Planetary Resources set for launch TODAY!

[Frida Space]

Planetary Resources will launch today the first-ever private space telescope! Arkyd 3 will fly to the International Space Station on a Cygnus resupply craft. Once in orbit, it will test some key technologies. If everything goes well, Planetary Resources will launch another test vehicle next year, and in 2016 it will finally launch the first of ten Arkyd 100s space telescopes, which will look for interesting asteroids. Once an asteroid is detected, an Arkyd 200 probe will visit it and assess the availability of its resources. Finally, a swarm of Arkyd 300s will visit the asteroid and mine metals, minerals and water.

What do you think of Planetary Resources and their asteroid-mining plan? I personally can't wait for them to get started!

[SuperFastJellyfish]

Planetary Resources will launch today the first-ever private space telescope! Arkyd 3 will fly to the International Space Station on a Cygnus resupply craft. Once in orbit, it will test some key technologies. If everything goes well, Planetary Resources will launch another test vehicle next year, and in 2016 it will finally launch the first of ten Arkyd 100s space telescopes, which will look for interesting asteroids. Once an asteroid is detected, an Arkyd 200 probe will visit it and assess the availability of its resources. Finally, a swarm of Arkyd 300s will visit the asteroid and mine metals, minerals and water.

What do you think of Planetary Resources and their asteroid-mining plan? I personally can't wait for them to get started!

Unless they find metallic hydrogen or some other super material, there is no real way with current launch vehicles to make an asteroid mining operation more profitable than just mining that material on Earth. I like that they are ambitious about it, but I doubt anything real comes from it except some cool telescopes in space.

[N_las]

Unless they find metallic hydrogen or some other super material, there is no real way with current launch vehicles to make an asteroid mining operation more profitable than just mining that material on Earth. I like that they are ambitious about it, but I doubt anything real comes from it except some cool telescopes in space.

Even now, just taking water from asteroids and "selling" it to customers in orbit may turn a profit. Bringing a ton of water from the surface of Earth into orbit may be less cost-efficient, than mining it from an asteroid and bringing it back to Earth orbit.

[Nibb31]

Even now, just taking water from asteroids and "selling" it to customers in orbit may turn a profit. Bringing a ton of water from the surface of Earth into orbit may be less cost-efficient, than mining it from an asteroid and bringing it back to Earth orbit.

Not when you factor in the equipment that was required to develop and launch the mining hardware or the spacecraft capable of providing the delta-v to carry tons of water from a random asteroid to a destination orbit. It will be a long time before that is cheaper than sticking 10 tons of water on something like a Cygnus or Progress.

And there is no current application that demands massive amounts of water. Even if you made massive amounts of rocket fuel out of it, there are no actual customers that are currently waiting for it.

[xenomorph555]

there are no actual customers that are currently waiting for it.

Theres also practically no customers for Musk's "50 tonne LEO" market.

[Bobnova]

Plenty of customers that would like to have an asteroid in a polar orbit with a decent retropack on it, though.

Let's not think too peacefully here, nothing beats a large mass moving quite quickly.

[Technical Ben]

Even now, just taking water from asteroids and "selling" it to customers in orbit may turn a profit. Bringing a ton of water from the surface of Earth into orbit may be less cost-efficient, than mining it from an asteroid and bringing it back to Earth orbit.

Charge £100 a bottle of water to an Astronaut and for £90 I'll send them a water recycler.

Charge £10 a bottle, and I'll send them an email telling them how to recycle their water with their current equipment.

In other words, it's not a captive market, there is competition. AFAIK ground based launchers win on the costs every time, until you scale up to 100s of stations or at least one massive Moon base.

[Streetwind]

I find it quite amusing how every thread on Planetary Resources gets immediately and predictably jumped by a selection of people who're obviously perfectly qualified to explain why it can't possibly be economically viable... and yet, there's not just one, but at least three individual commercial companies gearing up to get into the business, claiming that they can in fact make a profit.

I'm frankly content with sitting back and giving them the benefit of doubt. Nothing comes from negativity, and if just one of the three can pull it off (which by extension implies that a market grows to meet the supply), the 2020's are going to be interesting.

And if they all fail, we're probably still going to get better near Earth object detection out of it, improving our ability to predict and mitigate harmful impacts. What's not to like?

[Nibb31]

I find it quite amusing how every thread on Planetary Resources gets immediately and predictably jumped by a selection of people who're obviously perfectly qualified to explain why it can't possibly be economically viable... and yet, there's not just one, but at least three individual commercial companies gearing up to get into the business, claiming that they can in fact make a profit.

I find it quite amusing how many people jump on the bandwagon "big bucks to be made is space" and who swallow everything that companies like this have been boasting about for decades. The space industry has a long history of bold new companies that are going to revolutionize space and that disappear after a few years of Powerpoint presentations and CGI.

