Asteroid Mining Architectures

[redliox]

While the Moon and Mars dominate, and likely will continue to dominate, spaceflight plans, the asteroids in general may hold a place still.

Creating this thread so people can discuss asteroid mining and what routes companies, SpaceX or otherwise, could take to obtain materials for Earthly and extraterrestrial use.

My initial thoughts are these: NEOs, regolith, and (16) Psyche.

1) Near-Earth Objects/Asteroids are the inevitable firsts.  Some easy to reach, yields may vary depending on needs (rare earths v.s. water).

2) With many asteroids thick in regolith, any simple method that scoops it up could be the best initial route.  Cross Starship with Pac-Man.

3) Psyche, while not a NEO, would be a major end goal for metal-seekers, with Ceres likewise for water-seekers.  In Psyche's case it's a large concentration of metal not too heavily inclined yet far enough that any effort has to be serious.

Add your own thoughts to the above and anything regarding mining strategies.

[Coopman0]

While the Moon and Mars dominate, and likely will continue to dominate, spaceflight plans, the asteroids in general may hold a place still.

Creating this thread so people can discuss asteroid mining and what routes companies, SpaceX or otherwise, could take to obtain materials for Earthly and extraterrestrial use.

My initial thoughts are these: NEOs, regolith, and (16) Psyche.

1) Near-Earth Objects/Asteroids are the inevitable firsts.  Some easy to reach, yields may vary depending on needs (rare earths v.s. water).

2) With many asteroids thick in regolith, any simple method that scoops it up could be the best initial route.  Cross Starship with Pac-Man.

3) Psyche, while not a NEO, would be a major end goal for metal-seekers, with Ceres likewise for water-seekers.  In Psyche's case it's a large concentration of metal not too heavily inclined yet far enough that any effort has to be serious.

Add your own thoughts to the above and anything regarding mining strategies.

I definitely think that 16 Psyche will be the crown jewel of metal-mining in the asteroid belt. Ceres for water-mining somehow had not crossed my mind but absolutely now that I think about it. As for the large asteroids (bigger than 50 km in diameter), I feel like there will be some kind of regulation involved just to the size and amount of material they have.

[Eer]

So, if the topic is architecture, may we begin with a few categories by which we can distinguish alternatives?

1) Robotic missions
2) crewed missions

3) survey missions
4) mining missions (extraction on location)
5) retriever missions (relocate the entire or substantial chunk to different orbital location for harvesting)

6) refineries

Personally, I see robotic surveys, with a mix of crewed mining and retriever missions used by different commercial teams. Centralized crewed refineries.

Crewed missions will be long term assignments (1-3 years) with some spin-based gravity mechanisms to aid both extraction, refineries, and living.

[Chuck Yokota]

Discussion of mining Psyche or Ceres makes me picture someone, who wants to fill their water bottle, deciding to go to Lake Superior to fill it, because it is the largest body of fresh water on the continent. Asteroids that can fill any foreseeable need for the next few decades can be found in much more accessible orbits.

I picture a mining operation orbiting in the Asteroid Belt, having a wide selection of small asteroids accessible in similar orbits. They would choose some to move to orbit along with the mining operation, to be mined at leisure. Robotic mining machinery can be controlled in real time by operators in a habitation with spin gravity and radiation protection, and brought back as necessary for maintenance or repair.

In the scenario of profitable mining operations, a number of companies will want to have their own mining operation. I have worked out a system, where 8 mining operations equally spaced out in a circular orbit with a period of 3.2 years, would rendezvous with a cycler ship from Earth at each synodic period of 1.45 years. This would take 11 cycler ships in 2-year orbits equally spaced around Earth's orbit. These would all be in economical Hohmann transfer orbits.

[Alberto-Girardi]

Discussion of mining Psyche or Ceres makes me picture someone, who wants to fill their water bottle, deciding to go to Lake Superior to fill it, because it is the largest body of fresh water on the continent. Asteroids that can fill any foreseeable need for the next few decades can be found in much more accessible orbits.

I picture a mining operation orbiting in the Asteroid Belt, having a wide selection of small asteroids accessible in similar orbits. They would choose some to move to orbit along with the mining operation, to be mined at leisure. Robotic mining machinery can be controlled in real time by operators in a habitation with spin gravity and radiation protection, and brought back as necessary for maintenance or repair.

I agree with the first part.


