Harvesting Asteroids

Fathom

Remember Earth-skimming DA14 asteroid? L-type asteroid. 50 meters wide. Could proposed Fire Fly or equivalent spacecraft catch such asteroids? Drag them into Earth orbit. Harvest them using robotics. Estimated $195 billion of minerals. DA14 passed at distance of 17,200 miles in 2013. Practical with today's technology? Your thoughts?

Fathom

Prospect asteroids? Or prospect Earth? Asteroid mining expensive. Earth mining cheaper. Ceres Earth-observation program. 10 satellites. Low flying orbits. Measuring wavelengths. Infrared to visible. Discover potential mining sites for oil, gas, etc. Similar tech for examining asteroids. So why bother with asteroids?

Black Swan

Fathom wrote: »

Prospect asteroids? Or prospect Earth? Asteroid mining expensive. Earth mining cheaper.

Therein lies the questions. Extraordinary minerals that may be discovered on asteroids might justify such mining.

Fathom

Rare minerals. Asteroid discoveries. Justified. Otherwise, harvest Earth.

ScumLord

The first major problem is our economy. If you went to an asteroid and found a load of something rare, lets say gold, the act of bringing it back to earth would devalue the market. It's expensive because it's rare and if you make it less rare it's worth less. So the better they got at it the less money they'd make.

The next problem is transferring stuff from earth to space and visa versa is expensive. Earth doesn't really need the stuff that's in space.

Mining asteroids makes sense if you're living in space, then you don't need earth to supply you with expensive materials. If you want to build a giant city in space it would make sense to mine asteroids for the materials. I don't think there's any value to mining asteroids for use on earth, but it will be an essential part of living in space and being independent.

There are probably all kinds of safety reasons too, like losing control of 20 tons of iron ore on reentry, or the possibility of introducing alien microbes, or just dumping waste on earth that's not needed.

Fathom

ScumLord wrote: »

Mining asteroids makes sense if you're living in space

Minerals & water.

MySandwich

ScumLord wrote: »

The first major problem is our economy. If you went to an asteroid and found a load of something rare, lets say gold, the act of bringing it back to earth would devalue the market. It's expensive because it's rare and if you make it less rare it's worth less. So the better they got at it the less money they'd make.

I don't really think this is an issue. These minerals have industrial uses and lower commodity costs benefits most people, and would ultimately facilitate economic growth

Fathom

Asteroids containing platinum. Rare on Earth. Planetary Resources plans to mine them someday.

MySandwich

Fathom wrote: »

Asteroids containing platinum. Rare on Earth.
Planetary Resources plans to mine them someday.

I read somewhere that we're running out of helium also, so I guess we gotta go to space for that too

Fathom

Harvesting helium-3 on Moon? Rare element on Earth.

irishgeo

Aren't the Chinese looking at doing this soon?

MySandwich

Probably, should be an interesting race between the US and China

Fathom

Property rights problem. China, or other nations claiming rights over others. 1967 Outer Space Treaty. 100 nations signed. Individual or business rights? Global corporation claims? Without property rights, would businesses invest in Moon or asteroid mining?

MySandwich

Fathom wrote: »

Property rights problem. China, or other nations claiming rights over others. 1967 Outer Space Treaty. 100 nations signed. Individual or business rights? Global corporation claims? Without property rights, would businesses invest in Moon or asteroid mining?

I'm sure that will all be ironed out, even if there is a bit of friction. The empires of old were able to draw up treaties and carve up the world

Fathom

MySandwich wrote: »

I'm sure that will all be ironed out, even if there is a bit of friction. The empires of old were able to draw up treaties and carve up the world

Today. Scarce resource. South China Sea oil. Drilling rights. China vs Vietnam vs Philippines. China building naval fleet. Same old story. Will such a story continue when harvesting asteroids or Moon?

MySandwich

Fathom wrote: »

Today. Scarce resource. South China Sea oil. Drilling rights. China vs Vietnam vs Philippines. China building naval fleet. Same old story. Will such a story continue when harvesting asteroids or Moon?

