A group of billionaires and former NASA scientists is now unveiling the first asteroid mining company in history. They claim they will “add trillions of dollars to the global GDP” and “help ensure humanity’s prosperity” by mining asteroids for rare metals like gold and platinum.
Their objective is to “harness resources from passing-by asteroids”. And they claim they are going to launch their first space prospecting ships within 24 months!
One of the main resources they are going to mine is water. This will be used for fuel—oxygen and hydrogen—for space missions to Mars and other points of the solar system. Obviously, they are thinking long term here. He argues that, by mining this fuel on near-Earth asteroids, the cost of space travel will be peanuts.
The second resource is precious metals. He says they want to make precious elements abundant. Just like aluminum was a rare metal at the beginning and now it’s one of the core building metals in the world, they want to do the same with platinum, gold and other rare elements. This will allow for technology never seen before.
They’re trying to make space travel cheaper though. I think the metals are a way of offsetting the cost of developing cheaper space travel. I guess they’re thinking if they can start out with the fuel already in space they’ll be able to go long distances without having to get all of that fuel up out of the atmosphere.
Exactly, in theory fuel stays there for use and precious metals get send back to Earth. It’s like having a gas station in orbit.
Estimated LEO payload cost per lb (kg) = $4,729 ($10,416) on a USA Space Shuttle Launch.
One gallon of water is ~8 pounds, making it around ~$35 thousand dollars to put a gallon of water into space.
So when you want to drive to California instead of having a trailer with you that has all the gas you will need it makes more sense to stop and fill up on the way.
I think the concept is sound, since the earth’s resources will at some point no longer be able to sustain our locus like search-consume-and-move-on type of human expansion, that is before our active attempts to destroy ourself first with wars. Someone needs to to make an effort to preliminary conceptualize and test how we can achieve this effectively and cost effectively.
We don’t go from wright brother’s glider to space shuttle in a day, if we only begin to look into these type of ideas when we actually need it to work, it is already too late. Many many however seeming idioitic ideas and fail attempts ultimately do contribute to the success of a working concept.
I can see us actually landing on and mining an asteroid within the next 25 years. what I do not see(being cost effective) is actually getting the ore/materials back down here on solid ground. It takes TREMENDOUS power to launch just a bitty shuttle into space with minimal cargo(in todays transport standards).
Let’s say they go up for gold. How cost effective is it going to be bring back, lets say a 1/2 ton of refined gold ore? Would have to be refined up there to be cost effective as brining back unrefined rock or would be stupid. Unless they plan on running a docking station with the largest garabage shut this site of the galaxy back down to earth :lol
Potential is there, probably not in the next 50-75 years though.
There are relatively “easy” ways to do it.
Off the top of my head: putting the payload into low orbit fitted with a simple glider, or a parachute + a couple small boosters and controller to guide it, same as they landed space capsules. Or simply launch it down at your landing site after outfitting it with some ablative shield made out of waste material (chunk of asteroid) which will burn up on re-entry leaving the payload mostly intact, just collect it from the crash site. I suppose ideally they’d make a space elevator, but that’s currently still in the scifi realm, can’t make carbon nanotube trusses of any length yet.
BTW, that cute little collage they made for the article with a tiny piece of meteorite as an asteroid is hilarious :rofl
I still think there should have been an effort to have a moon base as a starting point. Chinese will do it first and then it’s game over man, game over, they’ll have the market cornered.
