What would it take for a space mission to dirrectly make a profit?

[jfull]

I don't mean scientifically profitable, I mean bringing back enough valuable materials to offset the cost of the mission.

I recall someone saying in some science program I watched a while ago saying, essentially "The Moon has rich deposits of Titanium, concentrated enough that, if it were in your back yard, you'd be a very wealthy person".

I'm assuming it is in the form of Titanium Oxide.

I guess what I'm asking is, would it be feasible for, say, a Mission to the Moon (with current or near future technology) to bring back enough Titanium to turn a profit?

Also, which would be more efficient, hauling back the full weight and bulk of Titanium Oxide rocks and dust, or launching some kind of refinery to convert it to metal on the Moon, then return it?

[Fractal_UK]

Unlikely - the cost of acquiring materials in space is enormous, even if you're recovering huge supplies of (extremely expensive) precious metals which simply can't be produced in those quantities on Earth, the only way to try and achieve a profit is to return large quantities, at which point you massively distort the market price because of the quantity you just returned, that makes it harder and harder to get the needed return.

For a worthwhile economy in space, you really need the ability for fairly advanced in-situ manufacturing as well.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Fractal_UK

[rpayne88]

Unlikely - the cost of acquiring materials in space is enormous, even if you're recovering huge supplies of (extremely expensive) precious metals which simply can't be produced in those quantities on Earth, the only way to try and achieve a profit is to return large quantities, at which point you massively distort the market price because of the quantity you just returned, that makes it harder and harder to get the needed return.

For a worthwhile economy in space, you really need the ability for fairly advanced in-situ manufacturing as well.

Not quite. If you control how much Titanium enters the market and how fast it enters, you can keep the price high. Its the same thing with diamonds. They are expensive because De Beers practically controls the market and controls how many diamonds can enter the market at any time.

Getting it back to Earth, though, is expensive no matter what you do with the market.

[Traches]

Seems like getting TO space is the hard part-- coming back all you need is some guidance, enough dV to hit the atmosphere and a heat shield. I don't think boulders need parachutes... I'm not saying it would be easy, but it certainly sounds feasible to bring back enough titanium/platinum/etc. to cover the cost of the launch.

That's of course entirely based on my intuition and not at all in any kind of hard fact.

[Kryten]

Titanium Oxide is almost worthless. Titanium metal has some value, but it's because of the expensive refining process.

[Tiberion]

Moon Express: http://www.space.com/23853-moon-express-private-lunar-lander.html

They have plans for a small, single stage lander that could be launched as secondary payload on a commercial rocket like a Atlas or Falcon9 and land on the moon on its own, scoop up a parcel of the extremely valuable moon soil and then return it to Earth. They're already building the 1st vehicle, which is supposed to do a landing (only) in 2015 (Its going for the Google Lunar xprize)

So there are business plans out there, already being implemented. So many things have to go right for it to work out though. So for now, its a HIGH risk, high reward venture. Its a lot like the early days of ocean exploration, when Europeans sailed to the East to bring back exotic things. Most people thought they were crazy.

[DonLorenzo]

Bringing back stuff? not going to happen. Not until every last ounce of it is exhausted on earth at any rate. Think about it; what's going to be more expensive? Getting something from the moon, or from some backwater country or even scrapheaps? Stuff on Earth is going to win out almost every time.

Now if you can get something that someone wants to Earth orbit from another place than Earth itself.. then you're talking. Say NASA (or whichever party) is facing launch costs of X thousand $ per kilogram, but you have put an asteroid in a lunar orbit and mine water from that, which you can make available in Earth orbit for X/n thousand $ per kilogram then you stand to make a profit. All you need is to have customers that want stuff in space, and be able to provide a way to get it there that's not 'launching it from Earth'.

Bottom line: taking stuff down into Earth's gravity well is hard to make profitable. Making stuff available outside of it, that's what you want to do.

[DonLorenzo]

Unlikely - the cost of acquiring materials in space is enormous, even if you're recovering huge supplies of (extremely expensive) precious metals which simply can't be produced in those quantities on Earth, the only way to try and achieve a profit is to return large quantities, at which point you massively distort the market price because of the quantity you just returned, that makes it harder and harder to get the needed return.

For a worthwhile economy in space, you really need the ability for fairly advanced in-situ manufacturing as well.

Well, in this scenario you could grab the asteroid (full of valuable stuff), put it on a return trajectory and announce you're bringing a BAZILLION TONS of unobtanium into the Earth market. When prices crash, you buy as much as you can, then reverse the rocket and fire that asteroid of riches into the sun after which you sell the unobtanium you picked up cheap for a massive profit.

Heck, you only need convincing YouTube footage probably

As long as you have full control over the supply, you win. Whichever way around

[Seret]

I don't really think the money in space is in raw materials, it's in services. Look at the kind of thing that makes money in space at the moment: satellite observation of Earth, navigation or communications. It may be possible to do some kind of processing of materials in space that will add value (perhaps due to being done in micro-g) but I don't think the real value is in the materials themselves.

[Faark]

Btw, have we found any materials on the moon that are not available on earth at all?

[sal_vager]

Well, there's this stuff...

[Comrade Jenkens]

Getting stuff back from the moon would be a lot cheaper than sending the equipment there. I'm not sure what the best way to deorbit large quantities of ore or metal would be though.