Those disputes are set against historical territorial claims and previous wars, outer space is essentially free of these grudge matches

Fathom

MySandwich wrote: »

Those disputes are set against historical territorial claims and previous wars, outer space is essentially free of these grudge matches

Americas? War between Native Americans and USA. Latter wins. Treaty signed. Gold discovered in Black Hills. USA violates treaty to mine scarce resource. Profits not treaties rule? On Earth and in mining scarce asteroid or Moon resources?

MySandwich

Fathom wrote: »

Americas? War between Native Americans and USA. Latter wins. Treaty signed. Gold discovered in Black Hills. USA violates treaty to mine scarce resource. Profits not treaties rule? On Earth and in mining scarce asteroid or Moon resources?

A more appropriate example is in the scramble for Africa, where the conference of Berlin divided up the untouched continent without major conflict

Fathom

MySandwich wrote: »

A more appropriate example is in the scramble for Africa, where the conference of Berlin divided up the untouched continent without major conflict

Depends on how "major" is defined? Examples. Boar War. Afrikaners vs British Empire. October 11, 1899 to May 31, 1902. North Africa campaign WWII between Germany, UK, and USA. Suez canal (trade route for resources). Oil scarce resource. Long list of wars. For resources. For independence. Africa has almost been in continuous war. Will competition for scare resources in space resemble Earth history? "In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war." Durant & Durant, Lessons of History, History & War chapter. Will human history repeat itself in space?

ScumLord

MySandwich wrote: »

I don't really think this is an issue. These minerals have industrial uses and lower commodity costs benefits most people, and would ultimately facilitate economic growth

I think they're are all sorts of issues with our economy, space travel and even manufacturing going into the future.

It doesn't matter if an industry needs a mineral, if another company has to mine the minerals for profit then they're not going to invest the money if they'll get less and less returns on each load they sell. They'd literally be kicking the stool out from under themselves and every method a company has for improving factories like improving efficiency can't over come the problem of the more they produce the less it's worth.

Then take into account what kind of settlement you'll need to mine asteroids. Even if you have robots doing a lot of the hard work you'll need people. Those people will need some forms of renewable food production and even the ability to manufacture.

Manufacturing is presenting a new problem for our economies and could present another problem for people living in space. CNC and 3d printing is becoming better and cheaper by the day. It's now possible for a one man shop to produce stuff that would have either been impossible 30 years ago, or massively expensive. This is going to make low production customised products much much cheaper and undermine the market share of companies that mass produce.

The other issue is if that mining colony can produce pretty much any piece of technology they want on site they don't need earth. If they're producing food they'll only need earth for luxuries and things they can't produce like textiles. As that colony grows it could get to the stage where they don't need earth, earth has nothing they want, and they may just decide it's not worth trading with us.

That could happen over and over again with groups of people becoming more and more self sufficient and having less reasons for trade. It's possible every space city could be more than capable of mining enough raw materials to sustain itself and has no need for the trade network we have on earth.

Trade is a fundamental part of the human condition, it's probably been with us since before we were humans. We find it extremely hard to operate without it but I can see it becoming redundant when we start living in space.

I'm sure it will still exist, there will always be experts in their fields and so on, but what do you trade in space when minerals are easy to come by and you can probably automatically whip up just about any piece of technology by pressing a button?

I'm pretty sure any big company that's looked into space mining has seen that it's an industry of diminishing returns because of the abundance.

Capt'n Midnight

MySandwich wrote: »

I read somewhere that we're running out of helium also, so I guess we gotta go to space for that too

We aren't running out of Helium.

We are running out of cheap Helium. It can be extracted from air.


But it's a lot cheaper when you have natural gas wells with a high concentration of it.

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

I'm pretty sure any big company that's looked into space mining has seen that it's an industry of diminishing returns because of the abundance.

Aluminium used to be more valuable than gold.

Over the last few thousand years we've pulled less than two hundred thousand tonnes of Gold out of the ground.

We're close to extracting nearly that much Aluminium every day.

Fathom

Several space mining companies formed. Pie-in-the-sky? Or future mining of asteriods, Moon, etc.? Talk "space mining industry."

ScumLord

Fathom wrote: »

Several space mining companies formed. Pie-in-the-sky? Or future mining of asteriods, Moon, etc.? Talk "space mining industry."

Mining the moon for helium 3 isn't a bad idea. Mostly because they only need a few dozen grams of helium 3 to power the entire earth for a year.

