New Google Company Possibly Being Made to Mine Asteroids

[PeZook]

If the asteroid is full of platinum or something, you could just chop off largeish chunks and deorbit them to be processed earthside at your leisure, because who the fuck cares that half of it burns off? And while this could in fact collapse platinum prices eventually, suddenly the hydrogen economy becomes a lot more viable, and opportunities begin opening up...

Naturally, I have to wonder about legal issues related to dropping a pile of precious metal on some emtpy space ; How would property laws work if the asteroid hit a piece of empty space that actually belonged to someone?

[Chirios]

If the asteroid is full of platinum or something, you could just chop off largeish chunks and deorbit them to be processed earthside at your leisure, because who the fuck cares that half of it burns off? And while this could in fact collapse platinum prices eventually, suddenly the hydrogen economy becomes a lot more viable, and opportunities begin opening up...

Naturally, I have to wonder about legal issues related to dropping a pile of precious metal on some emtpy space ; How would property laws work if the asteroid hit a piece of empty space that actually belonged to someone?

From what I can tell, the law is unclear if someone can actually claim an asteroid. NASA has previously used the Outer Space Treaty to say that they didn't need to pay parking fee's to someone who had bought the rights to an asteroid; but that was outside of a courtroom so it probably means nothing. It seems like any processed material from said asteroid would belong to the company, in which case if the metal landed in private property, it would still belong the company that processed the metal.

[LaCroix]

Re: Precious Rods from God...

Actually, some countries (like Hungary) automatically claim all meteoroids that land on their territory for the state. Since it is a chunk of an asteroid, it would count. Dunno for other countries. Some might even file against you for reckless endangerment... (Or littering, in case of Singapore...)

[PeZook]

Well, I ASSUME the deorbiting would be done in cooperation and planning together with national authorities, rather than just dumping hypersonic pieces of platinum all over and hoping they won't hit anything important

[Irbis]

2. How do you return the material to earth? The current cost of earth-LEO dV is in the range of the weight of whatever you are moving's price in silver to its price in gold. The alternative to decelerating it all the way with rockets is atmospheric braking, but thermal ablation then destroys most of what you're trying to mine. You also have the problem of where to land it.

You know when we figured out how to bring down a large hunk of metal from orbit relatively undamaged? April 12, 1961, with Wostok 1.

As for landing spot, try Siberia or any desert in, say, Nevada or Colorado.

3. Given that we're looking at something only worthwhile for an asteroid mainly made of platinum or something, how much is it actually going to yield if you return it to earth? Gold may be expensive right now, but if you find a way to produce vast amounts of it then the price is likely to crash, as the Spanish discovered in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Added value. Sure, raw gold price might drop, but with larger supply, new applications would apply. Zero-G manufactured processors from space Iridium?

Just 20 years ago, the very idea that anyone would have in his pocket supercomputer (by then's standards) capable of communicating around the globe with speeds surpassing internal serial buses of best machines of 1992 would be laughable, and that was just with materials we can make on Earth.

I don't understand what this has to do with reusable launch vehicles, but maybe I missed something. Reusable vehicles use atmospheric breaking to return to earth, so what do they want this fuel for?

For one, vehicle that can use its own engines again to brake instead of dropping like a brick doesn't need huge ablative armor. Which means less mass to carry to orbit (cheaper!) and stops bad things from happening, like Challenger and Columbia might attest.

If not, then it will be a cool, if unsuccessful, attempt by billionaires to make our lives ever so slightly more awesome.

This application of money is better than 95% of the stuff billionaires spend money on, IMHO.

ghetto edit: sorry, that was a geometry fail. -_-

Out of curiosity, what's ghetto edit?

[Grumman]

ghetto edit: sorry, that was a geometry fail. -_-

Out of curiosity, what's ghetto edit?

When you want to edit your previous post but the edit window has closed, so you're forced to double post.

[Companion Cube]

Would the price of gold/platinum/whatever necessarily fall? Asteroid miners would basically be a cartel, and could constrict the supply however they please.

[Grumman]

Would the price of gold/platinum/whatever necessarily fall? Asteroid miners would basically be a cartel, and could constrict the supply however they please.

...that's not how supply works. The asteroid miners can only constrict their own supply, not the existing supply. At worst, they don't sell any gold/platinum/whatever at all, and we're in exactly the same position we're in right now. But if they do that they're left sitting on a ton of metal where their ton of cash used to be, and there's no profit in that.

[Companion Cube]

Not sure what i was thinking with that post.