I instead think that the first asteroids mined will be NEOs, between Earth's orbit and Mars's orbit. The mining vehicle could be also refueled with propellant from Mars. IMO an intersting architecture is that of TransAstra, that wants to target small aseteroids (a few meter dimension), to mine them with focused sun light.Extracting from medium size asteroids will be more difficult, so I think it will happen later. IMO a succesful economy could be started is the extraction of minerals/volatiles on these asteroids is cheaper than shipping them from eart to the Mars Colony. So the mars colony will pay for asteroid material, and they will build and launch new miners. Obviusly this is very far fetched.

[Chuck Yokota]

I agree that NEOs will be the first asteroids mined, brought to lunar or Earth orbit. This will be essential for development of the equipment and methods for resource extraction.

However, once the feasibility of asteroid mining is demonstrated, NEOs will not be an attractive choice for the asteroid mining businesses that will spring up. Between years-long wait between launch windows, the preliminary robotic missions, the process of launch, rendezvous, and capture, and the years-long return path, it would be a decade or longer before the asteroid is available for mining. Plus any malfunction along the way could end or seriously delay the mission. The businesses will not gamble on what the market and competitive situation will be a decade in advance.

A crewed mining operation in the Asteroid Belt can adjust to market conditions as foreseen a year or two in advance, and maintain production despite the inevitable malfunctions of the mining equipment.

[TrevorMonty]

I agree that NEOs will be the first asteroids mined, brought to lunar or Earth orbit. This will be essential for development of the equipment and methods for resource extraction.

However, once the feasibility of asteroid mining is demonstrated, NEOs will not be an attractive choice for the asteroid mining businesses that will spring up. Between years-long wait between launch windows, the preliminary robotic missions, the process of launch, rendezvous, and capture, and the years-long return path, it would be a decade or longer before the asteroid is available for mining. Plus any malfunction along the way could end or seriously delay the mission. The businesses will not gamble on what the market and competitive situation will be a decade in advance.

A crewed mining operation in the Asteroid Belt can adjust to market conditions as foreseen a year or two in advance, and maintain production despite the inevitable malfunctions of the mining equipment.

Cost of delivering and supporting crew at Asteriod belt would cost $Bs. For same money you coud fly dozens of robotic mining vehicles. Result would be stuff returning to earth 2-4 times a year, would also allow for odd failure. Upfront costs are lower as only need to build single vehicle to start earning money.

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[Chuck Yokota]

Cost of delivering and supporting crew at Asteriod belt would cost $Bs. For same money you coud fly dozens of robotic mining vehicles. Result would be stuff returning to earth 2-4 times a year, would also allow for odd failure. Upfront costs are lower as only need to build single vehicle to start earning money.

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You have a lot more confidence than I have about the ability of robotic missions to extract a meaningful amount of material. It is probably pointless to debate the issue now. Future missions will show which of us is more correct, and the mining enterprises will act on the experience gained.

[Twark_Main]

TransAstra seems to have the most technically feasible asteroid mining architecture out there.







Their system breaks the asteroid into tiny pieces using concentrated sunlight. By using a centrifugal separator to sort this spall by density, you could effectively create a process that's the opposite of the Iron Catastrophe (which is the reason why metals are so scarce in Earth's crust to begin with). By selecting particles with high density, you "auto-magically" select particles with high economic value.

It's a paradox that we call Earth's differentiation by density a "catastrophe," because without it we wouldn't even exist. If the Earth's crust had been as rich in iron as the asteroid belt, it would have taken too long for Earth's cyanobacteria to complete the Great Oxygenation Event (far longer than the lifespan of the Sun), which would mean no multicellular life on Earth. So really we should call it the Iron Miracle!

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

[Vultur]

  By selecting particles with high density, you "auto-magically" select particles with high economic value.

That's pretty cool!

I wonder - given how "broken up" asteroids visited by spacecraft seem to be -  what would you get if you just spin-separated an asteroid, without any further shattering?

It's a paradox that we call Earth's differentiation by density a "catastrophe,"

I think it just means "sudden dramatic change", eg "oxygen catastrophe", "ultraviolet catastrophe". The "oxygen catastrophe" seems to be called the "Great Oxygenation Event" more often now, so maybe this use of "catastrophe" is a bit obsolete?

[cdebuhr]

  By selecting particles with high density, you "auto-magically" select particles with high economic value.

That's pretty cool!

I wonder - given how "broken up" asteroids visited by spacecraft seem to be -  what would you get if you just spin-separated an asteroid, without any further shattering?

