O50kL6am6U8

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#50

Post by 7373737373 »

callamdelaney wrote: post #49
sxp wrote: post #20

This article is mostly fluff. It doesn't get into any interesting technical details. The core bits are: > Mr. Kokorich, 44, is one such entrepreneur. In 2017 he founded Momentus, a California-based company that seeks to revolutionize transport in space by developing in-space transfer vehicles that use water as a propellant. These would “complement low-cost gigantic rockets, like Starship from SpaceX and New Glenn fro…

There's a Romanian space company trying to make first stage boosters out of super heating water.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKHI5VXisEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O50kL6am6U8

Once in space, does it not make more sense to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using solar energy and use that as fuel?
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