Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources • Hacker News Board

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#11

Post by bfe » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

Two Barclays commodities analysts produced a gleefully scathing research note on this project, and the Financial Times concluded that "The space mining talk amounts, however, to no more than hot air and gobbledegook", all based on laughably inadequate points of comparison. For example:

"Their calculations were based on Nasa’s forthcoming OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to launch a probe in 2016 to pluck samples from an asteroid called 1999 RQ36 and bring them to Earth.

Nasa hopes it will be home by 2023, with a couple of ounces of dirt. By then, the cost will have reached $1bn – made up of $800m for the vehicle, plus another $200m for the rocket launch.

Since that outlay will return just a couple of ounces of material, Barclays says it could use it as a baseline to estimate break-even prices for asteroid mining. Using the metrics proposed by Barclays, the Financial Times commodities team estimates that copper prices would need to rocket from today’s $3.81 an ounce to $476m for a similarly funded space mining project to cover its costs.

Clearly, it does not look like base metals from space are likely to provide a good return on capital.

So what about precious metals? Gold trades at $1,665 a troy ounce, setting a price of $518m a troy ounce for space-gold to break even."

"Asteroid mining is for space cadets", The FT, April 30, 2012 - http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9387fdc4-9081-11e1-8adc-00144...

Astonishing that anyone can take this seriously as a baseline. You don't become a commodities analyst for being able to include flexibility and imagination in your analytical capability.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#12

Post by pjscott » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 9:54 PM UTC

kolinko wrote: post #8

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #5

Uh oh... "PM: You've suggested an asteroid could be brought closer to the Earth to make it easier to mine. Is that really feasible? EA: It is. One of the ways that we could do that is simply to turn the water on an asteroid into rocket fuel and burn it in a thruster that nudges its trajectory. Split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you get the same fuels that launch space shuttles. Some asteroids are 20 percent wa…

I think he's not de-hydrolyzing water to get energy per se, but to generate thrust. Say, you've got a nuclear reactor (or whatever else is more practical) on an asteroid. You cannot use the energy from the reactor to propel the rock, you need to generate thrust. So you take water, you split hydrogen & oxygen, you burn it, you get thrust.

If you're already bringing a nuclear reactor into space, you could use it to heat up the hydrogen and use it as propellant directly, for more efficient travel. (In situations where you need bursts of high thrust and are willing to sacrifice efficiency, you can also go with a hybrid system that uses both nuclear heat and combustion.)

Oh, and fun safety fact: a nuclear reactor isn't actually particularly radioactive until it's turned on. If you launch it out of Earth's orbit before turning it on, you're sitting pretty.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#13

Post by seagreen » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 10:01 PM UTC

bfe wrote: post #11

Two Barclays commodities analysts produced a gleefully scathing research note on this project, and the Financial Times concluded that "The space mining talk amounts, however, to no more than hot air and gobbledegook", all based on laughably inadequate points of comparison. For example: "Their calculations were based on Nasa’s forthcoming OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to launch a probe in 2016 to pluck samples from a…

You'd have to be pretty dumb to bring copper back the surface. It would be far more valuable in orbit around Earth.

Also NASA isn't, ah, the best example of a cost conscious and frugal organization. They probably don't make a good baseline for the expense of these trips.

Planetary Resources still may never come close to turning a profit, but it's possible you're dismissing them a little too quickly.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#14

Post by Tuna-Fish » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 10:06 PM UTC

pjscott wrote: post #12

kolinko wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's not de-hydrolyzing water to get energy per se, but to generate thrust. Say, you've got a nuclear reactor (or whatever else is more practical) on an asteroid. You cannot use the energy from the reactor to propel the rock, you need to generate thrust. So you take water, you split hydrogen & oxygen, you burn it, you get thrust.

If you're already bringing a nuclear reactor into space, you could use it to heat up the hydrogen and use it as propellant directly, for more efficient travel. (In situations where you need bursts of high thrust and are willing to sacrifice efficiency, you can also go with a hybrid system that uses both nuclear heat and combustion.) Oh, and fun safety fact: a nuclear reactor isn't actually particularly radioactive un…

Also, assuming a lot of electricity, some form of ion engines would likely be (much) more efficient than heating.

Also, nuclear reactors aren't the ideal way to make electricity in space. Proper nuclear reactors work as heaters for a heat engine, and heat sinks are proportionally much more expensive in space than on earth.

However, solar power is much more efficient. You get 100% efficiency all the time, and it's 30% better in space (near Earth) than it is down here at best. Also, since no structure has to carry any significant weight, you can build things like a flexible paper-thin sheet of solar cells printed on plastic that is spun about it's axis to keep it deployed and spread out.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#15

Post by billswift » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

seagreen wrote: post #13

bfe wrote: post #11

Two Barclays commodities analysts produced a gleefully scathing research note on this project, and the Financial Times concluded that "The space mining talk amounts, however, to no more than hot air and gobbledegook", all based on laughably inadequate points of comparison. For example: "Their calculations were based on Nasa’s forthcoming OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to launch a probe in 2016 to pluck samples from a…

You'd have to be pretty dumb to bring copper back the surface. It would be far more valuable in orbit around Earth. Also NASA isn't, ah, the best example of a cost conscious and frugal organization. They probably don't make a good baseline for the expense of these trips. Planetary Resources still may never come close to turning a profit, but it's possible you're dismissing them a little too quickly.

