Economics of spaceflight

[rpayne88]

We've all seen it happen. An engineering marvel of space flight, such as the Apollo program or STS, is killed by a lack of funding from the government. The sector of commercial spaceflight is just beginning to get off the ground. But the problem with these companies is that they are limited to flights to LEO. Why? Because there is a high demand for satellite launches there. There are thousands, if not millions, of man made objects orbiting this planet. What would it take to get commercial, or even re-interest governing bodies, to begin flying to other bodies again? The possibility of an economic gain.

So, my questions are, what can we bring from space? Are there any resources we could economically mine and return to Earth for consumption, or is spaceflight only useful as a scientific endeavor with no payout? Can we really expect to reach for the stars again, or are we now doomed to remain on this planet for eternity?

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong section.

[Kimberly]

I don't think there is anything useful to modern society that can be more easily retrieved by launching a craft into space, sending it to an asteroid or planet and having it mine, and then deorbiting. I don't think that's likely to be possible with any advance in efficiency in the foreseeable future, either.

However, considering how ridiculously expensive it is to launch things into Earth orbit, what with that pesky atmosphere and high gravity, it might become profitable to mine asteroids or other planets for resources used in space-based construction. If there was a reliable source of fuel, then it would probably be more profitable to refuel interplanetary craft in orbit with space-mined fuel, than it would be to launch all that fuel up with them.

I think the core problem facing spaceflight isn't a lack of commercial viability. We need to get it through people's thick skulls that scientific advance is something to aspire to, something worth spending money on. Governmental funding is clearly the answer for scientific spaceflight, and the money is there, we just don't spend it the right way. NASA's 2012 budget was only 0.48% of the federal budget, even though research indicates every dollar spent on NASA will pay for itself by stimulating the economy. There are suggestions for changing the funding model (we can imagine a market-based system, where companies bid for contracts to reach scientific milestones), but there's not enough money going around in an absolute sense.

[Moon Goddess]

I think the core problem facing spaceflight isn't a lack of commercial viability. We need to get it through people's thick skulls that scientific advance is something to aspire to, something worth spending money on.

This to me is the biggest thing,

If I had magic powers the first thing I'd do would be wipe the thought "What's in it for me?" from mankind

[Drunkrobot]

Yeah, we need things like the Lunar X prize, $20 million for the group that gets a rover on the Moon. I'm not sure if that money will even cover the costs of building it and getting it to the Moon, though.

[sojourner]

Hopefully we'll one day need all that helium 3 on the moon.

[magnemoe]

Yeah, we need things like the Lunar X prize, $20 million for the group that gets a rover on the Moon. I'm not sure if that money will even cover the costs of building it and getting it to the Moon, though.

Private companies are not interested in pure science unless for publicity. However its no issues doing launches for ESA or NASA.

As other says, mining water at the moon poles should be economically if done right.

[Anton P. Nym]

Hopefully we'll one day need all that helium 3 on the moon.

Alas, nope. It's cheaper to harvest it from terrestrial sources, which include the decay of tritium (byproduct of water-moderated fission reactors) or the neutron bombardment lithium isotopes. Lithium's proposed as the primary component for neutron absorber layers for first-generation fusion reactors, so they'd make for a good source of He3 for a lot less delta-V.

-- Steve

[Pyre]

Hopefully we'll one day need all that helium 3 on the moon.

There isn't THAT much He3 on the moon. You would need to process several million tons of regolith to get just one ton of He3. It would probably be more efficient to get it from Saturn's atmosphere.

[Khrissetti]

This is a problem I've faced in my writing. My intention was to write a hard-sci-fi novel set in Earth and Lunar orbit, with the protagonist exploring a mystery amongst the satelites and stations. The problem is finding a realistic reason for people to be up there at all; almost anything we can do, 'bots can do better, 'bots can do anything better than us. My solution was a massive solar flare and startings of a Kessler syndrome which seriously damaged most space infrastructure, which requires human astro-technicians to make the repairs , whilst carefully maneuvering around the debris.

Oh, and the remilitarisation of space, which requires actual people to go from structure to structure instead of sending transmissions which are liable to interception.

[Jackissimus]

I think we will actually destroy this planet and have our society crumble under its own weight before people start looking at the stars again.