[Darth Tanner]

It’s a reasonable idea. Current platinum production is reasonably stable at just under 200 tonnes annually, I doubt it could really be scaled up that easily considering the difficulty in acquiring and the rarity of the metals. If asteroid miners were able to bring in a mother lode of several hundred tonnes all at once selling it all in one go would kill the market so they would be much better served limiting their release of the material to minimise the immediate price shift, although this is likely to be done anyway considering the lead times for them to mine the asteroid and then bring the good stuff back to earth.

It would really depend on how predictable the production of asteroid mining turns out to be and how demand for rare materials responds to their increase in availability. If it kick starts a new hydrogen economy for instance it could increase demand further.

Ultimately the price of the materials is going to drop anyway though; the only way to stop that would be to not sell it, which would defeat the point of mining it. It could be just like gold dropping in value when Europe started to receive large amounts of plunder from the new world.

EDIT: shitty formatting!

[Sky Captain]

What kind of concentrations of rare earth metals may be possible in asteorids? It's not like they are going to suddenly find asteorids made of almost pure gold and platinum. Most of them likely will be rock and nickel iron with only few percent at most of really valuable stuff. Mining water and manufacturing rocket fuel to provide boost services initially actually makes most sense because since the fuel already is in space it is highly valuable and extracting water to produce fuel will be much easier than extracting and refining metals.

[Guardsman Bass]

What kind of concentrations of rare earth metals may be possible in asteorids? It's not like they are going to suddenly find asteorids made of almost pure gold and platinum. Most of them likely will be rock and nickel iron with only few percent at most of really valuable stuff. Mining water and manufacturing rocket fuel to provide boost services initially actually makes most sense because since the fuel already is in space it is highly valuable and extracting water to produce fuel will be much easier than extracting and refining metals.

This research paper (PDF) says that they've found relatively high platinum-metal concentrations in a particular kind of Near-Earth Asteroid, called the LL Chondrites (greater than 50 grams per ton of material from meteorite samples). That's still a lot of rock that you'd have to go through to get the Platinum Group Metals, but most smaller asteroids aren't solid chunks of rock anyways - they're loosely held clumps of rubble. If you had the fuel, you could just pull the asteroid apart until you get to the bits of rock that have the valuable stuff in them.

[Sarevok]

Are there any asteroids with high enough concentrations of valuable elements to offset the cost ? You will need a solid ball of iridium or something like it to make profit.

They themselves claim they are only considering selling the water at lower than launch costs as actual business plan. Mining unobtainium worth trillions is only a loafty dream at this stage.

[MKSheppard]

Mining asteroids was never really going to end resource scarcity, because it's simply cheaper to reopen depleted mines on Earth that mine them in space.

Incorrect. While we'll never run out of Iron Ore; there will be a crossover point where asteroidal mining is cost effective for certain other materials, like say Platinum; which had only 239 tonnes mined in 2006. If you could drop 50 tonnes/year of asteroidal Platinum onto the world market; that'd let a lot more technologies use Platinum.

Yes, there may be other possibilities for Platinum mining on earth, such as undersea mining or undiscovered deposits; but those are crapshoots due to environmental issues; which are not a concern for asteroidal mining.

[MKSheppard]

Space water isn't worth anything.

BZZT. Wrong.

Assuming a Falcon 9 launch cost of $56 million and a $30 million Dragon capsule cost; along with a payload of 10,000 lbs; it works out to $8,600/lb for anything you want to put into orbit, including water.

That works out to about $71,810 for a gallon of water. Considering that the average person needs roughly a gallon of water to survive a day...and that you can only recycle it so many times...I mean, "drink your own piss fifty times over" is not a good selling point for space tourism.

[darthdavid]

I mean, "drink your own piss fifty times over" is not a good selling point for space tourism.

Unless you're Bear Grylls...

[Irbis]

When you want to edit your previous post but the edit window has closed, so you're forced to double post.

Yeah, but why 'ghetto'?

Incorrect. While we'll never run out of Iron Ore;

As you stated, space iron is worth 19.000$ per kilo in today's prices, and while dropping it to the Earth would destroy that value, there is place where it would still be just as valuable.

The Moon.

Any kind of human activity on the Moon, be it mining of Hel-3, or just constructing permanent base, would rely on materials brought from Earth... Or replaced by materials brought from somewhere else. Dumping "waste" iron on Moon to make habitats, mass drivers, mines, etc. would work just as good and make the venture much cheaper. And once we move on to mine actual asteroid belt, moving material from there to Mars and Jupiter would be trivial compared to sending resources there directly from Earth.

[Winston Blake]

When you want to edit your previous post but the edit window has closed, so you're forced to double post.

Yeah, but why 'ghetto'?

I would guess it's a shorter way of saying 'poor man's edit', in the sense of 'improvised due to lack of proper resources'.

