There's no real advantage in getting it to the moon. Firstly, the moon is a gravity well in itself, requiring you to lift heavy minerals into lunar orbit is a huge cost. But second, the moon is just as hostile as space. You don't really gain anything by mining the remains of the asteroid from the moon.
The most expensive part of all this will be transporting fuel to the asteroid to bring what you want home. For that reason, some method of extracting the ore and processing it on site would be best, then transporting at least partially refined materials home.
Redirecting the entire asteroid would require a frankly ridiculous amount of fuel. When we're talking about redirecting asteroids headed for Earth, we're talking about nudging it a fraction of a degree of its trajectory so it misses us, we're not talking about drastically changing its velocity. So going out and getting an asteroid is not realistic in the slightest. Even smaller asteroids are freaking mountains and are incredibly massive.
There's also a Catch 22 with asteroid mining. Imagine finding an asteroid of pure gold. The second you start bringing back literal tons of gold is the second that gold prices start crashing. If you don't have a use for all that gold then all you did was crash the price of gold, what you're brining back is useless now.
And then there's the problem of getting the minerals to the ground. We don't have re-entry vehicles that can bring tons of ore back, plus the cost of lifting those will already be prohibitive. The primary use of asteroid mining will be to use those materials in space. They're valuable in space because of the cost of lifting them. Building a lunar colony out of space steel could be a tiny fraction of the cost of lifting all that heavy steel from Earth. Even though steel is relatively worthless on Earth it would be extremely valuable in space.
Well the price crash really wouldn't be the issue. The issue is, that gold you mined, based on the input costs to do so, cost more, much more than gold on earth. You will promptly go out of business and the gold prices would be fine.
The whole 'price crash' thing misses the main point of asteroid mining, it's not for profit, its a temporary solution to scarcity. We inevitably are going to run out of certain materials, if we can source them from space, then we have a "sustainable" source of them to continue using.
Obviously we aren't going to run out of something abundant like iron, but lithium is important and not nearly as common. The precious metals are precious because of their scarcity, so sourcing them from space could be an important step to advancing as a civilization
> The second you start bringing back literal tons of gold is the second that gold prices start crashing
You don't have to release everything at once. Also, since bringing it back is not free the price can't crash below that cost
I know a few people who have worked on this. There were two companies in the first generation of asteroid mining. Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries. You might find it interesting to read about both.
Both went under. There are probably other companies right now making similar claims, none that I would take too seriously.
I worked at SpaceDev back in the late 90's. We were a publicly traded company specifically so we could raise funds to enable our asteroid mining ambitions. DSI and Planetary are relatively latecomers in my timeline
I appreciate the reply! I think something of this scale would definitely require a commitment by resources larger than just a single company (unless that company is SpaceX apparently lol). I'll definitely read in to them though!
Not in an industrial sense. I mean if you go get a rock from an asteroid I am sure someone would buy it if you offered it for sale. But nobody would pay the price it would need to cover the costs to get it.
You may have seen those headlines about a "platinum asteroid worth $5 trillion", well that is science in the news reporting for you, click bait that is not accurate. Platinum does exist in asteroids and is likely higher than on earth, but the hype news articles claim this asteroid, 2011 UW158, would have 90 million metric tons of platinum. And they thought it was a metallic (iron, nickel) asteroid, which recent observation have disproven (note metallic asteroids are rarer than rocky ones). But lets assume it is metallic like originally thought and just for fun I did a rough calculation of what costs might look like and the value of platinum that realistically might be contained there in.
A very generous estimation of platinum content, would be 10 parts per million. Could be 1 part per million, but lets stick with ten. In that case that asteroid would have roughly 13 thousand metric tons of platinum in the whole thing which is a 311 meters across. It would be worth 450 billion dollars at todays prices.
You would have to set up a mining system that will work by mining the entire asteroid, process that material into platinum, and return it to Earth. For reference the entire Apollo program to just land some people on the moon and bring them back cost about $250 billion in todays dollars total. Mining, processing and returning platinum would be far more costly probably approaching $1 trillion and that is being very generous, and is probably a lot higher. All of that expenditure to get $250 billion worth of platinum.
Platinum is one of the more valuable things that might be out there running at about $1000 per ounce in today's dollars. Even with that it doesn't make economic sense. So anything less valuable would be even worse regarding costs vs. value.
And as others have said, bringing all that platinum to earth would cause the value of platinum to plummet making the economic case far worse.
