Asteroid mining for space exploration

[kiwi1960]

Mining in space is moving from science fiction to commercial reality but metals magnates on this planet need not fear a mountain of extraterrestrial supply - the aim is to fuel human voyages deeper into the galaxy.

Within three years, two firms plan prospecting missions to passing asteroids. When even a modest space rock might meet demand for metals like platinum or gold for centuries, it is little wonder storytellers have long fantasized that to harness cosmic riches could make, and break, fortunes on Earth.

But with no way to bring much ore or metal down from the heavens, new ventures that have backing from some serious - and seriously rich - business figures, as well as interest from Nasa, will focus on using space minerals in interplanetary "gas stations" or to build, support and fuel colonies on Mars.

There may be gold up there, but the draw for now is water for investors willing to get the new industry off the ground.

Governments believe it has a future; Nasa has a project that may put astronauts on an asteroid in under a decade and on Mars in the 2030s.

And if the costs seem high, grumblers are told that one day the new skills might just save mankind from sharing the fate of the dinosaurs - if we can learn how to stop a massive asteroid smashing into Earth.

"We are dreamers," declares the website of Deep Space Industries (DSI), next to an image of a wheel-like metal station hooked up to a giant floating rock. But what the US-based start-up firm calls the first small steps in a "long play" to develop the resources of space are about to happen.

A priority is using hydrogen and oxygen, the components of water locked in compounds on asteroids, to refuel rockets.

Early in 2016, the first of DSI's exploration satellites, smaller than toasters, will hitch-hike into space on rockets carrying other payloads and start scouting for suitable rocks.

The same year, another US-based venture, Planetary Resources, expects to launch prospecting craft hunting viable asteroids.

"They are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system," said Eric Anderson, an American aerospace engineer and co-founder of Planetary Resources, which lists Google's Larry Page and Virgin billionaire Richard Branson among its backers.

"They are just there and they are not difficult to get to and they are not difficult to get away from," he said.

METALS

Meteorites - chunks that survive and fall to earth after asteroids disintegrate in the atmosphere - yield significant amounts of precious metals like platinum, rhodium, iridium, rhenium, osmium, ruthenium, palladium, germanium and gold.

Planetary Resources estimates some platinum-rich asteroids just 500 metres across could contain more than the entire known reserves of platinum group metals. Studies based on observation and meteorites suggest space is even richer in iron ore.

Wall Street research firm Bernstein notes that a big asteroid called 16 Psyche, in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and measuring some 200km across, may contain 17 million billion tonnes of nickel-iron - enough to satisfy mankind's current demand for millions of years.

But costs and technical hurdles rule out hauling resources down to Earth in the foreseeable future, experts say.

The real value in asteroid mining is for further space travel - and so hydrogen and oxygen reserves are as attractive as any metal.

"It's ridiculous to believe that asteroid resources will ever compete with terrestrial alternatives and Earth markets," said Brad Blair, a mining engineer and economist.

Referring to talk of city-sized settlements on Mars, he said: "The reason asteroid mining makes sense is because people might be some day where those resources are. You can't put an 80,000-person colony on Mars without using the local 'timber'.

"And if you're going to use chemical propulsion, it's going to take a lot of water to get them there."

The energy released when hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water can power rockets. The presence of both elements in compounds found on asteroids offers scope to set up space factories to make fuel for missions to Mars and beyond as well as offering "pit stops" to extend the lives of satellites.

"We're going to be looking at propellants for satellites, which is a multi-billion dollar industry to keep them alive," said Rick Tumlinson, Deep Space Industries' board chairman and a veteran promoter of commercial space development.

"We'll eventually be an oasis, a place where you can get air, and we can provide propellants. So we're a gas station," Tumlinson told a recent seminar in London.

"You can take the process leftover material, the slag, and use it for shielding, or concrete, and build large structures, and of course there is a percentage of precious metals."

CAMERAS, LASERS

DSI hopes to launch flying cameras it calls FireFlies early in 2016. Their images will let scientists judge the composition of asteroids they pass. They will use off-the-shelf parts in tried and tested modules, just 10cm wide.

That first phase should cost some US$20 million (NZ$24m), DSI chief executive David Gump said, adding he expects about half to come from government and research institute contracts and half from corporate advertising and corporate sponsorship.