[Guardsman Bass]

Incorrect. While we'll never run out of Iron Ore;

As you stated, space iron is worth 19.000$ per kilo in today's prices, and while dropping it to the Earth would destroy that value, there is place where it would still be just as valuable.

The Moon.

Any kind of human activity on the Moon, be it mining of Hel-3, or just constructing permanent base, would rely on materials brought from Earth... Or replaced by materials brought from somewhere else. Dumping "waste" iron on Moon to make habitats, mass drivers, mines, etc. would work just as good and make the venture much cheaper. And once we move on to mine actual asteroid belt, moving material from there to Mars and Jupiter would be trivial compared to sending resources there directly from Earth.

What would you be doing on the Moon that requires imported raw materials? You don't need the Moon to get He3 (assuming He3 fusion ever becomes commercially viable as a power source). Actually using any raw materials dropped on the Moon would require that you send up some really compact foundries and on-site manufacturing plants. Unless you have people who really, really want to live there and can pay for it, there's not really much need to actually make anything there as opposed to sending it from Earth (or Low Earth Orbit).

Back on topic, any water ice on asteroids would be useful as propellant. You could crack it into oxygen and hydrogen using the abundant solar power in space.

[Chirios]

What would you be doing on the Moon that requires imported raw materials?

Experiments maybe? Trying to make microgravity materials and shit like that?

Back on topic, any water ice on asteroids would be useful as propellant. You could crack it into oxygen and hydrogen using the abundant solar power in space.

Part of the reason why I like their plan is because this is what they are focusing on. Having H2/O2 depots in space would cut down costs by a huge margin, but one of the physics guys will have to come along and explain what is actually necessary to keep H2/O2 in space long term.

[someone_else]

I don't understand what this has to do with reusable launch vehicles, but maybe I missed something.

a reusable launch vehicle is lucky to get to LEO, because it has to carry around fucktons of crap and rocket science is a bitch.

But most commercial payloads want to stay clear of LEO due to various reasons (higher drag, atomic oxygen eating away your metals, they need to keep the same area covered for their job to be successful).

So someone has to bring the fuel to move the payload from LEO to the final orbits. Which requires significant payload for rockets that have to depart Earth (for example Proton rockets have a LEO payload of 22 tons and a GEO payload of only 5-6 tons, and GEO is a very hot area for a satellite), but much less so for something that is orbiting the Moon.

Also, every now and then, the satellites can use a lift from a space tug that moves them to another orbit.

but one of the physics guys will have to come along and explain what is actually necessary to keep H2/O2 in space long term.

keeping H2 cool in space is a bitch, but there are already designs from the ULA that reuse what little boil-off there is to reboost itself every now and then.

And once we move on to mine actual asteroid belt, moving material from there to Mars and Jupiter would be trivial compared to sending resources there directly from Earth.

Asteroid belt is a bit too disperse to make sense as mining area. thankfully there are fucktons of NEOs we can redirect or crash on the Moon to be mined.

[PeZook]

Being able to refuel the spent upper stages will also mean a DRAMATIC reduction in orbital debris left after each GEO launch ; The satellites could simply be hauled to GEO by a dedicated tug after being launched on a small, cheap LEO rocket that will then get deorbited in its entirety and not pollute higher orbits with debris.

It will also make it possible to clean up the larger pieces of debris that are making GEO launches more and more problematic ; Because instead of launching ANOTHER rocket to bring the fuel to deorbit the large piece of debris, you'll just contract Space Fuel Co. to nudge the debris down with hardware they already have in space.

The more you think about it, the more it seems like a sensible business plan.

EDIT: Also, less onboard fuel = more space for instrumentation or smaller (thus, cheaper) launch vehicle

[Chirios]

Plus if any other billionaires want to start something up in this sector, say Microsoft or Apple, google will be in a prime position to offer prospecting data from their sattelites to them.

[Sarevok]

But who would buy the water ? The ISS requires only 15000 pounds a year. If you are turning the water into propellant or fuel very few satellites ever go beyond LEO. At the prices they suggest it is not really much cheaper than launching it from Earth.

[The_Saint]

But who would buy the water ? The ISS requires only 15000 pounds a year. If you are turning the water into propellant or fuel very few satellites ever go beyond LEO. At the prices they suggest it is not really much cheaper than launching it from Earth.

I'm thinking the intent is not to move into an existing market (getting fuel to orbit) but to create a new one to supply the "next big thing". Think of it like a new boom town, first building to go up is a pub (well usually by Australian standards): somewhere with accommodation, food, etc a position currently filled somewhat by ISS, the next buildings are the supply stores and build/repair workshops be they blacksmiths or petrol stations.