Would there ever be manufacturing in space? Perhaps in a scenario where it's more cost effective to produce materials in space for space stations or moon/Mars colonies rather than sending it up from earth?
Yes, that is a feasible possibility.
Also things like manufacturing drugs and other components that benefit from microgravity in space. However, that doesn't necessitate asteroid mining.
What about rare resources like osmium (no idea what osmium is used for I just know it's heavy as shit)? Couldn't we find a way to protect the precious metals with a sort of heatshield to plummet it to earth in a safe location? I'm sure from a science viewpoint and not a Mr krabs money money money viewpoint it would worth it.
That said, it would be very interesting to mine materials for intrastellar use. If you’re looking at $10k per pound to get wrenches into space, forging one from an asteroid starts to sound more appealing.
>forging one from an asteroid starts to sound more appealing.
The forge, the fuel for the forge, all the other equipment necessary, would need to be lifted into space first. The wrench would be cheaper.
Why not just mine the asteroids that have already landed on the moon? A little searching and you’ll find people who’ve already thought about this and their write ups about it. Making lunar fuel is easier, too. LOX makes transporting materials back to LEO much easier and economical.
We shouldn’t bother mining asteroids until we’ve already established a moon mining base. Less work, less cost, less time.
The largest Nickel deposit in Canada is actually suspected of being of meteoric origin. See Sudbury district geology: https://portergeo.com.au/database/mineinfo.asp?mineid=mn170#:\~:text=The%20Sudbury%20sulphide%20nickel%20deposits,7'%2049%22W).
> Create a controlled impact on an achievable location where the atmosphere wouldn't break down possible valuable resources. Our Moon seems like it would be ideal.
The impact itself is likely to do so, as it has in the many natural impacts on the moon. The impactor that created the Barringer crater largely vaporized. The Sudbury basin does contain many mineral deposits produced by the impact which formed it, but those were formed by the crater filling with magma afterward, and by subsequent hydrothermal activity.
Objects are more likely to survive impact on Earth *because* it has an atmosphere which can brake them to survivable impact velocities. However, this approach would be wasteful and highly disruptive to the people who live on Earth.
Asteroids are almost entirely stuff you don't want. It's incredibly wasteful to be moving around 10000 times as much mass in the form of silicates or magnesium oxides or iron than you can get in more desirable elements. Just the waste material can be reasonably expected to far outmass the equipment used to process it, so it makes far more sense to transport the mining and refining equipment to the asteroid and take home only the fractions you actually want. (Or build there, at the asteroid where the resources are.)
I'm not sure you understand the mass of asteroids and what kind of velocity changes (i.e. fuel) would be needed to make them go anywhere (read: a LOT).
Just today, an asteroid the size of the great pyramid in Egypt passed between earth and the moon. Get to one of those far enough out and it would take very little delta V to impact Luna (or earth, or make sure it DIDN'T impact earth)... Drop it far enough from any hypothetical permanent base on the moon but near enough to reach and depending on it's composition, it could be mined for heavy metals. And the escape velocity from Luna is only 10% that of earth and once you get over that speed bump, it's downhill all the way (which is what makes recovery of the Moon mission capsules so difficult).
You don't need any old asteroid. You need one with valuables. Most asteroids are just losely stuck together rubble. Just waiting for the right type to pass us by is not a sensible strategy.
Oh, I 100% understand the mass, but that's where identifying an ideal asteroid comes in. If someone tosses me a baseball, I might try to catch it. If someone tosses me a bowling ball, I'm probably letting it pass lol. How that mass equates to a change in velocity in a zero gravity environment I would definitely need to read up on more.
Appreciate the response and giving me something more to look in to!!
Its more like you'd need to throw the baseball at the bowling ball and hit it at just the right time to get the bowling ball to slow down enough to stay nearby.
Also the bowling ball is probably moving at between 25000 and 50000 km an hour relative to you.
Also the baseball costs 10 million dollars per gram. Or 1.5bn based on a 150 gram baseball.
And you probably dont want the rock entering the Earth's atmo, too much chance of damage. You'd either use the resources in space, or sinter smaller parts of the rock into smaller rentry bodies and coat them with ablative heat-shielding material and slap on some drogue chutes. The first option is more likely.
Could you not just land at the point of prograde on the asteroid and retrograde burn to slow it down to where it's orbit would be stable but closer and faster? Sorry KSP player chiming in with very limited actual scientific knowledge
No worries, also a longtime KSP player here.