It's a paradox that we call Earth's differentiation by density a "catastrophe,"

I think it just means "sudden dramatic change", eg "oxygen catastrophe", "ultraviolet catastrophe". The "oxygen catastrophe" seems to be called the "Great Oxygenation Event" more often now, so maybe this use of "catastrophe" is a bit obsolete?

If you were extant life in the Archean the Great Oxygenation Event was ... a catastrophe.  Oh sure, we love oxygen, because we can handle it.  But it you don;t already have the bio-mechanical machinery in place to deal with it, its just awful stuff.  It's really kind of shocking just how much biochemistry goes into allowing aerobic organisms like us to survive in such a corrosive, toxic environment.  The Great Oxygenation Event (what I've always heard it called) was arguably the greatest ecological crisis the planet has ever faced.

As for the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, that doesn't refer to a change in anything.  During early theoretical work to explain the features of the black-body spectrum, there was a problem in that the early theoretical models that matched the low-energy end of the spectrum made nonsensical predictions about emissions of higher-energy radiation (i.e., ultraviolet, x-rays, ...).  The predictions were so bad that they were "a catastrophe".  The problem was solved by a truly bizarre (for the time) assumption made by Max Planck about how electromagnetic radiation was emitted.  While the assumption seemed kind of out there, it completely fixed the predicted black-body spectrum, and was later confirmed to be an accurate model of physical reality.  So was born the field of quantum mechanics.

[savantu]

Might sound crazy, but is there any way to control crash an asteroid in a desert for example ?

[Chuck Yokota]

Crash, yes. Control, no. The asteroid would hit with at least Earth's escape velocity, creating a large crater, and bury most of itself deep underground, while scattering bits of material in the surrounding area.

Consider Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. A nickel-iron asteroid 30 to 50 meters across struck there. The resulting blast was equal to a 20 to 40 megaton nuclear bomb, except without ionizing radiation. Plant and animal life was destroyed for 50 kilometers away.

Attempts to mine the material in the early 20th century failed. More mining was accomplished mid-century, mining the silica sands exposed in the crater.

Anyway, only the trace amount of precious metal would have much value on Earth. The asteroid material would be much more valuable in space, as valuable raw material.

[TrevorMonty]

Moon is covered in craters from crashed metallitic asteroids, some may contain intact cores of asteroid.

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[Chuck Yokota]

Moon is covered in craters from crashed metallitic asteroids, some may contain intact cores of asteroid.

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The asteroid cores will be buried hundreds to thousands of meters below the surface. These will be very expensive to reach. It will be more practical to gather shards blasted out during impact. Pieces of all sizes up to tons will be lying on or just under the surface.

[Slarty1080]

TransAstra seems to have the most technically feasible asteroid mining architecture out there.







Their system breaks the asteroid into tiny pieces using concentrated sunlight. By using a centrifugal separator to sort this spall by density, you could effectively create a process that's the opposite of the Iron Catastrophe (which is the reason why metals are so scarce in Earth's crust to begin with). By selecting particles with high density, you "auto-magically" select particles with high economic value.

It's a paradox that we call Earth's differentiation by density a "catastrophe," because without it we wouldn't even exist. If the Earth's crust had been as rich in iron as the asteroid belt, it would have taken too long for Earth's cyanobacteria to complete the Great Oxygenation Event (far longer than the lifespan of the Sun), which would mean no multicellular life on Earth. So really we should call it the Iron Miracle!

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Sounds like the spalling process would effectively act like froth floatation does in mining on Earth for separating minerals (but without the froth!). An interesting idea although I wonder how great the concentration of valuable minerals would be? I would be difficult to be very selective unless the particle size was very small.

[Twark_Main]

[snip]

Sounds like the spalling process would effectively act like froth floatation does in mining on Earth for separating minerals (but without the froth!). An interesting idea although I wonder how great the concentration of valuable minerals would be? I would be difficult to be very selective unless the particle size was very small.

You can get an idea of the particle size in this video (@21:57, in case the link doesn't work):



Not too small. The particle size could possibly be improved by tweaking the light intensity.

If necessary you might coax the spall through a roller mill. Perhaps a "sandwich" of two conveyor belts?

[Chuck Yokota]

Sounds like the spalling process would effectively act like froth floatation does in mining on Earth for separating minerals (but without the froth!). An interesting idea although I wonder how great the concentration of valuable minerals would be? I would be difficult to be very selective unless the particle size was very small.

