Asteroid Mining

[LordFerret]

I've heard that assertion before from fringe people and frankly, it is completely ridiculous and illogical. Many oil deposits are located in areas (oceanic crust) where the crust is young, only a few hundred million years. The oil and coal is located right int he middle of sedimentary layers of rock. How did it get there if it wasn't through biology? Oil can't melt its way up from the mantle like magma, and the high temperatures of the mantle would destroy it anyway. So either oil has a biological origin or the great Oil God simply dropped it out of the sky. This proves that it was something that was not born with this planet, but created afterward. Oil and coal are concentrated carbon, and carbon does not make up very much of this planet. The only way to concentrate it to such degree is through biological processes.

Now is it possible to create oil without biological processes? Sure. Does that ever happen in nature? I donno. Even if to does occur though, all the fossil fuels we produce here on Earth are, in fact, FOSSIL fuels. No "primordial" oil would have survived Earth's early years, and we don't find oil in old cratonic crust anyways... a gigantic hint as to where it comes from....

The current evidence supporting a biological process is inconclusive. The current theories and research being done are moving toward proving abiotic production. Explain Titan to me. Are you a patient person?... just wait for it.

[-Velocity-]

The current evidence supporting a biological process is inconclusive. The current theories and research being done are moving toward proving abiotic production. Explain Titan to me. Are you a patient person?... just wait for it.

And how did Earth's hydrocarbons get concentrated in sedimentary layers in the crust? Answer that.

Also you don't understand one of the key differences between Earth and Titan. Earth lost almost all of its volatiles (such as water, methane, etc) during its formation. Titan did not, in fact, a huge fraction of Titan IS volatiles.

So Titan is an iceball, composed largely of volatiles. So it has a lot of primordial methane and ethane, SIMPLE hydrocarbons. I don't believe there is any evidence that Titan has oil.

Earth's interior, on the other hand, is so hot these hydrocarbons cannot exist, at least in significant quantities. Volcanoes would emit massive amounts of methane if this were not the case, but instead methane is just a trace gas. So we see that the majority of all of Earth's hydrocarbons are concentrated in the crust, in sedimentary rocks dating back to a few hundred million years. So where did it come from? There is only one reasonable answer, and it's the answer that is well supported by centuries of established science and evidence.

[Beowolf]

Platinum is around $40000 per kg, so a ton, at current prices, is "only" $40 million. That's not even enough to launch a Falcon 9. The propellant to bring it back to Earth would outweigh that cost...

I respectfully disagree with this calculation. All the schemes I've heard proposed bring payload back to Earth with mass drivers firing the refining leftovers as "fuel". Reentry and landing shouldn't be all that expensive. A little foamed rock for a heatshield and you can bring down several tons of metal in a parachute-assisted desert landing pretty cheaply. As long as it doesn't hit hard enough to explode or bury itself you're good.

/just make sure you don't land long and crash into a school.

[-Velocity-]

I respectfully disagree with this calculation. All the schemes I've heard proposed bring payload back to Earth with mass drivers firing the refining leftovers as "fuel". Reentry and landing shouldn't be all that expensive. A little foamed rock for a heatshield and you can bring down several tons of metal in a parachute-assisted desert landing pretty cheaply. As long as it doesn't hit hard enough to explode or bury itself you're good.

/just make sure you don't land long and crash into a school.

Agreed. Also, fuel based on volatiles is not expensive if you can mine it in-situ. For example, I'm pretty sure we're about to find out that Ceres has a lot of ice. Ceres would have extremely low launch costs, as it has no atmosphere and very weak gravity. It could be the best fuel depot in the solar system, because it's not TOO terribly far from Earth and is likely to have easily-accessed volatiles in great abundance that can be cheaply put into orbit around the Sun. We could make a series of robotic NTR fuel ships that ferry volatiles from mining bases on Ceres to places all over the solar system. That is, if Ceres really has volatiles in abundance, and there aren't any "pesky" subsurface lifeforms there to raise contamination and ethical concerns.

[Neil1993]

The current evidence supporting a biological process is inconclusive. The current theories and research being done are moving toward proving abiotic production. Explain Titan to me. Are you a patient person?... just wait for it.

|Velocity|'s reply was correct. Methane can be created without the presence of living organisms. Oil, however, contains Alkanes, naphthenes, aromatic hydrocarbons and asphaltenes. Most of these can only be produced through biological processes followed by anaerobic decomposition (thank you to Wikipedia). Titan has none of these complex compounds in its atmosphere or on its surface (well, excluding basic hydrocarbons, of course). The fact is, there's a huge difference between liquid methane and oil.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Neil1993
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[magnemoe]

|Velocity|'s reply was correct. Methane can be created without the presence of living organisms. Oil, however, contains Alkanes, naphthenes, aromatic hydrocarbons and asphaltenes. Most of these can only be produced through biological processes followed by anaerobic decomposition (thatnk you to Wikipedia). Titan has none of these complex compounds in its atmosphere or on its surface (well, excluding basic hydrocarbons, of course). The fact is, there's a huge difference between liquid methane and oil.

Yes, I could agree that natural gas can be created non biological: ethane, methane, propane is also the stuff on Titan, not oil its far more complex.