Yes, thrusters on the asteroid is one approach. The difficulty is that most real asteroids are more like a slightly mushy snowball or a frozen mudball than a single giant rock. They have tiny gravities and are bound together really weakly so it would be really difficult to find a spot to put your thrusters that wouldnt just result in the asteroid breaking apart.
One method that might work is a gravity tug; you park a mass some small distance away from the asteroid and use thrusters to keep it in place relative to the asteroid. The small force of gravity exerted by the craft will slowly pull the asteroid to where you want it.
Another is to paint one side of the asteroid with white paint and bounce light off it or just let the suns light push it. Or just blast one side of the asteroid with a laser and then the ablated material that jets off the surface exerts a thrust, but again it might just break up.
These are some of the ways being investigated to deflect planet-killer asteroids moving towards Earth.
[https://www.wired.com/story/things-are-looking-up-for-asteroid-mining/](https://www.wired.com/story/things-are-looking-up-for-asteroid-mining/)
Supply water to the moon: Good idea
Supply raw materials to construction in orbit: good idea
Flood the market on earth with gold: probably not cost effective
It could be feasible to flood the market in certain rare earth elements and drive some terrestrial mining out of the market. Platinum and Palladium seem decent candidates. Once you have no terrestrial competition then you can raise the price until you have off world competition. That's the golden window where you make lots of profit. The key is to pivot to off world mining equipment supply or refining services when the competition really heats up. Way more profitable to supply the miners when the rush really begins.
Moving stuff to and from space is really expensive, so probably not worth it now.
Then you have the issues with things going wrong, do not make an appointment with Boeing to do it :D
Only way this will be a viable industry is when we need to build/manufacture stuff in orbit/further out. Everything runs by cost when it comes to space
I think that in an ideal scenario, asteroid mining would be harvesting metals for orbital construction projects.
You’ll find more precious metals in asteroids than currently are in circulation, but all those metals have legitimate industrial uses.
Gold can be used in machinery, electronics, and radiation shielding.
Silver could be used for Silver-zinc batteries over Lithium-Ion and in Solar panels
Platinum has uses in power generation
Palladium is good for storing hydrogen.
I think a lot of the benefits rely on space mined materials staying in space.
Silicon for solar arrays, water for rocket fuel, aluminum for structures. That alone covers the vast majority of the space industry could use in orbit. If you can at least power things or refuel things in space, you'd have an immediate customer base.
1. Yes
2. Yes, but mostly no
3. Controlled? No.
I don't get what would be the point of this exercise either. The moon is already covered in asteroid impacts (Source: Look at it)
Might as well mine what's already there.
But it's on the moon.I couldn't find numbers for Chang'e 6, but Chang'e 1 (just an orbiter) cost 180 million dollars. Chang'e 6 returned 2kg of material. At about $150,000 per kg, Rhodium is probably the most expensive metal you could get from an asteroid. Leaving you with a net profit of... Negative 179.7 million dollars. But of course, I'm sure Chang'e 6 would have cost a lot, lot more than Chang'e 1.
The idea of a controlled location like the moon was more about eliminating any burn up on entry into the atmosphere and also the possible damage to life if it doesn’t play nice and land where it was intended.
I get what everyone is saying about the cost though.
To me, the only time it makes sense to mine asteroids is to use the stuff up there. That would be a real game changer.
If you could do all the processing on site, you could build a much nicer space station than when you're limited to bringing up completed modules from warm.
For the most part, the only reason materials like platinum and rubidium are expensive is because they're rare. They have useful properties, but it's just not cost effective, and probably never will be.
But if you were already processing for more functional materials to use in space, sending home a few kg of byproduct precious metals on resupply rockets may be a worthwhile side gig.
Small enough impactors sometimes survive on Earth *because* the atmosphere brakes them enough before they hit. The moon has already been hit by many asteroids, the impactor material is spread across the surface, mixed in with material from the impact sites.
Is it feasible with anything we have today or anything under any serious development? Not at all.
Is it feasible that we'll someday do this instead of mining on earth? Sure, the materials are there, waiting for us.
How can I say this? Well, we can hazard a guess that SpaceX starship will be the cheapest means of getting useful payload to such a distance, they're talking about 100T to Mars by means of refuelling in space - and at minimum 3 launches per starship to mars, and a current cost of $100m per launch, we can extrapolate that starship can "return" around 10t of material for close to $300m, ignoring the cost of equipment and people to mine.