TransAstra's aim is extracting volatiles from the asteroids, for water and the precursors for rocket fuel. The solid material is basically a byproduct, useful for radiation shielding. Dr. Sercel barely mentions the possibility of extracting valuable solid materials. Asteroid mining for valuable metals would target different classes of asteroids, and probably use different technologies.

[TrevorMonty]

Sounds like the spalling process would effectively act like froth floatation does in mining on Earth for separating minerals (but without the froth!). An interesting idea although I wonder how great the concentration of valuable minerals would be? I would be difficult to be very selective unless the particle size was very small.

TransAstra's aim is extracting volatiles from the asteroids, for water and the precursors for rocket fuel. The solid material is basically a byproduct, useful for radiation shielding. Dr. Sercel barely mentions the possibility of extracting valuable solid materials. Asteroid mining for valuable metals would target different classes of asteroids, and probably use different technologies.

Water is first and most import product, for without fuel for in space transport there is no way to economically harvest other materials from asteriods.

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[Alberto-Girardi]

Sounds like the spalling process would effectively act like froth floatation does in mining on Earth for separating minerals (but without the froth!). An interesting idea although I wonder how great the concentration of valuable minerals would be? I would be difficult to be very selective unless the particle size was very small.

TransAstra's aim is extracting volatiles from the asteroids, for water and the precursors for rocket fuel. The solid material is basically a byproduct, useful for radiation shielding. Dr. Sercel barely mentions the possibility of extracting valuable solid materials. Asteroid mining for valuable metals would target different classes of asteroids, and probably use different technologies.

Water is first and most import product, for without fuel for in space transport there is no way to economically harvest other materials from asteriods.

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I agree. I can see a business case of shipping water to Mars from asteroids, if mining on Mars turns out to bee to difficult to provide large aumouts needed to refuel a lot of SS. BTW, trans astra architecture is based on SS to launch the robots, so seing the SS progres is very good for them.

[Twark_Main]

Sounds like the spalling process would effectively act like froth floatation does in mining on Earth for separating minerals (but without the froth!). An interesting idea although I wonder how great the concentration of valuable minerals would be? I would be difficult to be very selective unless the particle size was very small.

TransAstra's aim is extracting volatiles from the asteroids, for water and the precursors for rocket fuel. The solid material is basically a byproduct, useful for radiation shielding. Dr. Sercel barely mentions the possibility of extracting valuable solid materials. Asteroid mining for valuable metals would target different classes of asteroids, and probably use different technologies.

I bring it up because TransAstra has mentioned using optical mining to dig regolith, too. A "rubble pile" asteroid could have significant inclusions of M-Type asteroidal material.

[punder]

There is a new book about asteroid mining

https://www.amazon.com/Asteroids-Greed-Determine-Future-Space/dp/030023192X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1623972120&sr=8-1

[Twark_Main]

There is a new book about asteroid mining


https:// www. amazon. com/Asteroids-Greed-Determine-Future-Space/dp/030023192X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1623972120&sr=8-1

Very cool!

Clean URL: https://www.amazon.com/Asteroids-Greed-Determine-Future-Space/dp/030023192X/

[Robert Thompson]

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-07-21/californias-electric-car-revolution-designed-to-save-the-planet-inflicts-a-big-toll-on-it

It has always seemed to me that the ocean floor is a Rubicon. Yes, obviously, it is less expense to extract manganese nodules from thousands of feet under water than to extract equal mass of manganese and critical elements from an asteroid.

The price we shall have to wait to see, to do the presently less expensive thing, is a price that cannot be reversed once it is seen.

[high road]

That depends on the scale. Good monitoring practices and reparation measures are necessary, and they need to be enforced.

[LMT]

the first asteroids mined will be NEOs

I agree that NEOs will be the first asteroids mined

If Mars perihelion were just 0.08 AU lower, its meteorites, such as Lebanon, would join your NEO list, in a manner of speaking.

So just within this thread, truncate Mars perihelion to 1.3 AU, and refresh your NEO list.

How could that simplify or otherwise improve the "NEO" mining architecture?

[TrevorMonty]

There are two trojan asteroids at L4, latest is 1.2km C type. The DV to L4 is 4.1km/s same as LLO so they relatively  easy to get to. Most important in stable location which makes mining a bit easier.  Like to be few more there waiting to be discovered.

https://www.space.com/earth-extra-moon-trojan-asteroid-2020-xl5-discovery

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[txgho]

Before the mining begins I would expect a distribution of exploration ships with cameras blistered around the hull.
Along the lines of sending a observatory telescope SS to the L4&L5 points of several planets to visually and otherwise prospect any orbital bodies. Also would benefit discovery of other NEO not bound to a Lagrange point.