Actually with his sloppy writing, I couldn't decide if he was dismissing Planetary Resources or Barclay's and the FT.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#16

Post by typpo » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 10:47 PM UTC

As a side project, I've been working on a site, http://asterank.com, that attempts to rank asteroids by their economic potential. These calculations take into account things like the energetic cost of reaching and extracting material from an asteroid. Open to any feedback or pointers.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#17

Post by ovi256 » Sun, Aug 19, 2012, 10:58 PM UTC

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #5

Uh oh... "PM: You've suggested an asteroid could be brought closer to the Earth to make it easier to mine. Is that really feasible? EA: It is. One of the ways that we could do that is simply to turn the water on an asteroid into rocket fuel and burn it in a thruster that nudges its trajectory. Split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you get the same fuels that launch space shuttles. Some asteroids are 20 percent wa…

I think you're pretty much putting words in his mouth. He didn't say a single word about energy balance. He just said "burning water", which is badly formulated and unclear, but does not exclude using an external energy source for the hydrolysis.

That energy could come from solar panels as you mentioned, with the drawbacks you mentioned. But it looks to be a good enough method.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#18

Post by mikeash » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 12:00 AM UTC

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #5

Uh oh... "PM: You've suggested an asteroid could be brought closer to the Earth to make it easier to mine. Is that really feasible? EA: It is. One of the ways that we could do that is simply to turn the water on an asteroid into rocket fuel and burn it in a thruster that nudges its trajectory. Split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you get the same fuels that launch space shuttles. Some asteroids are 20 percent wa…

You'll probably collect energy with solar panels or similar. You'll expend energy with rocket thrust, and all else being equal, rocket thrust is most efficiently used for orbital maneuvering when done over a short time.

So you have energy collected over a long period of time, then released in a short period of time. That means you need to store that energy. It's not feasible to ship batteries up from the surface with current battery technology, since the energy/mass ratio is awful, so you'll need some other way to store the energy. Chemical storage would be one way. Use local materials and transform them into new materials with more chemical potential energy. Chemical storage tanks can be reasonably light. When the time comes, you can reverse the process and transform your stored chemicals back into electricity.

But wait, we don't actually want electricity, we want thrust. A traditional rocket engine is a great way of transforming chemical potential energy into thrust. So let's skip the electrical middleman, and burn our chemical energy storage reagents in a rocket engine.

All that's left to do is choose the chemicals. If there's water, then it's easy to make oxygen and hydrogen from it using electricity, and hydrogen is a great rocket fuel.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#19

Post by squonk » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 12:11 AM UTC

cwilson wrote: post #6

squonk wrote: post #4

The technology to discover and retrieve minerals from asteroids is likely to be simpler than resolving politics and economics of it: In order to sell the minerals, there must be a way to attain ownership. How does one come to own an asteroid, or the minerals it contains? A land grab under a single government is manageable. When there are 200 sovereign states, who decides which asteroids are owned by whom? First to di…

You've clearly not played EVE Online. This sounds like a joke, but it's probably the closest thing out there to an example of what the future will be like if mining of asteroids becomes insanely lucrative (and technology advances fast enough for us to even witness it). Someone who's played EVE for a significant amount of time (it's been years since I've touched any game) could probably answer everything above. This i…

Haven't played it, to my regret.

Seems like, loosely speaking, chasing down sunken treasure, or possibly wildcatting for oil can offer precedent in some form. The notion of 'international waters' perhaps can apply to space. However, someone, sometime owned the treasure that was lost and may lay claim to it.

My real question is, apparently, nations can not claim ownership of asteroids. But they will have to mutually define the legal ways any citizen or corporation on Earth can acquire ownership. What is the most likely method, once they all agree on it?

Planetary Resources is at the same time forcing the issue by proceeding with their endeavor, and, making a pretty big bet that when the laws are in place, they will have legally acquired their booty.

Re: Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources

#20

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 12:17 AM UTC

kolinko wrote: post #8

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #5

Uh oh... "PM: You've suggested an asteroid could be brought closer to the Earth to make it easier to mine. Is that really feasible? EA: It is. One of the ways that we could do that is simply to turn the water on an asteroid into rocket fuel and burn it in a thruster that nudges its trajectory. Split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you get the same fuels that launch space shuttles. Some asteroids are 20 percent wa…

I think he's not de-hydrolyzing water to get energy per se, but to generate thrust. Say, you've got a nuclear reactor (or whatever else is more practical) on an asteroid. You cannot use the energy from the reactor to propel the rock, you need to generate thrust. So you take water, you split hydrogen & oxygen, you burn it, you get thrust.

Yeah, or just heat the water into steam and shoot it that way, saves a lot of work. There was an interesting paper done on turning a comet off course by basically throwing a supercritical mass of uranium at it. If you can set it up with a 'cool' side (perhaps leading non-metal penetrator cover) and a 'hot' side (the fissioning core) then the thing tries to dig into the comet by vaporizing ice at the back and shoving it out the hole that it made when it went in. Poof, instant rocket engine changing the orbit of the comet (hopefully in a good way)