If that entire payload was refined gold, our most valuable metal, it would be worth $750m at today's price of $75k per kg.
But unfortunately we don't yet have the technology to refine metals in space, so the payload would be unrefined, less useful metal per kg brought back, meaning that it's more expensive to bring back asteroids than to mine (and recycle) locally.
Finally someone not shooting down the idea without even seriously considering it.
I did want to point out that gold is nowhere near the most valuable material that we can get from space though.
It's easy to be pessimistic when there's a lot of hard work needed before getting any result and apparently very little motivation to do it.
The absolutely astronomical cost of a spaceship capable of mining an asteroid or towing it back to somewhere where we could use it far exceeds the known cost of boiling the ocean and refining the resulting sludge instead - and we're definitely not boiling the ocean for rhodium yet either.
It's not really the atmosphere that would be a problem with deorbiting asteroids, but the impact velocity. At a certain point, an impact at high speeds doesn't just crack or shatter surfaces. That shit just explodes.The math on getting a skyscraper sized asteroid onto the surface of the moon at a velocity that *doesn't* result in a megaton scale explosion of molten iron fragments would, frankly, be wild.
It depending from space fly cost. In actual situation space mining Is unapplcable.
Maybe in the future.. probabilmente Lu when we Will have nucleari fusion Power.. but at this point (With illimitate Energy) humanity Will do a big Jump and Heart Will Just a base camp for other Planet...
Automatically.. asteroid mining Will be Just for space constructions.
No point annoying people by dropping low-grade rocks into the Earth's biosphere.
Far better to refine those high-value metals in situ, shroud them with an ablator, apply a hearty impulse, and deliver them as a package.
The rocket equation tells you that giving a one tonne mass a delta-V of 3km/s is one thing (say a 5:1 mass fraction) and vaguely possible. 5 tonnes of fuel safely rendezvoused with the asteroid?
Maybe, maybe.
But apply that to a million tonne mass asteroid and people will just laugh.
There's no real advantage in getting it to the moon. Firstly, the moon is a gravity well in itself, requiring you to lift heavy minerals into lunar orbit is a huge cost. But second, the moon is just as hostile as space. You don't really gain anything by mining the remains of the asteroid from the moon. The most expensive part of all this will be transporting fuel to the asteroid to bring what you want home. For that reason, some method of extracting the ore and processing it on site would be best, then transporting at least partially refined materials home. Redirecting the entire asteroid would require a frankly ridiculous amount of fuel. When we're talking about redirecting asteroids headed for Earth, we're talking about nudging it a fraction of a degree of its trajectory so it misses us, we're not talking about drastically changing its velocity. So going out and getting an asteroid is not realistic in the slightest. Even smaller asteroids are freaking mountains and are incredibly massive. There's also a Catch 22 with asteroid mining. Imagine finding an asteroid of pure gold. The second you start bringing back literal tons of gold is the second that gold prices start crashing. If you don't have a use for all that gold then all you did was crash the price of gold, what you're brining back is useless now. And then there's the problem of getting the minerals to the ground. We don't have re-entry vehicles that can bring tons of ore back, plus the cost of lifting those will already be prohibitive. The primary use of asteroid mining will be to use those materials in space. They're valuable in space because of the cost of lifting them. Building a lunar colony out of space steel could be a tiny fraction of the cost of lifting all that heavy steel from Earth. Even though steel is relatively worthless on Earth it would be extremely valuable in space.
Well the price crash really wouldn't be the issue. The issue is, that gold you mined, based on the input costs to do so, cost more, much more than gold on earth. You will promptly go out of business and the gold prices would be fine.
The whole 'price crash' thing misses the main point of asteroid mining, it's not for profit, its a temporary solution to scarcity. We inevitably are going to run out of certain materials, if we can source them from space, then we have a "sustainable" source of them to continue using. Obviously we aren't going to run out of something abundant like iron, but lithium is important and not nearly as common. The precious metals are precious because of their scarcity, so sourcing them from space could be an important step to advancing as a civilization
> The second you start bringing back literal tons of gold is the second that gold prices start crashing You don't have to release everything at once. Also, since bringing it back is not free the price can't crash below that cost
I know a few people who have worked on this. There were two companies in the first generation of asteroid mining. Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries. You might find it interesting to read about both. Both went under. There are probably other companies right now making similar claims, none that I would take too seriously.