A year later, larger craft would begin two-to-three year missions to land and take samples for analysis. Most dramatic of all, the company sees a "harvester" craft heading out in 2019 to capture and divert the most promising asteroids so that they settle into orbit around Earth by 2021.

On these, Gump said, DSI would try to make propellant and mine nickel and iron to make the building components for new structures in space.

"If we are successful producing resources in space then it makes what Nasa wants to do, which is going to Mars, that much less expensive," he said.

"It costs a lot of money to launch everything from the ground."

Planetary Resources plans to send telescopes into space to study asteroids between Earth and the Moon. In a later phase, it will send out craft carrying deep-space lasers to gather data on some of the thousands of more distant asteroids.

"By 2020 we will have begun processing asteroidal material in space, and we will have our first interplanetary fuel stop," Planetary Resources' Anderson said.

"A mission can leave the Earth and stop by the trading post and gas themselves up."

And while commercial gain from asteroid exploration is drawing investors, the rest of humanity also has an interest.

A shift in climate caused by a big asteroid strike may have killed off the dinosaurs and Nasa is taking the risk of another such impact seriously enough to go looking for similar threats.

As mining expert Blair put it: "For survival of the human species, we have to address the asteroids, or they will address us. Because statistically a big enough one will come along that will scrub the planet clean and set it back to zero."

- Reuters

[Neil1993]

Great article! well thought out and well researched. It's great to see that humanity's future in space isn't as far away as we once thought.

[kiwi1960]

Yes, I agree. I stated awhile back that space mining will be happening soon, ONLY, I made the mistake of suggesting it would all come back to Earth, and maybe it will one day. Someone told me there was nothing worth mining on the Asteroids or the moon. I just read a book about space exploration that stated the Moon has vast quantities of Uranium located on one place on the moon, as well as other minerals such as titanium.

There is enough stuff on the moon to not only build a base, but manned space ships to take us out further, such as Mars. As for fuel, the Moon also has vast quantities on hydrogen located under the surface.

I'd like to seen KSP delve into that aspect, where you can mine metals, build a ship and launch it to take you out further from the Mun.

[Nibb31]

Mining in space is moving from science fiction to commercial reality

Sorry, but I get stuck on the first sentence. There is no evidence whatsoever of any commercial reality to asteroid or lunar mining. There are no customers. There is no demand. There are no suppliers. Therefore, there is no business.

Governments believe it has a future; Nasa has a project that may put astronauts on an asteroid in under a decade and on Mars in the 2030s.

The asteroid mission is still an unfunded concept. It's only designed as a justification for the SLS program and its scientific value is pretty dubious. I don't see why the article brings up Mars, as it is totally unrelated to asteroid mining.

It's NASA, not Nasa.

And if the costs seem high, grumblers are told that one day the new skills might just save mankind from sharing the fate of the dinosaurs - if we can learn how to stop a massive asteroid smashing into Earth.

Again, unrelated to mining.

"We are dreamers," declares the website of Deep Space Industries (DSI), next to an image of a wheel-like metal station hooked up to a giant floating rock. But what the US-based start-up firm calls the first small steps in a "long play" to develop the resources of space are about to happen.

Finally, the author of the article drops a name. Yes, DSI are dreamers, but they have no money. You would need a upfront investment to start such a business, and that's if there were any customers. There aren't.

A priority is using hydrogen and oxygen, the components of water locked in compounds on asteroids, to refuel rockets.

Not rockets, satellites. It's cheaper to launch a new GEO comsat than to launch a resupply vehicle to an asteroid, mine it, process the ore, and rendez-vous with an old comsat and refuel it. It's a highly complex mission with lots of expensive manoeuvers and customers prefer to actually have a new comsat that is more capable than an old one.

[Idobox]

Deep space Industries might not have any money, but Planetary resources have, and they've built space telescopes (still not in orbit though).

Space mining is not science-fiction anymore, but it's still not a commercial reality (although it is a venture business), so, as the article said, it is moving from one to another.

[iDan122]

I hope DSI get the funding, because if we start using resources from asteroids,we will have a lot of cheap materials for everything. We can finally build space habs like the Stanford torus, we can build interplanetary and even interstellar ships, bases on planets and moons. Mining gives us so much more, without it there would have been no advancement in Earth, but we cannot mine in one place all the time...