[Ralathon]

I think we will actually destroy this planet and have our society crumble under its own weight before people start looking at the stars again.

Destroying this planet is going to be a bit of a tall order.

The gravitational binding energy of earth is around -2*10^32 Joulles. The worldwide energy production is somewhere around 142 TWh, this means that if we completely overhauled our society to devote all our resources to destroying the earth it'd take us around 14 billion years. The sun would beat us to it.

[Nuke]

Hopefully we'll one day need all that helium 3 on the moon.

no we wont, p-b11 is better (and abundant on earth).

[Diche Bach]

I was browsing the pages on asteroids a bit and I was surprised to see just how much nomenclature, cataloguing and classification exists about these things. They seem to think they already know a lot about them despite most evidence about them being fairly indirect and observational from considerable distances and not based on up close and exhaustive observation or actual physical samples. Just based on what I know about geology (an undergraduate minor) that seems rather speculative at best. Imagine if geologist tried to infer the composition of even a small portion of the Earth based on observations made with telescopes from great distances. Yes, I know that basic models could be built that would offer reasonable guidelines, but those models would also miss a great deal of the exceptions and 'diamonds in the rough' so to speak.

The wiki page is pretty sketchy but it sounds like there are broadly three main types: carbonaceous (the most common); silicate and; "other" with the metallic ones I think belonging in that last and least numerous (they think) category. That is the other thing of course, if they have a very low albedo, they might go undetected so the current observations about distributions are probably fairly tenuous.

Now just based on my little bit of physical science background, I could certainly see a lucky find in either a carbonaceous or metallic asteroid cluster as being well worth several hundred millions of dollars to any given industry if not even more. A few asteroids full of rhodium, palladium, platinum, etc., . . . you would think that those could be worth a lot of money given how rare some of those metals are on Earth. That is to say nothing of even more exotic stuff like metallic hydrogen. Seems very unlikely there would be an asteroid full of metallic hydrogen drifting around out there, but who knows!

Yes there are a lot of question marks and unknowns. Probably a large segment of all that stuff out there is just junk. But the same was true of the "New World" and every other frontier that humans have expanded into. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

[Drunkrobot]

You can determine quite a lot about an asteroid from astronomy, including the most important aspect of it i.e. whether it's going to intercept the Earth and kill us all. However, we only get hypothesis's from long-range observation, facts can only be got from either robots or human explorers.

There are technical challenges to asteroid mining, like how do you control the asteroids attitude? How do you put it into Earth orbit? How do you get the mined material down to Earth (remember, "dumping all the material on the Earth at once" is the one situation we want to avoid.)?

Those problems will be solved, technology always get's better. The problems I'm worried about are economic. When you dump trillions of pounds (£) worth of material into the international market, you've turned supply and demand on it's head. We've finally found a situation where the human race isn't demanding enough.

[Diche Bach]

It certainly is likely to produce a good deal of economic, social and political disturbance. Moreover, given what has always happened in association with expanding long-distance trade in exotic valuable commodities, violence and war are I think quite likely to come into play. For centuries the European nations fought on and off low-intensity 'wars' through letters of marque (in addition to full states of war) over the precious commodities of the New World, Africa and the East.

Once the first government, corporation or multinational gets its hands on a juicy asteroid family full of 'booty,' you can bet that will change things _very_ quickly and everyone will want a slice of the pie. The day that happens might be a long way off. But when that day comes, things will begin to change very quickly, probably at a dizzying pace. Once it becomes clear that there are fortunes to be made, it will be a veritable cavalcade of space travelers and that is when things will get very interesting. And, as has always been the case, a poignant mixture of noble, pathetic, inspiring, horrific and amazing human tales will unfold.

[Nuke]

people will eventually go to space just to take territory. its as simple as that.

[KOCOUR]

This to me is the biggest thing,

If I had magic powers the first thing I'd do would be wipe the thought "What's in it for me?" from mankind

That would be rather dumb thing to do, as the "waht is in it for me?" or otherways called "need" is one of the most important drive of anything we humans do.

The other one is "fear". Without "need" and "fear" there will be no humans actualy there will be no animals either, as they are driven by the same two things.