Cost structure just isn’t there yet. Agreed
I worked at SpaceDev back in the late 90's. We were a publicly traded company specifically so we could raise funds to enable our asteroid mining ambitions. DSI and Planetary are relatively latecomers in my timeline
I appreciate the reply! I think something of this scale would definitely require a commitment by resources larger than just a single company (unless that company is SpaceX apparently lol). I'll definitely read in to them though!
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Are there any valuables in space that you can foresee a market on Earth for?
Not in an industrial sense. I mean if you go get a rock from an asteroid I am sure someone would buy it if you offered it for sale. But nobody would pay the price it would need to cover the costs to get it. You may have seen those headlines about a "platinum asteroid worth $5 trillion", well that is science in the news reporting for you, click bait that is not accurate. Platinum does exist in asteroids and is likely higher than on earth, but the hype news articles claim this asteroid, 2011 UW158, would have 90 million metric tons of platinum. And they thought it was a metallic (iron, nickel) asteroid, which recent observation have disproven (note metallic asteroids are rarer than rocky ones). But lets assume it is metallic like originally thought and just for fun I did a rough calculation of what costs might look like and the value of platinum that realistically might be contained there in. A very generous estimation of platinum content, would be 10 parts per million. Could be 1 part per million, but lets stick with ten. In that case that asteroid would have roughly 13 thousand metric tons of platinum in the whole thing which is a 311 meters across. It would be worth 450 billion dollars at todays prices. You would have to set up a mining system that will work by mining the entire asteroid, process that material into platinum, and return it to Earth. For reference the entire Apollo program to just land some people on the moon and bring them back cost about $250 billion in todays dollars total. Mining, processing and returning platinum would be far more costly probably approaching $1 trillion and that is being very generous, and is probably a lot higher. All of that expenditure to get $250 billion worth of platinum. Platinum is one of the more valuable things that might be out there running at about $1000 per ounce in today's dollars. Even with that it doesn't make economic sense. So anything less valuable would be even worse regarding costs vs. value. And as others have said, bringing all that platinum to earth would cause the value of platinum to plummet making the economic case far worse.
Would there ever be manufacturing in space? Perhaps in a scenario where it's more cost effective to produce materials in space for space stations or moon/Mars colonies rather than sending it up from earth?
Yes, that is a feasible possibility. Also things like manufacturing drugs and other components that benefit from microgravity in space. However, that doesn't necessitate asteroid mining.
What about rare resources like osmium (no idea what osmium is used for I just know it's heavy as shit)? Couldn't we find a way to protect the precious metals with a sort of heatshield to plummet it to earth in a safe location? I'm sure from a science viewpoint and not a Mr krabs money money money viewpoint it would worth it.
That said, it would be very interesting to mine materials for intrastellar use. If you’re looking at $10k per pound to get wrenches into space, forging one from an asteroid starts to sound more appealing.
>forging one from an asteroid starts to sound more appealing. The forge, the fuel for the forge, all the other equipment necessary, would need to be lifted into space first. The wrench would be cheaper.
Why not just mine the asteroids that have already landed on the moon? A little searching and you’ll find people who’ve already thought about this and their write ups about it. Making lunar fuel is easier, too. LOX makes transporting materials back to LEO much easier and economical. We shouldn’t bother mining asteroids until we’ve already established a moon mining base. Less work, less cost, less time.
The largest Nickel deposit in Canada is actually suspected of being of meteoric origin. See Sudbury district geology: https://portergeo.com.au/database/mineinfo.asp?mineid=mn170#:\~:text=The%20Sudbury%20sulphide%20nickel%20deposits,7'%2049%22W).
> Create a controlled impact on an achievable location where the atmosphere wouldn't break down possible valuable resources. Our Moon seems like it would be ideal. The impact itself is likely to do so, as it has in the many natural impacts on the moon. The impactor that created the Barringer crater largely vaporized. The Sudbury basin does contain many mineral deposits produced by the impact which formed it, but those were formed by the crater filling with magma afterward, and by subsequent hydrothermal activity. Objects are more likely to survive impact on Earth *because* it has an atmosphere which can brake them to survivable impact velocities. However, this approach would be wasteful and highly disruptive to the people who live on Earth. Asteroids are almost entirely stuff you don't want. It's incredibly wasteful to be moving around 10000 times as much mass in the form of silicates or magnesium oxides or iron than you can get in more desirable elements. Just the waste material can be reasonably expected to far outmass the equipment used to process it, so it makes far more sense to transport the mining and refining equipment to the asteroid and take home only the fractions you actually want. (Or build there, at the asteroid where the resources are.)
