Is Asteroid Mining coming? Uncover Michigan

"The presence of ice or water on these bodies is one of the most significant potential resources. This is so as solar panels on spacecraft can provide the power to simply convert water to hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. This idea of harvesting resources needed in space doesn't sound like such a bad idea considering the fact that it costs from $5,000-25,000+ per kg to ferry items into space.

Currently, there are two private companies pursuing asteroid mining, these are Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries. NASA too is involved on several levels as it has awarded contracts to several companies including both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries for studies relating to relating to asteroid redirection."  Uncover Michigan

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The Heinlein novel linked to below is centered on Luna, not an asteroid but you get the idea.  In Heinlein's book the Loonies used mass drivers to throw their ore production at Terra aiming for splash down areas at sea where the rocks could be harvested. 

Space colonization must come to be commercially viable or it will just end in a whimper of some sort.  pl

http://uncovermichigan.com/content/22019-asteroid-mining-its-way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(film)

 

Comments

[Charles I]

People are pretty clever, even in the nuttiest of pursuits. In law school, my nickname was Anything-for-a-buck-Chuck. If you can find some fool (or even better, some genius with a few business smarts) with capital, and a salesman or two, even the most harebrained schemes sometimes play out.

Some clever group attracted to space,technology, adventure, get-rich-quick-schemes, etc will try to make a buck somehow, and eventually, after much trial and error, someone, building on all that will come up with some irresistible way to monetize something or some experience in space that those who can will stampede like a Black Friday mob to get it at premium prices.

We started with electricity and telegraphs, now we have the web and smart phones - all 6 versions to date. No-one really invents anything new; they build on and modify all the prior work, failures and all. Who thought of putting a camera on a phone? Coulda been a genius or a voyeur. There's billions of us. It'll happen

[different clue]

This could well happen. But I think deep seabed metal-nodule harvesting/mining will happen sooner. Also black-smoker energy harvesting.

[C Webb]

http://vimeo.com/25401444

Would it be possible to build a construction drone(s) to construct a shelter (or the material for one) in the sahara desert?

If we can do this remote automated construction on earth, we could then consider the same on other planets.

IMHO, the life span of the current gen ROVs is too short to accomplish this task. (Mostly due to batteries) So we need a durable battery with a very high cycle count 1st.

[Fred]

First you have to lift the mining gear into orbit, but once there it's a matter of physics and travel time. Of course we will need to figure out how to stop some miner's stray ore from 'accidentally' hitting a city.

[Rocketrepreneur]

Pat,

I actually did a talk just a few weeks ago on this topic. I'm not sure how interesting it would be to most readers here, but here's a link to the Youtube, in case people are interested:

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

~Jon

[Farooq]

Peter Diamandis of Planetary resources explaining their moonshot:
http://tinyurl.com/n4gb6zo

[A. Pols]

This is techno-triumphalist BS of the highest order.
There have been crazy ideas like this bruited for decades, since the fifties at least. All these schemes have as their root preposition, spoken or not, the availability of limitless and free energy to carry them out...
Dog ain't gonna hunt...
But maybe someone could get the credulous to "invest" in this nonsense and the proponents could at least mine the suckers' bank accounts...

[Charles I]

trial and error!

[Charles I]

"bruited for decades". . . The fifties?

You think too small, or rather, too fast. 2 new sub- atomic particles were reported discovered just last week:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/two-new-subatomic-particles-found-using-large-hadron-collider-scientists-say-1416409980

Since the Rosetta mission took so long - a decade or so - to get designed, funded and in situ, it's incredibly high tech camera, that sent us those extremely moving photos from Philae, has a resolution of an incredible 4 (FOUR) pixels.

Current phones have 8 megapixels or so.

Give us a few centuries to get our physics learned, and there will be a way. Even if homo sapiens survives to perfect abundant H2O sourced hydrogen fusion to fight wars over, it'll just give us more agency to attempt our crazy ideas in space. Do you have any conception of just how much energy is contained in Creation, and how rudimentary and inefficient our present, almost infantile, our present conversion/utilization potentials are?

Will there be 199 notorious flops? Mais oui, but we can't quit gambling no matter what the odds, what's the old line about the guy who invested in the buggy whip factory? Nobody knows his name but someday - assuming species survival -somebody'll be driving a Saab or a Porsche or a Virgin to the Moon on the backs of those flops.

The people who don't like to go in the water, our other energy frontier.

[C Webb]

The headline is the 1st give-away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

Back in the 1950s energy what no problem....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

It's healthy to dream.
But only if you know you are dreaming.

[Farooq]

Great talk! Thanks for sharing this.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Too much sand in Sahara; a better place would be deep sea mining with remote robots or semi-autonomous robots. Say mining for Tungsten.

But why mine in the Asteroid Belt or the Moon when there is Afghanistan?

[Imagine]

AI + robotics FTW. "2001" is just around the corner.

[tpinlb]

The real opportunity for space mining is to exploit the Helium-3 resources of the moon. This will be a major fuel for fusion reactors in the coming years. The Chinese have stated this is a focus of their plans to go to the moon.