Expectations would need to be solid and defined. Water being the most valuable commodity would have the highest priority. Heavy metals and other malleable materials would be needed for further development. Export of space born material to Earth would be defeating the purpose of space development.
1. Water
2. Iron
3. Copper
4. Rare earth elements used in the IC industry
5. Silicates used in electronics and optics
6. Other metals used in refining iron to steel and other derivatives.
7. Construction material for walls/insulation against radiation

Industry in space is call for the raw/intermediate materials :
1. Steel
2. Insulating material
3. Solar panels
4. Electronics for monitoring/control

Successful mining in space is going to have people at the core. Mission duration for such will more than 2-3 years. Minimum may be more on the order of 5 or 10 year commitments.

More likely a spaceborn mining colony would be the most productive and inclined for success.
A colony or if you like Mining Expedition starting with 20 to 50 SS tied in a number of parallels rings rotating for a significant percent of 1G. A number of young family units in the crewed SS. In addition to the cargo SS bulk rolls of steel could be attached for developing the station be that sheathing tubes between and building a station around the framework of the rings.

As a station is building and mining ops are started SS thrust sections can be canabolized for the ring structure as a whole. Mining ops would need a storage for all materials of utility. Whole SS could be used for bulk materials before they would be smelted into intermediate states. Again all possible materials of utility would have to be stored/refined and eventually used in some purpose.

A growing station at Jupiter's L4 or L5 could then build their own 10s of thousands square meter field of solar paneling and even much more as materials provide.   With growing power an artificial magnetic field could be engineered around the colony or before the Sun to deflect normal radiation levels as well as surges that accompany CMEs.

[TrevorMonty]

Initially it might just be case of unmanned equipment extracting water and use that to send raw material back EML1 for processing. DV between L4 and EML1 is low. EML1 processing facility can be manned or robotic.



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[JohnFornaro]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

[JohnFornaro]

I can see a business case of shipping water to Mars from asteroids, if mining on Mars turns out to bee to difficult to provide large aumouts needed to refuel a lot of SS. BTW, trans astra architecture is based on SS to launch the robots, so seing the SS progres is very good for them.

And speaking of water and Ceres,  If Ceres is 50% dihydrogen monoxide, and if all of that chemical were beamed down, or hosed down to Mars, what would happpen to the orbital characteristics of Mars and its moons? 

At what point do mass changes in the Solar System have macro effects?

[JohnFornaro]

More likely a spaceborn mining colony would be the most productive and inclined for success.
A colony or if you like Mining Expedition starting with 20 to 50 SS tied in a number of parallels rings rotating for a significant percent of 1G. A number of young family units in the crewed SS. In addition to the cargo SS bulk rolls of steel could be attached for developing the station be that sheathing tubes between and building a station around the framework of the rings.

As a station is building and mining ops are started SS thrust sections can be canabolized for the ring structure as a whole. Mining ops would need a storage for all materials of utility. Whole SS could be used for bulk materials before they would be smelted into intermediate states. Again all possible materials of utility would have to be stored/refined and eventually used in some purpose.

A growing station at Jupiter's L4 or L5 could then build their own 10s of thousands square meter field of solar paneling and even much more as materials provide.   With growing power an artificial magnetic field could be engineered around the colony or before the Sun to deflect normal radiation levels as well as surges that accompany CMEs.

I reccomend a diameter of 1K yards, and a rotation of 1RPM, resulting in 1 Gee artificial gravity.  The ring station would be a clock as well as a preventer of micro-Gee mitochondrial anomalies, as well as a comforting reminder of home.   The ring station grows perpendicular to the plane of rotation, eventually resulting in an O'Neil structure.

[cdebuhr]

I can see a business case of shipping water to Mars from asteroids, if mining on Mars turns out to bee to difficult to provide large aumouts needed to refuel a lot of SS. BTW, trans astra architecture is based on SS to launch the robots, so seing the SS progres is very good for them.

And speaking of water and Ceres,  If Ceres is 50% dihydrogen monoxide, and if all of that chemical were beamed down, or hosed down to Mars, what would happpen to the orbital characteristics of Mars and its moons? 

At what point do mass changes in the Solar System have macro effects?

