Comments on: Asteroid-prospecting spacecraft plan to be announced

By: HHHoppe

HHHoppe — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:46:06 +0000

Wow! You couldn’t be MORE wrong! Space exploration has been in the public domain for 50 years, and where has it gotten us? No where! When you say “the public domain” to whom are you referring? How do you decide who gets what? That’s the problem with public goods, even though we may be heading for a world of abundance, today recourses are still scarce, and by diverting scarce resouces away from the private sector to the public,(taxation), you take from some and give to others. Private property established through homesteading is the only just method that allows the one who risk to reap the reward.

By: godot

godot — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:36:56 +0000

@Real Tim: Here’s the counterintuitive thing you don’t expect until you try to design equipment to work in the harsh environment of Earth, and then do the same for space: Space is a very gentle environment to design for. There are no caustic oceans, waves, winds, storms, ice, unpredictable weather, seasons, etc. to protect against. Vacuum is a relatively forgiving, straightforward, and simple environment to house your design.

By: godot

godot — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:24:23 +0000

Yes, exactly. I even heard a rumor that some kid just made a hundred billion dollars from a dating website he wrote in college. Something seems a little out-of-balance, doesn’t it?

By: godot

godot — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:12:06 +0000

Are you saying a viable business has to be profitable, even in the face of competition? It’s hard to disagree with that.

I think we might do better to consider mining asteroids in regard to risk:reward ratios rather than cost:benefit. If you have a few billion dollars lying around, and you want to make a trillions, it’s hard to find a better risk.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 01:07:29 +0000

The development of extraterrestrial resources should be a public domain, not a private one. It’s been proven many times over private institutions can’t be trusted with our food, water, health, or money. I fail to see how (or why) they would do a better job with space exporation.

In a situation of abundance, a system of scarcity will never work.

By: Bri

Bri — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 03:43:47 +0000

Although I think it’s a little premature to think we.’re going to just hook up with an asteroid and make a gazillion dollars, I do think we should be thinking about it. The materials are essential for space development. My advice is to keep it all on the small scale. This is still in the proof of concept stage. We don’t even know the problems that we will need to solve yet.

By: MatthewQ

MatthewQ — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:25:31 +0000

” …biggest payoff will be for materials to build space-based objects, rather than for importing to Earth.”

Yup. That should be the entire point to any such venture.

You could use raw materials you find in space to build a ring habitat like the one pictured at the top of the article. A ring habitat can be rotated to produce g. With g people could stay in space indefinitely, grow food, make babies. Go places.

Our current mission ideas to Mars always run into this lack of g problem. A rotating habitat could be slowly moved to Mars orbit with no ill effects for the humans on board. And why stop at Mars? Huge asteroid belt out there. The gas and ice giants. The Oorts. Centauri system.

This is completely do-able.

By: Editor

Editor — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:55:22 +0000

Just added: The announcement will be broadcast live at http://www.spacevidcast.com. A video of the announcement will be available at http://www.deepspaceindustries.com.

By: godot

godot — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:42:06 +0000

Jeez, Allin, we’re all stardust. Any elements heavier than helium are the products of past nuclear reactions deep within a star. One r some subsequently burned out, exploded and then accreted into the Solar System and Oort Cloud — home. Earth accreted from material orbiting the sun. That may sound like a gentle process, but it’s not. Every asteroid or meteor captured is a violent collision! Some of that stardust — asteroids, if you will — contains gold and all the other heavy elements listed above. How else did you think they got here? Made via transmutation by alchemists?

By: godot

godot — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:22:48 +0000

This is pretty funny! I usually prefer ChickComedy on YouTube, but this guy’s deadpan delivery is so good, and his timing is so good that you can almost believe him. But what a howl! What great material! We’re going into deep space, so let’s build a telescope! Look, we have a numerical controlled mill — just like high school! And a partly clean room! Haha!

“I’m going to the asteroids, and I’m going to take a LASER!”

Where’s their shaker-table? Where’s their launch vehicle?

They’re almost as funny as the guy who doesn’t know up from down: All you have to do to get down a gravity well from deep space is aim carefully. Given sufficient control of your direction, and sufficient precision in the measurement of your velocity, you can drop a payload virtually anywhere on earth virtually without expending any energy — using only the gravity well. Stuff might get hot on re-entry, but so what if you boil some gold? You’re going to want to reshape it anyway.

Love this new space comedy! Thumbs up!