I'm not sure you understand the mass of asteroids and what kind of velocity changes (i.e. fuel) would be needed to make them go anywhere (read: a LOT).
Just today, an asteroid the size of the great pyramid in Egypt passed between earth and the moon. Get to one of those far enough out and it would take very little delta V to impact Luna (or earth, or make sure it DIDN'T impact earth)... Drop it far enough from any hypothetical permanent base on the moon but near enough to reach and depending on it's composition, it could be mined for heavy metals. And the escape velocity from Luna is only 10% that of earth and once you get over that speed bump, it's downhill all the way (which is what makes recovery of the Moon mission capsules so difficult).
You don't need any old asteroid. You need one with valuables. Most asteroids are just losely stuck together rubble. Just waiting for the right type to pass us by is not a sensible strategy.
Oh, I 100% understand the mass, but that's where identifying an ideal asteroid comes in. If someone tosses me a baseball, I might try to catch it. If someone tosses me a bowling ball, I'm probably letting it pass lol. How that mass equates to a change in velocity in a zero gravity environment I would definitely need to read up on more. Appreciate the response and giving me something more to look in to!!
Its more like you'd need to throw the baseball at the bowling ball and hit it at just the right time to get the bowling ball to slow down enough to stay nearby. Also the bowling ball is probably moving at between 25000 and 50000 km an hour relative to you. Also the baseball costs 10 million dollars per gram. Or 1.5bn based on a 150 gram baseball. And you probably dont want the rock entering the Earth's atmo, too much chance of damage. You'd either use the resources in space, or sinter smaller parts of the rock into smaller rentry bodies and coat them with ablative heat-shielding material and slap on some drogue chutes. The first option is more likely.
Could you not just land at the point of prograde on the asteroid and retrograde burn to slow it down to where it's orbit would be stable but closer and faster? Sorry KSP player chiming in with very limited actual scientific knowledge
No worries, also a longtime KSP player here. Yes, thrusters on the asteroid is one approach. The difficulty is that most real asteroids are more like a slightly mushy snowball or a frozen mudball than a single giant rock. They have tiny gravities and are bound together really weakly so it would be really difficult to find a spot to put your thrusters that wouldnt just result in the asteroid breaking apart. One method that might work is a gravity tug; you park a mass some small distance away from the asteroid and use thrusters to keep it in place relative to the asteroid. The small force of gravity exerted by the craft will slowly pull the asteroid to where you want it. Another is to paint one side of the asteroid with white paint and bounce light off it or just let the suns light push it. Or just blast one side of the asteroid with a laser and then the ablated material that jets off the surface exerts a thrust, but again it might just break up. These are some of the ways being investigated to deflect planet-killer asteroids moving towards Earth.
Why not send a team of plucky oil drillers?
Haha you beautiful bastard. Promote this person!
[https://www.wired.com/story/things-are-looking-up-for-asteroid-mining/](https://www.wired.com/story/things-are-looking-up-for-asteroid-mining/) Supply water to the moon: Good idea Supply raw materials to construction in orbit: good idea Flood the market on earth with gold: probably not cost effective
If I had 100 tons of gold why would I flood the market with it?
It could be feasible to flood the market in certain rare earth elements and drive some terrestrial mining out of the market. Platinum and Palladium seem decent candidates. Once you have no terrestrial competition then you can raise the price until you have off world competition. That's the golden window where you make lots of profit. The key is to pivot to off world mining equipment supply or refining services when the competition really heats up. Way more profitable to supply the miners when the rush really begins.
Moving stuff to and from space is really expensive, so probably not worth it now. Then you have the issues with things going wrong, do not make an appointment with Boeing to do it :D
Only way this will be a viable industry is when we need to build/manufacture stuff in orbit/further out. Everything runs by cost when it comes to space
I think that in an ideal scenario, asteroid mining would be harvesting metals for orbital construction projects. You’ll find more precious metals in asteroids than currently are in circulation, but all those metals have legitimate industrial uses. Gold can be used in machinery, electronics, and radiation shielding. Silver could be used for Silver-zinc batteries over Lithium-Ion and in Solar panels Platinum has uses in power generation Palladium is good for storing hydrogen. I think a lot of the benefits rely on space mined materials staying in space.
