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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

#41

Post by p1mrx »

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…

It looks like titanium costs $4/kg [1], and a SpaceX LEO launch is $2719/kg [2]. I'm not sure how much Ti is in "ferro titanium", but even if it's only 10%, the numbers aren't even close. Am I doing this wrong?

[1] http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/ferro-titani...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Launch_prices

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

#42

Post by bryanlarsen »

adlpz wrote: post #38
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.

That's what Wolfram Alpha told me, sorry. But my $956 quintillion number is about as relevant as the article's $700 quintillion number. Even 5 orders of magnitude off, we're still not supply limited. The only number that matters is the $32/gram number.

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

#43

Post by Gracana »

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…

> A gram of titanium in LEO is only about 20% more expensive than a gram of titanium on Earth.

Can you elaborate on that? I can't parse that statement in a way that would make it seem correct, so... What exactly do you mean?

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

#45

Post by IndianAstronaut »

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…

Getting it out of the crust means digging very deep. Asteroids will have higher purity and minerals available on the surface.

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

#46

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

gizmo686 wrote: post #37
BurningFrog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

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.

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

#47

Post by bryanlarsen »

p1mrx wrote: post #41
bryanlarsen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It looks like titanium costs $4/kg [1], and a SpaceX LEO launch is $2719/kg [2]. I'm not sure how much Ti is in "ferro titanium", but even if it's only 10%, the numbers aren't even close. Am I doing this wrong? [1] http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/ferro-titani... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Launch_prices

Nope, it's all me. Platinum is $32/g. Titanium is $4/kg. Mixing the two up results in nonsense.

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

#48

Post by shmerl »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #46
gizmo686 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

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.

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

#49

Post by IndianAstronaut »

Lxr wrote: post #30
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…

Yep, like mining anything asking how much is down there without reference to the cost of extraction is useless. Gold mines exist all over the world with large known deposits but feasibility comes down to whether it's worth it to extract based on current prices.

The whole idea behind investment in asteroid mining is to get capital infrastructure in place to make it cost competitive.

In the past we traveled thousands of miles in boats and caravans to get raw materials that were not easily available locally. Sure, you could grow cloves in France, but investing in and establishing routes to south Asia ended up being an investment that made availability of the cloves easier.

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

#50

Post by bryanlarsen »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #45
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…

Getting it out of the crust means digging very deep. Asteroids will have higher purity and minerals available on the surface.

Modern platinum mining is mostly done from surface alluvial deposits.
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