So until any of these "new space" companies actually make some money, yeah, I'll be taking their business plan they say with a healthy pinch of salt.

I'm frankly content with sitting back and giving them the benefit of doubt. Nothing comes from negativity, and if just one of the three can pull it off (which by extension implies that a market grows to meet the supply), the 2020's are going to be interesting.

Supply is not enough to create a market. Believe it or not, the space market is saturated. There is too much supply. The problem is that there are no customers because there is no money to be made in space. If there was a magical business model that would make space profitable, then the mega-corporations would be all over it.

[Nibb31]

Theres also practically no customers for Musk's "50 tonne LEO" market.

Very few, yes. Which is why I don't expect it to be tremendously profitable. However, it's a viable proposal based on existing hardware. It doesn't incur any huge costs if it hardly ever flies, because the hardware and infrastructure is the same as F9. The development cost is minimal and it doesn't cost them much to add it to their catalog for when an occasional customer comes along. ULA have similar proposals in their catalog that will never fly because there is no need for them.

[magnemoe]

Not when you factor in the equipment that was required to develop and launch the mining hardware or the spacecraft capable of providing the delta-v to carry tons of water from a random asteroid to a destination orbit. It will be a long time before that is cheaper than sticking 10 tons of water on something like a Cygnus or Progress.

And there is no current application that demands massive amounts of water. Even if you made massive amounts of rocket fuel out of it, there are no actual customers that are currently waiting for it.

Infrastructure for cracking to H2 and O2 and then refueling is also a large nut, simplest is probably an automated facility and an tug who docks with satellites sent to LEO and move to GEO.

Basic problem is that space business probably don't make enough demand for this to be profitable today, yes cheaper prices will increase demand who will increase scale bringing prices down. However the business has long decision cycles and lots of hardware who is purpose build so an change would be slow.

But planetary resources is not planning to go with profit with this project, they might get money for other projects and they have enough money to put in so they don't care if it take 30 years before they start making money.

[Sky_walker]

I find it quite amusing how many people jump on the bandwagon "big bucks to be made is space"

I find it quite amusing how many people jump on the bandwagon "no money can be made is space"

The space industry has a long history of bold new companies that are going to revolutionize space and that disappear after a few years of Powerpoint presentations and CGI.

I see you didn't noticed, but Planetary Resources is long past that stage.

Supply is not enough to create a market. Believe it or not, the space market is saturated. There is too much supply.

I'm slightly confused which market you're talking about but it can't possibly be a natural resources market, cause that would be stupid as..., well, never mind me.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Sky_walker

[SuperFastJellyfish]

I find it quite amusing how every thread on Planetary Resources gets immediately and predictably jumped by a selection of people who're obviously perfectly qualified to explain why it can't possibly be economically viable... and yet, there's not just one, but at least three individual commercial companies gearing up to get into the business, claiming that they can in fact make a profit.

I'm frankly content with sitting back and giving them the benefit of doubt. Nothing comes from negativity, and if just one of the three can pull it off (which by extension implies that a market grows to meet the supply), the 2020's are going to be interesting.

And if they all fail, we're probably still going to get better near Earth object detection out of it, improving our ability to predict and mitigate harmful impacts. What's not to like?

If we're talking about bringing the raw materials back to Earth to compete in established markets then just think about all the stuff that goes into mining here on Earth(massive machinery and lots of people to maintain and operate those machines). Now accelerate most of that to orbital velocity. You are already less price competitive than any Earth based mining corporation just from that alone. I don't know what qualifications you think you need to be able see that that's a failing business model.

If you're talking about keeping the materials you mine in orbit and just moving it around from one orbit to the other then you still lose because there is no one to sell your on orbit raw materials to. There simply is no market for it so there again, failing business model.

Edit: Barring a revolution in launch vehicles, a government will have to be the first to set up the infrastructure and get the kinks worked out before a company could make a profit off of mining asteroids.

Edited October 27, 2014 by SuperFastJellyfish

[Sky_walker]

If we're talking about bringing the raw materials back to Earth to compete in established markets then just think about all the stuff that goes into mining here on Earth(massive machinery and lots of people to maintain and operate those machines). Now accelerate most of that to orbital velocity. You are already less price competitive than any Earth based mining corporation just from that alone. I don't know what qualifications you think you need to be able see that that's a failing business model.

That's not how it works.

Massive machinery, lots of people, all this stuff is necessary because of how difficult it is to extract certain resources. In space you have no gravity, no pressure, no heat, no water flooding your mines, no gravity collapsing them, no methane threatening with explosions or fires, etc. - all of this makes machinery much lighter, easier, simpler and by this: cheaper.