[NASAFanboy]

Sorry, but I get stuck on the first sentence. There is no evidence whatsoever of any commercial reality to asteroid or lunar mining. There are no customers. There is no demand. There are no suppliers. Therefore, there is no business.

The asteroid mission is still an unfunded concept. It's only designed as a justification for the SLS program and its scientific value is pretty dubious. I don't see why the article brings up Mars, as it is totally unrelated to asteroid mining.

It's NASA, not Nasa.

Again, unrelated to mining.

Finally, the author of the article drops a name. Yes, DSI are dreamers, but they have no money. You would need a upfront investment to start such a business, and that's if there were any customers. There aren't.

Not rockets, satellites. It's cheaper to launch a new GEO comsat than to launch a resupply vehicle to an asteroid, mine it, process the ore, and rendez-vous with an old comsat and refuel it. It's a highly complex mission with lots of expensive manoeuvers and customers prefer to actually have a new comsat that is more capable than an old one.

Nibb...*cough* Reality strikes again.

Commerical asteroid mining is too much of a novelty industry to take off as a "true" commerical industry. As much as I hate to say it, I have to partly agree.

Yes, we will most likely have a asteroid mining industry by the 2020-2050 timeframe, but it won't be raking in much profit, and will likely be run by companies who rely on government funding and R&D companies. The dream will become reality by the 2020's, yes, but it'll require government funding to float much.

[mdatspace]

Nibb...*cough* Reality strikes again.

Commerical asteroid mining is too much of a novelty industry to take off as a "true" commerical industry. As much as I hate to say it, I have to partly agree.

Yes, we will most likely have a asteroid mining industry by the 2020-2050 timeframe, but it won't be raking in much profit, and will likely be run by companies who rely on government funding and R&D companies. The dream will become reality by the 2020's, yes, but it'll require government funding to float much.

Commercial asteroid mining is likely going to be a very expensive undertaking. You have to find the asteroids with the stuff, get them where you can mine them, and then set up operations. Private companies will struggle with the costs.

[kiwi1960]

You guys are missing the point...

1) The company in the article is looking to help refuel probes etc, ergo, a space refuelling station.

2) The ones that will be doing the mining will be NASA and nations like China. Both have stated they want a colony on the Moon, NASA wants and additional base on Mars. Seeing as the costs of launching materials into space from Earth is the BIGGEST cost, it would make sense to mine what you needed from stuff already in space because then it becomes very cheap. The Moon has low gravity and no atmosphere, meaning, it will only a fraction of what it would cost on Earth, and also, you could reuse the ships on the Moon as they won't suffer during re-entry.

Rather than launch materials for ONE ship, you could launch it for ONE processing plant and one smelter and on fabrication plant, and use it to make as many ships as you wanted, or bases... and as much fuel as you wanted.

For example, if you COULD get it back to Earth, there is enough Nickel on the Moon to last earth 125,000 years. And there doesn't have to be any real digging, it can be strip mined, a lack of an atmosphere means all the goodies are laying on the surface as well as under it.

May be one day they can get it back to Earth, but for now, NASA and others are viewing that stuff as a way to get man onto other worlds.

[Nibb31]

NASA and China have no short term (~2030) plans to do any asteroid mining. Neither have plans for a Moon colony. NASA has explicitely ruled out any Moon landings from their exploration roadmap.

Space will never be cheap, especially when manned vehicles are involved, because it's an extreme environment where the slightest mistake can be fatal. Therefore anything that goes into space and on which people rely to stay alive, is going to be expensive. The biggest cost is not the launch, it's the design and testing of the hardware and mission material. In other words, it's the manpower that's expensive. A 100% automated factory does not exist yet so you will need workers. Lots of them actually. Maintenance, quality control, repairs, etc... can't be done 100% by robots. Manpower on Earth is cheap. Manpower in space is expensive. Paying people to do mining, construction, and maintenance work in space will always cost more than paying them to work in a factory on Earth. Therefore, for a long time, building stuff on Earth will still be cheaper that building stuff in space.

