I did think about just crashing the materials into a rural area like suggested, but there are 3 things that would be (Very?) problematic, why i would think that spacemade capsules would be more feasible. 1) the legal problems with firing tons of metal at earth would be huge i'd think.
2) retrieving the projectiles depends on your landing elipse, if its too big you might just loose your valuable goods. And you would have to melt it down again, instead of picking up a capsule, equiped with transponders and filled with refined ingots.
3) a coilgun generates thrust that needs to be canceled, so either you have a SEP firing into the opposite direction, you are burning tons of fuel or you are putting even more potential satellite-killers into orbit.
Quote3) a coilgun generates thrust that needs to be canceled, so either you have a SEP firing into the opposite direction, you are burning tons of fuel or you are putting even more potential satellite-killers into orbit. There are several ways to recoup the recoil, mechanical as well as electromagnetic. I highly doubt recoil is a significant engineering challenge for a rail gun
You propell a mass away from the asteroid, so you are generating thrust. you have to throw reaction mass into the opposite direction to cancel that thrust. The Asteroid would need Thrusters or Engines for Stationkeeping, SEP propably would be the best way to go. I wasnt talking about the transfer of that recoil from the coil/railgun to the rest of your mass (asteroid), but i do agree that that would be doable.
QuoteQuote3) a coilgun generates thrust that needs to be canceled, so either you have a SEP firing into the opposite direction, you are burning tons of fuel or you are putting even more potential satellite-killers into orbit. There are several ways to recoup the recoil, mechanical as well as electromagnetic. I highly doubt recoil is a significant engineering challenge for a rail gun You propell a mass away from the asteroid, so you are generating thrust. you have to throw reaction mass into the opposite direction to cancel that thrust. The Asteroid would need Thrusters or Engines for Stationkeeping, SEP propably would be the best way to go. I wasnt talking about the transfer of that recoil from the coil/railgun to the rest of your mass (asteroid), but i do agree that that would be doable.
Platinum is definitely the lion's share of the platinum group metals when it comes to market size. The market for platinum is much greater than the rest of the platinum group metals combined.At the current $35/gram and 150 tons per year, the global market for platinum is currently like $4.7 billion per year. That's peanuts compared to the global satellite telecomms market.
And this all ignores the fact that if you want to talk about the jewelry market, the fact that it's materials that are "FROM SPACE!!!(TM)" is something product marketing will seize upon. There is zero doubt in my mind that it would sell for a premium - the question is only how much of a premium, and how supply-sensitive the premium would be.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 04/30/2016 12:22 amPlatinum is definitely the lion's share of the platinum group metals when it comes to market size. The market for platinum is much greater than the rest of the platinum group metals combined.At the current $35/gram and 150 tons per year, the global market for platinum is currently like $4.7 billion per year. That's peanuts compared to the global satellite telecomms market.... so, the market can't grow because the resource is scarce and the market is too small to economically obtain the resource (from space)?How much the demand would grow if the price dropped to, say, $0.35/gram?
Gee, that's a good point I'd never considered. Imagine giving your spouse/significant-other a "Moon Crystal" for a ring, or some other piece of jewelry. I'm not sure how it would be authenticated or certified as non-counterfeit, but the exclusivity of such stones could make them very precious for ornaments.
One thing that is overlooked is the use of a rock crusher that pulverizes the regolith to a fairly uniform powder. Then put this powder in a box. Then vibrate the box. The powder over time will stratify based on the powder particles density just like if it was a liquid. Now the box has one side transparent/simi-transparent for detection of the stratification layers (color variations). Another side can be slowly pulled down so that a specific layer can be "swept off" into a bin. The result is that the regolith is now sorted into higher specific ore type bearing powders ready for further processing or even just simply shipment. The bottom layer would contain the PGM powder. This system could increase a specific ore bearing a specific mineral by a factor of up to 10 or more. If you create a turntable then the system could be highly automated and have a significant mass throughput without having to be very large or even complex.