Besides - noone is going to extract iron in space. We're talking here about resources that are in a limited supply or resources that are important for strategical reasons. These are, obviously, difficult to find, but once found - they will be worth the effort of - basically - sending a small, automated mine into space.

[Technical Ben]

I find it quite amusing how every thread on Planetary Resources gets immediately and predictably jumped by a selection of people who're obviously perfectly qualified to explain why it can't possibly be economically viable... and yet, there's not just one, but at least three individual commercial companies gearing up to get into the business, claiming that they can in fact make a profit.

I'm frankly content with sitting back and giving them the benefit of doubt. Nothing comes from negativity, and if just one of the three can pull it off (which by extension implies that a market grows to meet the supply), the 2020's are going to be interesting.

And if they all fail, we're probably still going to get better near Earth object detection out of it, improving our ability to predict and mitigate harmful impacts. What's not to like?

There are more than 3 companies right now offering "unlimited power sources" if your (or I or anyone) is willing to invest in them. I'd not suggest anyone do so. A company offering a service, is no guarantee that service exists (see betting to loose on the stock market as a good example of why).

Space is just as hard. You loose gravity, but gain a vacuum. You loose deep (relatively) drilling and gain massive distances and no gravity (yep, both a benefit and a draw back!) to anchor your drill/furnace to.

Supply is not enough. There are materials on earth in massive supply, that are either not demanded, or too "cheap" to bother spending money on extraction. See bauxite and Titanium for wobbles in market pricing and how it can change demand/infrastructure etc. For example, Titanium is quiet a plentiful material. It's in large demand (we want to build cars out of it). But it costs a lot to process, so is a high price, despite being "abundant".

So even a asteroid of gold or titanium, may be of no use, as even on the earth, materials already reach an economic limit and get left alone being "too expensive to mine/process".

That's not how it works.

Massive machinery, lots of people, all this stuff is necessary because of how difficult it is to extract certain resources. In space you have no gravity, no pressure, no heat, no water flooding your mines, no gravity collapsing them, no methane threatening with explosions or fires, etc. - all of this makes machinery much lighter, easier, simpler and by this: cheaper.

We would need proof of this. I've not seen any apart from Lunar excavation (very different than asteroids).

Edited October 27, 2014 by Technical Ben

[Sky_walker]

We would need proof of this. I've not seen any apart from Lunar excavation (very different than asteroids).

Planetary Resources wants to mine specifically asteroids, not the moon.

Look up their website: http://www.planetaryresources.com/mission/

[shynung]

I'm slightly confused which market you're talking about but it can't possibly be a natural resources market, cause that would be stupid as..., well, never mind me.

As of today, the only spacecraft that's being constantly resupplied is the ISS (Even then, they don't currently need things like nuggets of platinum or the like). The other possible customers are space telescopes like Hubble, which occasionally needs repairs.

Also, no matter how easy the processing is in the absence of gravity (or practically any other troublesome earthly conditions), even if the machines doing them is much lighter than their earth-bound contemporaries, it's still be quite heavy to be lifted out into orbit. To put it simply, one does not use solar panels designed for GEO comsats to mine asteroids. Anything powering the beast would have significant mass on its own. All that would translate to high launch costs, even before considering that they have to get to escape velocity to get to the prospective asteroids, for none of the rocks have stable orbits near the earth.

It's not impossible that the final profit of the extracted resources would be big enough to sustain a company, but it's hard to see anything indicating that condition from here. I'd look at PR's mission report before claiming anything silly.

[Mazon Del]

In general, mining materials in orbit and bringing them down to Earth at this time is not exceedingly cost effective. There are a few markets that because of the silly situation the world finds itself in, it would work, be quickly trumped, and then eventually become king again on. The main example is rare earth metals. Right now with China's death grip on them, if they gained the capacity to bring down several tons of it every couple weeks, they'd make a pretty penny. The end result is that China then further saturates the market to keep PR and whatnot from being profitable. Eventually though (like 20-30+ years down the road assuming they expand their retrieval infrastructure) the sheer output that could be produced from an asteroid in a near Earth orbit would result in prices low enough that it just isn't worth paying people to mine it on the Earth.

Do not forget that though the initial costs of putting up further systems (orbital foundries and factories) would be ridiculously expensive (still doable though), it then will effectively drop the cost of a return vehicle to zero. Once they have the system up and running, they no longer need to ship up the return craft, they just forge a bullet of iron, fill it with the REM of their choice, slap on some orbital-produced control systems, slam it down into the ground on a cleared location (loads of legal and UN-level hurdles to do there, but solvable).