Something like 99.8% of the mass in the solar system is in the sun.  About 70% of whats left is in Jupiter, and most of whats left over after that is in Saturn.  The left overs after that will be overwhelmingly dominated by Uranus and Neptune, and finally we've got the rocky planets ... roughly 50% Earth, 40% Venus, then Mars and Mercury.  When we're talking about things like moving asteroids around, that won't even be a rounding error.  The mass of everything in the main belt put together is utterly dwarfed by Earths moon.   Moving asteroids around will have no significant effects whatsoever on the overall orbital/mass structure of the system.  You'd literally need to be moving the major planets around to do that.

[TrevorMonty]

More likely a spaceborn mining colony would be the most productive and inclined for success.
A colony or if you like Mining Expedition starting with 20 to 50 SS tied in a number of parallels rings rotating for a significant percent of 1G. A number of young family units in the crewed SS. In addition to the cargo SS bulk rolls of steel could be attached for developing the station be that sheathing tubes between and building a station around the framework of the rings.

As a station is building and mining ops are started SS thrust sections can be canabolized for the ring structure as a whole. Mining ops would need a storage for all materials of utility. Whole SS could be used for bulk materials before they would be smelted into intermediate states. Again all possible materials of utility would have to be stored/refined and eventually used in some purpose.

A growing station at Jupiter's L4 or L5 could then build their own 10s of thousands square meter field of solar paneling and even much more as materials provide.   With growing power an artificial magnetic field could be engineered around the colony or before the Sun to deflect normal radiation levels as well as surges that accompany CMEs.

I reccomend a diameter of 1K yards, and a rotation of 1RPM, resulting in 1 Gee artificial gravity.  The ring station would be a clock as well as a preventer of micro-Gee mitochondrial anomalies, as well as a comforting reminder of home.   The ring station grows perpendicular to the plane of rotation, eventually resulting in an O'Neil structure.

SpaceX are banking on 1/3G being OK for Mars colony so may as well us that, which allows for lot smaller diameter.

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[Michael S]

I can see a business case of shipping water to Mars from asteroids, if mining on Mars turns out to bee to difficult to provide large aumouts needed to refuel a lot of SS. BTW, trans astra architecture is based on SS to launch the robots, so seing the SS progres is very good for them.

And speaking of water and Ceres,  If Ceres is 50% dihydrogen monoxide, and if all of that chemical were beamed down, or hosed down to Mars, what would happpen to the orbital characteristics of Mars and its moons? 

At what point do mass changes in the Solar System have macro effects?

That question is more likely designed for Isaac Arthur.  It would take hundreds of billions of tonnes of mass to increase Mars’ mass by .0001%. And that is an understatement.
As for macro effects on the Solar System, a 1% increase in planetary mass would start to be noticeable, but the gathering of available resources in the system and relocating them to Mars would probably have a more noticeable effect.

[Twark_Main]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

No $100,000,000,000,000,000 payday huh? Sounds like somebody hates growth and jobs. Gettim boys!

[Twark_Main]

More likely a spaceborn mining colony would be the most productive and inclined for success.
A colony or if you like Mining Expedition starting with 20 to 50 SS tied in a number of parallels rings rotating for a significant percent of 1G. A number of young family units in the crewed SS. In addition to the cargo SS bulk rolls of steel could be attached for developing the station be that sheathing tubes between and building a station around the framework of the rings.

As a station is building and mining ops are started SS thrust sections can be canabolized for the ring structure as a whole. Mining ops would need a storage for all materials of utility. Whole SS could be used for bulk materials before they would be smelted into intermediate states. Again all possible materials of utility would have to be stored/refined and eventually used in some purpose.

A growing station at Jupiter's L4 or L5 could then build their own 10s of thousands square meter field of solar paneling and even much more as materials provide.   With growing power an artificial magnetic field could be engineered around the colony or before the Sun to deflect normal radiation levels as well as surges that accompany CMEs.

I reccomend a diameter of 1K yards, and a rotation of 1RPM, resulting in 1 Gee artificial gravity.  The ring station would be a clock as well as a preventer of micro-Gee mitochondrial anomalies, as well as a comforting reminder of home.   The ring station grows perpendicular to the plane of rotation, eventually resulting in an O'Neil structure.

Anyone can "recommend' until they're blue in the face, but the real challenge (especially given such a luxurious and, dare I say, cost-maximized design) will be selling your pitch deck to investors.