Even if we had the technology (which we don't), an orbital processing plant and a fabrication plant is going to require a lot of heavy highly automated equipment. This isn't StarCraft or C&C. That equipment will take dozens of SLS launches to put up, and lots of assembly work and testing, which means that the upfront cost will be enormous. At current prices, it simply isn't worth the investment, because there is no budget for any exploration plans that would actually benefit from such an infrastructure.

Maybe one day, in a couple of centuries, we will have a need for mass production of interplanetary cruisers and orbital colonies, but that is science fiction at this point. There will be no need or demand for such things in our lifetimes, and therefore no reason to spend trillions of dollars to set up a production infrastructure to build them.

It's one of those things for which the technology simply isn't ready. We have very little experience with asteroids, their composition, approaching with them, retrieving anything more than some dust samples. We have zero experience with building space-rated mining/extraction equipment or any sort of ISRU hardware. In general, we tend to avoid building things with moving parts because lubrication and wear are problems in space, so building a robust mining machine with many moving parts is going to require the development of lots of new technologies and experience that simply doesn't exist. You need that stuff to be reliable, self-maintaining and self-repairing. You might need materials and chemicals that don't exist yet or mining techniques that aren't proven. We simply don't know, and this sort of experience takes decades to accumulate.

We also don't know the potential amount of minerals and/or water that is available in NEOs. By available, I mean:

- Accessible with less delta-v than launching from Earth.

- Contain more easily accessible propellant than would be needed to reach them.

- Are in an orbital configuration that allows safe landing (it's hard to land on something that's tumbling around multiple axes)

Edited November 27, 2013 by Nibb31

[Scotius]

Very valid points Nibb. But when and where are we going to gather necessary experience, if we are not going to take first baby steps towards asteroid exploatation? Telescopes and probes will only take us so far. Finally someone will have to go out there and start digging holes. Consider this: mid- to long range exploration missions to NEO and further may finally create a need for small, lightweight nuclear reactors, non-chemical drives with more 'oomph' than ion engines. Better life-support systems, comfortable spacesuits, roomier capsules... Even if asteroid mining on industrial scale won't start in our lifetimes, we still might see some serious improvements to space travel methods.

[Nibb31]

Oh I don't disagree that we should be exploring, doing science, and developing technologies.

I simply don't think there is a valid business case at this point for the commercial sector to be doing it. When the demand exists and the technology is mature, it will happen, but I don't think those conditions will be met any time soon.

[kiwi1960]

We shall see. Once China decides to build a Moon base, NASA will follow suit, a move that will remind us older people of the cold war days.

By the way, Nibb, we are consuming resources at the rate of 1.5 Planet Earth's... even now, Copper is in very short supply.

As for what is on the Moon, we do know, thanks to surveys conducted by the Apollo missions. There is even a commodity NASA calls "Lunar Crude"..... hydrogen, just under the surface. This is what the majority of rockets use these days.

Edited November 27, 2013 by kiwi1960

[Nibb31]

China hasn't published anything about a Moon landing program and their hands are tied with the Tiangong program until at least 2025-2027. Beyond that, who knows what can happen... Everything changes so quickly these days that you can't really be sure of anything beyond a decade or so. For all we know, NASA might be completely defunded by then, or the US economy might not be able to sustain a manned space program at all.

Mining copper from asteroids is decades (if not centuries) away. We will have run out of it, found substitutes, or developed recycling techniques for copper way before we have the technology to economically get it from asteroids. Heck, it would be cheaper to extract the traces of copper from seawater than to get it from asteroids.

The answers to our over-consumption of resources will be found on Earth, not in space. My hope is that we invert the population growth curves and eventually decrease our resource usage to manageable levels with better recycling and better efficiency. I agree that it's our biggest problem right now and our biggest challenge. We can't simply continue to increase resource consumption at an exponential rate and hope that some future technology will save us, because that's a race that we are bound to lose.

Edited November 27, 2013 by Nibb31

[Albert VDS]

Like what SpaceX is doing, you need to get the cost of your launch vehicle down to an fordable level.

Every commercial technology starts off with a high price tag. The more it's being bought/used, the more it drops in price.

[Nibb31]

SpaceX could only exist because it has NASA as a customer, which incidentally also paid a major part of the vehicle development.

Asteroid mining has no customers and the technology that has to be developed is far more complex than a rocket engine or a launcher.