By: asiwel

asiwel — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 23:19:33 +0000

Yes, the pay-offs certainly will be enormous – and we are “separated” from these rewards by only small “future-technology” gaps. I suspect the people at Planetary Resources are “discovering/proving” just how small these “gaps” actually are. Space mining and manufacturing go a long way toward protecting the Earth’s environment. It is relatively easy to “move” products downward in a gravity well. Eventually space elevator or similar technology may allow the removal of “pollutants” such as spent fission reactor cores out into space (to factories that can reprocess and use this material safely). Consider how casually we locate and “move” fossil fuels around today – that ordinary technology was not here 20 years ago. This story is repeating over and over, faster and faster, in so many fields of human endeavor today .. accelerating, in fact.

By: Bruce Wright

Bruce Wright — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:19:45 +0000

I suspect that the biggest payoff will be for materials to build space-based objects, rather than for importing to Earth. The cost of getting even precious minerals down the Earth’s gravity well safely will probably outweigh the value of the minerals themselves in the short run – though that won’t be true if we ever manage to construct a space elevator. But as raw materials for space-based manufacturing and construction projects it makes a lot of sense – no need to boost all that matter into space, which is vastly more expensive than bringing it down.

By: Paul in Vancouver

Paul in Vancouver — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:08:04 +0000

In my opinion, as long as it costs less to discover and mine these minerals and deliver them to their point of use, then space-based mining will not be viable. The exceptions currently be would helium-3, which is abundant on the moon, and is a fraction of the cost to produce the same on Earth. Another exception would be if we actually had a use for the mined materials IN space, for example to build lunar outposts or spacecrafts, in which case the cost to transport such materials from Earth would be saved. But then you would need to factor in costs to produce finished materials from raw materials IN space. So the cost/benefit equation gets more and more complicated.

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:04:56 +0000

…I think that if you are using the materials mostly to build a giant space station or giant spaceships, then it saves a ton of rocket fuel and related costs to just have all your materials already delivered to you in space (these asteroids are circling past earth all the time as though they are a special delivery). I have NEVER heard of a case where any asteroid that was recovered on earth was made of gold, or had big gold pieces in it…so this theory that ALL gold we find on earth today came from Meteorites sounds cool, but has me wondering how exactly did they prove that? some more info here at least http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

By: Dr.Pratt

Dr.Pratt — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:34:07 +0000

This is a great idea! Asteroids are full of minerals including: Gold, Rubidium, Iridium, Platinum, Paladium, Osmium, Ruthinium and Silver. The yield will far out weigh the costs. This is much smarter than suggesting we bore tunnels into the earth. The yield will be in the mega trillions

By: DAG

DAG — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:13:37 +0000

As Gauss said – there are environmental concerns. That translates into following and wrestling with local laws and regulations.

Similarly there are other terrestrial-only problems, such as securing land, paying taxes for that land, paying taxes to the government(s) that own that land, etc etc.

By: DAG

DAG — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:11:28 +0000

Tens of billions seems modest… For example the video game industry is getting to the hundreds of billions about now.

By: GAUSS

GAUSS — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:44:46 +0000

Too many environmental concerns. The deeper you dig, the more you can cause seismic irregularities. Better to take the process away from Earth. :)

By: pt

pt — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:48:12 +0000

From a Physics standpoint, after the initial launch into space is completed, particularly if you can use mined resources to construct more mining craft without returning to Earth, mining in space would be far less energy intensive than terrestrial mining. The amount of wealth per asteroid is also difficult to fathom, and given how many near Earth asteroids there are, and the scale of the asteroid belt beyond Mars, the potentials are pretty extreme. This wouldn’t even be considered if it weren’t economically logical. The profit margins of terrestrial mining companies aren’t anything mind blowing, so when a single platinum rich asteroid is worth $10 trillion plus.

http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/keep-mining_509c729a6cb46_w587.jpg

It’s backed by big name CEO’s…I don’t mean to be an ass, but I’m pretty sure they’re more well versed in the economics of the situation than us, particularly if they’re throwing huge amounts of money at the project.

By: tim the realist

tim the realist — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:13:34 +0000

Seems strange to me to incur the cost of going into space for mining. We have not mined into the earth more than a mile or two, and then only for rare minerals. I think $ would be better spent on terrestrial mining technologies.

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:58:52 +0000

Just check out that great illustration. Some time ago a commenter here stated that asteroid mining was a flat-out impossibility because it took gravity to separate minerals. Another commenter then added that all you needed was to bring centrifuges to bear. Now look at those wonderful spinning-wheel mining vessels. Just what the doctor ordered.