[DanClemmensen]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

No $100,000,000,000,000,000 payday huh? Sounds like somebody hates growth and jobs. Gettim boys!

Sigh. The iron is not very valuable on Earth, not worth sending down to the surface. Keep it in space and use it to build rockets, spacecraft, structures, etc. Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.

[Twark_Main]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

No $100,000,000,000,000,000 payday huh? Sounds like somebody hates growth and jobs. Gettim boys!

Sigh. The iron is not very valuable on Earth, not worth sending down to the surface. Keep it in space and use it to build rockets, spacecraft, structures, etc. Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.

The price calculation is based on the spot metal value on Earth.

Point being, it's an absurd calculation on a number of levels.

"Keep it in space" is a good quip, but it's begging the biggest unsolved question in spaceflight economics. It's still an open question whether it can ever be economical to live your entire life in space.



All you've done is replace one hard problem (asteroid mining economics) with an even harder problem (space habitation economics).

[txgho]

The biggest obstacles of human being is dying and preservation of the human species.
All the eggs are in one basket.
Biggest hurdle to disperse from the basket would be getting the eggs out of the basket.

The sooner the eggs get more even miniscule small and precarious baskets built the sooner said eggs can build the bigger more robust baskets to assist the further unloading the big basket.   

For so many of the viable and creative ideas that humanity is capable of the missing lynk to further insurance to humanity's survival is to generate the momentum in moving to space. Eggs gotta get crackin (Kraken) .

How much nuclear fuel may be found in Psyche to be used as fuel for power. 
Mining expedition staff for the metallic asteroid should be called Reevers.

[DanClemmensen]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

No $100,000,000,000,000,000 payday huh? Sounds like somebody hates growth and jobs. Gettim boys!

Sigh. The iron is not very valuable on Earth, not worth sending down to the surface. Keep it in space and use it to build rockets, spacecraft, structures, etc. Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.

The price calculation is based on the spot metal value on Earth.

Point being, it's an absurd calculation on a number of levels.

"Keep it in space" is a good quip, but it's begging the biggest unsolved question in spaceflight economics. It's still an open question whether it can ever be economical to live your entire life in space.



All you've done is replace one hard problem (asteroid mining economics) with an even harder problem (space habitation economics).

I guess you missed the implicit tags, so here:
<sardonic>
    Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.
</sardonic>

[Twark_Main]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

No $100,000,000,000,000,000 payday huh? Sounds like somebody hates growth and jobs. Gettim boys!

Sigh. The iron is not very valuable on Earth, not worth sending down to the surface. Keep it in space and use it to build rockets, spacecraft, structures, etc. Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.

The price calculation is based on the spot metal value on Earth.

Point being, it's an absurd calculation on a number of levels.

"Keep it in space" is a good quip, but it's begging the biggest unsolved question in spaceflight economics. It's still an open question whether it can ever be economical to live your entire life in space.



All you've done is replace one hard problem (asteroid mining economics) with an even harder problem (space habitation economics).

I guess you missed the implicit tags, so here:
<sardonic>
    Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.
</sardonic>

The part you missed is that, in that calculation, "the stuff that is valuable on Earth" is the iron.

For obvious reasons, you can't separate the iron from the iron. 

[meekGee]

Fun fact: if we brought 16 Psyche's infamous "100 quadrillion dollars worth of metals" back to Earth, that'd be enough iron to completely consume all the free oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

Fun Fact? Somebody don't do something!

No $100,000,000,000,000,000 payday huh? Sounds like somebody hates growth and jobs. Gettim boys!

Sigh. The iron is not very valuable on Earth, not worth sending down to the surface. Keep it in space and use it to build rockets, spacecraft, structures, etc. Separate out the stuff that is valuable on Earth and send it down, completely destroying nearly the entire mining industry and the financial structure instead of destroying life by consuming the oxygen.

The price calculation is based on the spot metal value on Earth.

Point being, it's an absurd calculation on a number of levels.

"Keep it in space" is a good quip, but it's begging the biggest unsolved question in spaceflight economics. It's still an open question whether it can ever be economical to live your entire life in space.



All you've done is replace one hard problem (asteroid mining economics) with an even harder problem (space habitation economics).

Not sure which is harder... 

I think both are interdependent, so the iron will stay in space.  How to bootstrap this in-space economic cycle is currently unsolved, but I don't think it'll be by shipping iron down to Earth.

[mikelepage]

While the Moon and Mars dominate, and likely will continue to dominate, spaceflight plans, the asteroids in general may hold a place still.