[Scotius]

Y'know, exotic spices, furs, wood etc. weren't vitally important for Europe's economy at the dawn of Age of Exploration. Society could still comfortable live without cane sugar from Carribean islands, tea, silk and porcelain from Asia, cotton from North America and so on. Yet when those things were discovered, market for such merchandise appeared and grew fast enough to be profitable. And here we are now. No one knows how future will look. What groundbreaking technology will appear in 10-20 years, or what our children will consider vitally important part of their everyday life. Going out there and checking what useable things migh be found is a better alternative than naysaying, and slowly stewing in our increasingly cramped kettle on Earth.

[Nibb31]

Ah the good old 17th Century comparison... None of that is relevant, because exploration of space is vastly different from the exploration of the world. For one, most of the places where these resources were found were actually habitable. You could set up a homestead in the Caribbean and actually breath and live off the land without relying on regular supplies or complex technology. Those luxury products were not essential, but there was actual demand for them because they were rare and they were hard to produce locally in Europe, so trade was worthwhile. None of that applies to anything we could find in space. Anything we can find on asteroids can be produced more easily, in more quantities and more cheaply here on Earth.

It makes me cringe whenever people bring up the old Far West or 17th Century colonization analogies, because they are culturally biased and none of them are applicable to space.

[NASAFanboy]

The Chinese will not be sending anyone out of Low-Earth-Orbit soon, and all they're likely to do in 2020 is to build big spacestations. NASA, on the other hand, has retained the Constellation vision for Mars (Mars base established in period between 2035-2050), but I wouldn't find much use for asteroid mining in this endevour. The only people saying they want a colony on the moon is the people who can't put a colony on the moon. All NASA will do is redirect an asteroid and take samples. Not mine it and sell the minerals on the world market.

Asteroid mining is a long way off from becoming a true commericial industry. It will be done by the 2030's, yes, I certainly believe it will-but it will be done by non-profitable missions testing technologies while bloated on government funding.

[kiwi1960]

"China is pressing forward on its human space exploration plans, intent on establishing an international space station and, experts say, harnessing the technological muscle to send its astronauts to the moon."

http://www.space.com/topics/latest-news-china-space-program/

Further...

" China is pressing forward on its human space exploration plans, intent on establishing an international space station and, experts say, harnessing the technological muscle to launch its astronauts to the moon.

Highlighting China's intent, the country is working with the United Nations to stage a major workshop on human space technology, to be held Sept. 16-20 in Beijing.

The meeting is organized jointly by the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and the China Manned Space Agency, co-organized by the International Academy of Astronautics and hosted by the China Manned Space Agency.

The five-day international workshop will bring together senior experts, professionals and decision-makers from public sectors, academia and industry worldwide. [see photos from China's Shenzhou 10 space mission]

On the agenda, the workshop aims to contribute to "establishing institutional capacity in microgravity science and enhancing international cooperation in human space exploration as a global endeavor," according to meeting documents."

http://www.space.com/22474-china-space-program-empire.html

Further to that story...

" "My top line is that the Chinese are moving ahead aggressively on a human exploration program," said Laurence Young, Apollo program professor of astronautics and professor of health sciences and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Young told SPACE.com that China is progressing toward robotic lunar exploration and eventually human moon exploration."

PLEASE... accept it, China has the will, the money and the ambitions to go to space. Only a fool doubts they will. Once they do, NASA will follow suit. Living here in New Zealand, we can already see the US and Chinese military flexing its muscles, recently, the US sent a B52 over a disputed island claimed by China, but also claimed by Japan.

The US is building new military bases in Australia, and it recently forgave us our anti nuke stance because they want us as an ally against China...

The Cold war is starting up again.... this will extend into space... just like last time.

[Albert VDS]

SpaceX could only exist because it has NASA as a customer, which incidentally also paid a major part of the vehicle development.

And your point is? It doesn't make SpaceX' goal different.

Asteroid mining has no customers and the technology that has to be developed is far more complex than a rocket engine or a launcher.

I'm not going to try an figure out away to get customers for asteroid mining or how the technology should work.

All I'm saying is that brining down the cost of a launch helps it to over come an other hurdled.

After all it makes more sense to have a reusable rocket than throwing one away each launch.

It's like scrapping your car every time you drive to a super market to get groceries.