This however is mostly a moot point. What a lot of people don't quite seem to realize, is that the true worth of setting up space infrastructure is not in the dollar value on the ground, its in the resources you claim NOW. Sure, right now there isn't enough orbital infrastructure to require vast quantities of resources. Once we can build some satellites and ships in space, their price drops a lot, which is nice and will make some money, but again is not the main show. Once PR and the others have some asteroids claimed as theirs, first off that is a long term investment. They can mine those suckers for 50+ years. Secondly they can use the resources that they own 100% to construct other systems that let them go around claiming more asteroids. Even if in a UN debate it is declared that they still don't own the asteroids themselves, it will be pretty hard for someone else to start mining it if they have already enclosed the asteroid in the debris-cover (basically the semi-rigid tarp you'd put around the asteroid so that industry systems don't result in a dangerous cloud of rocky debris around you). That would require damaging property of the company, which WOULD be recognized by the UN.

Space is the long game. Think of it like colonizing North America. Europe for the most part never really gave it its due, didn't think about it for what it really was. After all, it was mostly worthless. We had a few colonies, there were a few things here and there that were kind of worth shipping back. But really there was nothing. Just think, if you were France, would you have sold all that land? That was one of the advantages of the early US, they saw what all that land was worth, what it could be turned into one day hundreds of years in the future.

Incidentally, yes there are some asteroids near enough to Earth to be worth considering, while it would be an interestingly difficult undertaking to stabilize their orbits for ease of use, it is certainly doable.

[Nibb31]

That's not how it works.

Massive machinery, lots of people, all this stuff is necessary because of how difficult it is to extract certain resources. In space you have no gravity, no pressure, no heat, no water flooding your mines, no gravity collapsing them, no methane threatening with explosions or fires, etc. - all of this makes machinery much lighter, easier, simpler and by this: cheaper.

We have it easy on Earth. In space you have radiation, MMOD, vacuum, no convection, wild thermal variations, difficulty of repairs, the need to counter any torque, and the cost of simply getting the stuff where it needs to be and keeping it there. A few things might be easier, but most of the engineering is whole lot harder. You need oversized radiators, MMOD shielding, power, special lubricants and seals that don't outgas. Everything you take for granted on Earth has to be redesigned and moved there. And the lack of gravity is actually a PITA for engineering. Have you ever tried cleaning up dust in space? Or designing a conveyor belt? Mechanical equipment is hard to design for space because lubricants don't work properly and you have to design stuff maintain itself (clean filters, reload fluids, replace used parts...)

There is a reason why space hardware is expensive. It has to be low maintenance, high reliability, and it has to work in the most extreme environment possible.

Besides - noone is going to extract iron in space. We're talking here about resources that are in a limited supply or resources that are important for strategical reasons. These are, obviously, difficult to find, but once found - they will be worth the effort of - basically - sending a small, automated mine into space.

Well, there are two paths that are usually mentioned by asteroid-mining proponents:

- Commodities that will be consumed by a large space-based infrastructure: water, propellant, construction materials.

- Stuff that is valuable enough to be brought back to Earth: gold, platinum, and other stuff.

The former might be possible if anyone needs to resupply a large space-based infrastructure, but I don't see any plans for one in the next 20 years at least.

The latter is not economically plausible. Valuable stuff is valuable because it's rare. If you flood the market with enough material to make it worthwhile, you crash the market and it is no longer valuable.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Nibb31

[Technical Ben]

Planetary Resources wants to mine specifically asteroids, not the moon.

Look up their website: http://www.planetaryresources.com/mission/

That is what I said. Mining on the Moon is easier than asteroids, but both still harder than on earth. Thus where is the proof it's "easier" to mine asteroids instead of on earth?

Edited October 27, 2014 by Technical Ben

[Mazon Del]

That is what I said. Mining on the Moon is easy in comparison. Thus where is the proof it's "easier" to mine asteroids instead of on earth?

Depending on how they approach the mining, what ends up being a bit simpler is you end up griding up the whole asteroid slowly and extracting all the useful materials out of the rock, while the rock is put aside for use as construction mass later. This is roughly equivalent to strip mining on Earth, which is the easiest form of mining but is generally outlawed due to the environmental effects. On the mining station the usual plan is to enclose the asteroid in a semi-rigid tarp so that none of the bits escape and pose navigation hazards. Nothing leaves that you don't want to leave, and when it leaves it does so in some way you intended. Barring accidents of course.

[Motokid600]

Thanks for reminding me about today's launch!

[Kryten]

Launch may be delayed because some idiot in a sailboat is right in the middle of the danger zone just out from the range.

[Javster]

Even now, just taking water from asteroids and "selling" it to customers in orbit may turn a profit. Bringing a ton of water from the surface of Earth into orbit may be less cost-efficient, than mining it from an asteroid and bringing it back to Earth orbit.

I guess you could make loads of money selling small phials of it as "asteroid water"...

[SpaceXray]

Launch was scrubbed because of some idiot in a boat.