For everything else the earth needs to much for it to be viable. If you go to space to mine minerals for electronics you're in competition with a kid from Africa. The kid from Africa probably gets paid less than a dollar a day, the space mission is going to have to bring back enough to last decades to cover the cost of the mission.

I guess it makes some sense for rare elements but if it's rare there's probably not much of a market for it.

Our markets and economy is at odds with space colonisation. I don't think we can depend on private enterprise to do anything other than turn low earth orbit into a holiday destination.

Fathom

ScumLord wrote: »

Mining the moon for helium 3 isn't a bad idea. Mostly because they only need a few dozen grams of helium 3 to power the entire earth for a year.

Helium-3. Appears frequently in literature. Claimed justification for space mining. Asteroids. Moon.

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't think we can depend on private enterprise to do anything other than turn low earth orbit into a holiday destination.

Holiday fights. Tens of thousands of dollars. Long list already. Short space flights. Also on NBC news. Few days ago. Launch capsule of cremated ashes into low Earth orbit. Returns as shooting star. Foolish people with money to waste.

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

Mining the moon for helium 3 isn't a bad idea. Mostly because they only need a few dozen grams of helium 3 to power the entire earth for a year.

Make that tens of tonnes at least.

and that's not counting the energy needed to harvest the He.
or that we still haven't gotten fusion reactors to work
here on earth the oceans contain enough uranium to power us for ages, except it takes a lot of energy to harvest it.

solar panels work and are getting cheaper all the time. what we need is energy storage.

that's all He would be by the time it's brought back and only for those living beneath clouds and you could probably use orbital mirrors on the moon
right now we are using solar panels as far as Jupiter

China and Japan have recently announced improvements in harvesting methane hydrates from the sea floor. Not carbon free but could totally undercut coal


as an aside this film was about harvesting He on the moon with an interesting way of paying work bonuses
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

ScumLord

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Make that tens of tonnes at least.

Maybe I misheard it as a city for a month or something?

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

Maybe I misheard it as a city for a month or something?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-05/former-apollo-astronaut-says-moon-mining-could-solve-global-energy-crisis

Schmitt says a two-square-kilometer swath of lunar surface mined to a depth of roughly 10 feet would yield about 220 pounds of helium-3. That's enough to run a 1,000-megawatt reactor for a year, or $140 million in energy based on today's coal prices. Scale that up to several reactors, and you've got a moneymaking operation.

10 feet is about 3 meters in real money. And 220 pounds is 100Kg.

So that's processing 6 million m3 of moon per GW year
guesstimate the regolith density as 1.6 thingy's and that a mass of a million tonnes

To get 8.766 TWh , one estimate of our energy usage back in 2012 was 157.5 PWh so that would require processing 18 Billion tonnes mass of moondust.


Global iron production is about 3.2 billion tonnes and coal production is 7.8 billion tonnes

IIRC moondust contains 0.1 or 1% native iron so that would be a useful byproduct but the whole scheme is a non starter unless I've missed a few zeros somewhere


And there is the efficiency to figure out
And the small problem of not having a working He 3 fusion reactor

ScumLord

So there still isn't any reason to import materials from space to earth?

I think many countries will be opposed to importing anything from space, especially if it will negatively impact local economies.

Scarinae

Mining water from the Moon or from asteroids could potentially be more valuable than mining minerals, as it can be used to make hydrogren propellant. The cost of fuel is one of the biggest factors holding back NASA's aim of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s.

Planetary Resources, one of the companies looking into mining asteroids, made this video a few years ago explaining the fuel problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLouRKHknOU

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

So there still isn't any reason to import materials from space to earth?

I think many countries will be opposed to importing anything from space, especially if it will negatively impact local economies.

Maybe if you arranged to drop a small platinum rich asteroid in a desert area ?

Otherwise the costs of heatshielding on the way down might disrupt the economics.


But in the main the reason to mine asteroids is to save costs on getting stuff out of our gravity well.

Long term a solar powered rail gun or maglev on the moon could get stuff into orbit easily. Escape velocity is only 2.38Km/s so orbital velocity is 1.68Km/s which is 6,000 Km/Hr

I suspect that asteroid dust , like moon dust is very sharp and unfriendly to mechanical stuff. So might need to make gear out of something with a harder surface than aluminium.