[Ravenchant]

Profitable for industrial use, even if it's cutting-edge engineering? Almost certainly not, at least not for a long time.

An almost sure-fire way would be to collect some tiny rocks there and then count on rich braggarts who would pay heaps of money to own a piece of jewellery with a "space stone" in it. Of course, you'd be limited to a couple hundred at most, else it would lose the novelty value... but it could probably be profitable for a small-scale sample return mission. Only works once, though.

[Kryten]

Btw, have we found any materials on the moon that are not available on earth at all?

Nope. Given the Moon is effectively made out of Earth crust material, that'd be pretty much impossible.

[nhnifong]

It seems to be an unspoken assumption here that by space mission we're talking about a deep space mission, outside of the vicinity of earth. There are already plenty of profitable space missions in LEO.

Besides returning material, I think the most valuable service would simply be tourism. Put zillionaires on the moon. Because you can.

[jfull]

Besides returning material, I think the most valuable service would simply be tourism. Put zillionaires on the moon. Because you can.

There is one other way I've heard of, basically, it involves an aerospace company putting up a private space station, then renting out experiment space and crew positions to other aerospace companies or countries without substantial space programs. (obviously not to anyone dangerous though)

[Idobox]

If you find water, you can make LH2/LO2 and sell it to other space operators to refuel once in space. You could also sell moon rocks for novelty.

Nope. Given the Moon is effectively made out of Earth crust material, that'd be pretty much impossible.

The moon is not protected by either a magnetic field or an atmosphere, and doesn't have wind or a water cycle, so the top soil accumulates particles from solar wind, like He3. That being said, He3 is worthless as a fusion fuel (more difficult to fuse than D-T or even D-D and still produces neutrons) and present in tiny concentrations only.

And my favorite concept: mometum exchange tethers. They're long cable cables spinning with stuff attached at each end, and they allow to exchange momentum between two objects, for example accelerating a ship from suborbital to orbital speed by decelerating stuff that is in orbit and throwing it in the atmosphere. You could build a mass driver on the moon and launch bags of dust to a tether in LEO, they would arrive with at least 5km/s of velocity, which means a 10kg bag could boost a 50kg satellite by 1km/s

[Motokid600]

Well, there's this stuff...

This is. Helium3 is almost reason enough to perfect such a system. But you would need to process it on the moon, can it and fire it back to Earth. Meaning skimming rovers that return soil back to a central "factory". And as for a cheap way to get material back ive always imagined having the factory on the retrograde face of the moon. Then canisters just larger then scuba tanks covered in heat shielding could simply be fired straight up and fall back to earth via a magnet-gun ( rail gun? ). Meaning a lot of power.. meaning a large solar farm to accompany it. .. Maybe one day.

[SunJumper]

What about solar power? Have solar panels in space and beam it to Earth.

[Luis]

What about solar power? Have solar panels in space and beam it to Earth.

Beam it in what form? It is already beamed to us directly from the sun! It seems unlikely this would ever be cheaper than just putting solar panels in the desert, or the ocean.

[Nibb31]

He-3 from the Moon is just about the most expensive and inefficient way to do fusion. There are much cheaper and more straightforward fusion fuels.

[Ralathon]

Beam it in what form? It is already beamed to us directly from the sun! It seems unlikely this would ever be cheaper than just putting solar panels in the desert, or the ocean.

It's night on earth half the time. A satellite can be dumped into an orbit that permanently has sunlight, so you can gather at least twice the energy in space simply because of that. You also cut down on atmospheric losses and the 0G environment means you can make the solar panels ultra thin without then snapping under their own weight. All those things combined can make for a pretty viable energy source.

The problem is mainly in getting the satellites up there. Until we start mining asteroids or the moon to create a space borne production line there is no way it'll be economically viable. And i recon we have fusion energy by that time, making the whole thing obsolete.

[Psycix]

What's with the obsession with returning the materials to earth?

Metal in orbit is worth more than metal on earth.

Mine materials on the moon, and build the heavy frame and bodywork of large spacecrafts in LEO. Send up special materials, electronics, engines, equipment, etcetera from earth.

[magnemoe]

What's with the obsession with returning the materials to earth?

Metal in orbit is worth more than metal on earth.

Mine materials on the moon, and build the heavy frame and bodywork of large spacecrafts in LEO. Send up special materials, electronics, engines, equipment, etcetera from earth.

Water in LEO is expensive, another business is the LEO-GEO trip who would be far cheaper if you had an off world fuel source.

Simple bulk materials for shielding would be valuable in themselves.

Returning more than samples to earth is far off.

[Smidge204]

Titanium Oxide is almost worthless. Titanium metal has some value, but it's because of the expensive refining process.

Titanium dioxide actually has more daily applications than the raw metal. The vast majority of mined titanium is used in that form. If you want valuable materials, you want platinum group metals and their close neighbors... that's where the action is.

And water. Water is a pretty big f**kin' deal for sustained space operations.

He-3 from the Moon is just about the most expensive and inefficient way to do fusion. There are much cheaper and more straightforward fusion fuels.

Difficulty: We don't even have a nuclear fusion reactor of any kind yet, let alone a reactor that can use He3. The value of the fuel is essentially nothing until we develop something to put the fuel in.

=Smidge=