[Khrissetti]

people will eventually go to space just to take territory. its as simple as that.

Perhaps, but at the moment we've huge swathes of Antarctic and Desert land, not to mention the oceans, which are all more congenial to human life than any other planet around the Sun. Considering even most of Siberia is largely uninhabited and that's a veritable paradise compared to some places on Earth and you can see that we've no need to go to the planets for real-estate any time soon.

[Javster]

We've all seen it happen. An engineering marvel of space flight, such as the Apollo program or STS, is killed by a lack of funding from the government. The sector of commercial spaceflight is just beginning to get off the ground. But the problem with these companies is that they are limited to flights to LEO. Why? Because there is a high demand for satellite launches there. There are thousands, if not millions, of man made objects orbiting this planet. What would it take to get commercial, or even re-interest governing bodies, to begin flying to other bodies again? The possibility of an economic gain.

So, my questions are, what can we bring from space? Are there any resources we could economically mine and return to Earth for consumption, or is spaceflight only useful as a scientific endeavor with no payout? Can we really expect to reach for the stars again, or are we now doomed to remain on this planet for eternity?

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong section.

Some asteroids have large amounts of titanium which is worth a huge amount.

[sojourner]

Some asteroids have large amounts of titanium which is worth a huge amount.

But still not worth the current costs to bring it back. Hopefully those costs will come down.

[Dkmdlb]

Private companies are not interested in pure science unless for publicity. However its no issues doing launches for ESA or NASA.

As other says, mining water at the moon poles should be economically if done right.

Depends on the definition of "Pure Science." If you mean actual science, than this is false. If you mean science for its own sake with no potential for any economic gain save for publicity, then sure. But I haven't thought of any kind of science that doesn't have a potential for economic gain.

[rpayne88]

Perhaps, but at the moment we've huge swathes of Antarctic and Desert land, not to mention the oceans, which are all more congenial to human life than any other planet around the Sun. Considering even most of Siberia is largely uninhabited and that's a veritable paradise compared to some places on Earth and you can see that we've no need to go to the planets for real-estate any time soon.

That is not taking into account the land required to support people. I'm talking about plants to absorb CO2, water, and food. This planet has an estimated carrying capacity of 10 billion people. The question is how will we have enough air, water, and food. I can think of ways we can make fresh water and scrub CO2 out of the air via man made machines, but food is a different story. I don't really like the idea of people subsisting in insects.

[Rondon]

Resource wise apart from maybe platinum in asteroids there isn't really anything viably worth taking to earth, that said space tourism may become a viable industry, especially if the cost from earth to orbit went down, I'm thinking primarily about Skylon and its SABRE engines.

[rkman]

We need to get it through people's thick skulls that scientific advance is something to aspire to, something worth spending money on.

I totally agree, but the problem is that the economic value of scientific research - even though it pretty much guaranteed - is unpredictable in terms of time and dollars.

Even though the private sector prides itself on its willingness to take risks, the gamble of investing in fundamental scientific research is so far done more readily by the public sector (government) - after which both the public sector and the private sector profit from it.

[Khrissetti]

That is not taking into account the land required to support people. I'm talking about plants to absorb CO2, water, and food. This planet has an estimated carrying capacity of 10 billion people. The question is how will we have enough air, water, and food. I can think of ways we can make fresh water and scrub CO2 out of the air via man made machines, but food is a different story. I don't really like the idea of people subsisting in insects.

We'll switch to a primarily vegetarian diet before we move to Mars for more food. Meat consumes an obscene amount of land to grow, if overcrowding gets that bad, meat will be too expensive to produce. Trust me, it isn't such a bleak prospect!

Further, there is massive untapped room for food to grow on rooftops and basket crops, hopefully we'll start to take more advantage of rainwater and greywater harvesting in the next few years in our cities. Current city designs are massively unsustainable, but the potential is there. The Vertical Farm project is just one idea to help with this project: http://www.verticalfarm.com/

A change in diet, greater sustainability of our cities and the 'greening' of concrete spaces are all tactics we'll use before we start to think about sending people to Mars (And they're tactics we should really be doing now.)

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2007/10/diet-little-meat-more-efficient-many-vegetarian-diets