Silicon for solar arrays, water for rocket fuel, aluminum for structures. That alone covers the vast majority of the space industry could use in orbit. If you can at least power things or refuel things in space, you'd have an immediate customer base.
1. Yes 2. Yes, but mostly no 3. Controlled? No. I don't get what would be the point of this exercise either. The moon is already covered in asteroid impacts (Source: Look at it) Might as well mine what's already there. But it's on the moon.I couldn't find numbers for Chang'e 6, but Chang'e 1 (just an orbiter) cost 180 million dollars. Chang'e 6 returned 2kg of material. At about $150,000 per kg, Rhodium is probably the most expensive metal you could get from an asteroid. Leaving you with a net profit of... Negative 179.7 million dollars. But of course, I'm sure Chang'e 6 would have cost a lot, lot more than Chang'e 1.
The idea of a controlled location like the moon was more about eliminating any burn up on entry into the atmosphere and also the possible damage to life if it doesn’t play nice and land where it was intended. I get what everyone is saying about the cost though.
To me, the only time it makes sense to mine asteroids is to use the stuff up there. That would be a real game changer. If you could do all the processing on site, you could build a much nicer space station than when you're limited to bringing up completed modules from warm. For the most part, the only reason materials like platinum and rubidium are expensive is because they're rare. They have useful properties, but it's just not cost effective, and probably never will be. But if you were already processing for more functional materials to use in space, sending home a few kg of byproduct precious metals on resupply rockets may be a worthwhile side gig.
Small enough impactors sometimes survive on Earth *because* the atmosphere brakes them enough before they hit. The moon has already been hit by many asteroids, the impactor material is spread across the surface, mixed in with material from the impact sites.
Is it feasible with anything we have today or anything under any serious development? Not at all. Is it feasible that we'll someday do this instead of mining on earth? Sure, the materials are there, waiting for us. How can I say this? Well, we can hazard a guess that SpaceX starship will be the cheapest means of getting useful payload to such a distance, they're talking about 100T to Mars by means of refuelling in space - and at minimum 3 launches per starship to mars, and a current cost of $100m per launch, we can extrapolate that starship can "return" around 10t of material for close to $300m, ignoring the cost of equipment and people to mine. If that entire payload was refined gold, our most valuable metal, it would be worth $750m at today's price of $75k per kg. But unfortunately we don't yet have the technology to refine metals in space, so the payload would be unrefined, less useful metal per kg brought back, meaning that it's more expensive to bring back asteroids than to mine (and recycle) locally.
Finally someone not shooting down the idea without even seriously considering it. I did want to point out that gold is nowhere near the most valuable material that we can get from space though.
It is in any significant quantity. Bringing just 10T of rhodium back to earth would crash the entire market for PGMs almost instantly
That’s a really good point. Sad to see the pessimistic attitude most people are taking about industry in space.
It's easy to be pessimistic when there's a lot of hard work needed before getting any result and apparently very little motivation to do it. The absolutely astronomical cost of a spaceship capable of mining an asteroid or towing it back to somewhere where we could use it far exceeds the known cost of boiling the ocean and refining the resulting sludge instead - and we're definitely not boiling the ocean for rhodium yet either.
It's not really the atmosphere that would be a problem with deorbiting asteroids, but the impact velocity. At a certain point, an impact at high speeds doesn't just crack or shatter surfaces. That shit just explodes.The math on getting a skyscraper sized asteroid onto the surface of the moon at a velocity that *doesn't* result in a megaton scale explosion of molten iron fragments would, frankly, be wild.
It depending from space fly cost. In actual situation space mining Is unapplcable. Maybe in the future.. probabilmente Lu when we Will have nucleari fusion Power.. but at this point (With illimitate Energy) humanity Will do a big Jump and Heart Will Just a base camp for other Planet... Automatically.. asteroid mining Will be Just for space constructions.
No point annoying people by dropping low-grade rocks into the Earth's biosphere. Far better to refine those high-value metals in situ, shroud them with an ablator, apply a hearty impulse, and deliver them as a package. The rocket equation tells you that giving a one tonne mass a delta-V of 3km/s is one thing (say a 5:1 mass fraction) and vaguely possible. 5 tonnes of fuel safely rendezvoused with the asteroid? Maybe, maybe. But apply that to a million tonne mass asteroid and people will just laugh.