Creating this thread so people can discuss asteroid mining and what routes companies, SpaceX or otherwise, could take to obtain materials for Earthly and extraterrestrial use.
(snip)
Add your own thoughts to the above and anything regarding mining strategies.

I never know quite how to answer these questions simply. My thinking below has evolved over a number of years, with more owed to conversations on the NSF forum than could ever be reflected in citations. It's about time I wrote it down. My preferred "asteroid mining architecture" is intrinsic to, but inseparable from what I see as a broader space settlement strategy.

I would argue - for reasons beyond the scope of this thread - that it's a mistake to conceive of technology growth as inevitably exponential: I think it's more realistic to see the progress of the last two centuries, and this one, as representing more of a sigmoid step function, driven by the excess energy of the fossil fuel boom and hopefully landing on a high technology, sustainable/low growth society. For my purposes here, my aim is for anything that I'd propose to be possible with today's technology, or at least that which is conceivable in the next couple of decades or so, and feasibly built by limited, vertically integrated organisations of (say <10k) people. So Starship? yes. Small space based nuclear power? yes. Autonomous robot swarms? yes. Fusion and antimatter drives? no. Space elevators? no.   

Context:
The Earth-Moon system will remain the centre of activity, and Mars is clearly the destination with the most momentum at the moment. Any conversation about asteroid mining has to take place in that context, but orbital mechanics sets the rules. Will mined materials be returned to Earth or sent to Mars? Not unless they're very low mass and/or precious, or unless the delta V to move the materials is otherwise small. These conditions create a strong preference for choosing asteroids that can be maneuvered onto regular close approaches with Earth or Mars.

First takeaway: The mining architecture should have as its bi-product a way to maneuver the host asteroid - doesn't have to be by much, relatively speaking, we're talking "station-keeping" delta V for small mountains. There will be an incentive to select asteroids which are in orbits that are close to a regular ratio with Earth or Mars (say 2:3, 3:4, 3:5, 2:7, etc) so that they can be maneuvered to an orbit such close approaches occur regularly. This probably puts a reasonably small upper-size-limit on the asteroids that can be viably mined for profit on Earth-based or Mars-based markets.

My second takeaway is something you really can't escape after playing with the NASA trajectory browser for any length of time, is just how long it takes to get most places.  The radiation issue from GCRs and CMEs is not going to go away, and we can't have people maxing out their lifetime radiation exposures after just 3-5 years in space if we're serious about settling the solar system. While Starship looks like it will be a great vehicle for moving cargo to Mars and elsewhere, and for moving humans up and out of/down and into a gravity well/atmosphere, the realities of interplanetary passenger transport on Starship (needing fast transits) is incredibly limiting to where you can go. Something much bigger, and with much better passive shielding will be preferred to do the transporting of significant numbers of "settlers" to Mars or anywhere else.

I think the plan for at least some of the asteroids being mined - particularly those that are both Earth and Mars crossers and could be maneuvered into Mars-cycler trajectories - should be to become something like tourist towns: mostly unoccupied for large stretches of time (likely years at a time), followed by periods of intense activity during key transit windows.

Spin gravity is also something I think is fairly obvious to integrate into such a scenario - to make it worth the delta V to rendezvous with the cycler asteroid. More on how that fits in below

Notional Plan:
So, what architecture can we use to mine asteroids which also has asteroid redirection as a bi-product? We will eventually use solar sails and mag sails, but for even moderate sized asteroids these sails will have to be huge. What's the first step? Asteroids already alter their trajectories out of strictly Keplerian orbits through the Yarkovsky effect as they spin. If we could modify the spin rate of these asteroids even slightly, we could change the average direction of this existing propulsive effect, and start to actively steer the asteroid towards the desired orbits where we can deliver the materials that are mined.

In a previous thread on spin-gravity, it was proposed that human habitat modules - exactly like train cars - could run inside a circular (toroidal) tunnel, on tracks that curve over on themselves, all shielded from radiation within the asteroid. This habitat tunnel torus is oriented on the same axis as the spin axis of the asteroid and uses the asteroid itself as the reaction mass. The habitat train could be built up over time as more modules are delivered, eventually connecting the train nose to tail - with that connection providing tensile strength sufficient to allow the train to climb to full speed (for 1xG or as high as possible). 

So to repeat: the idea here is to mine the asteroid in such a way that digging the tunnel creates space for the habitat, which itself becomes the momentum wheel for the asteroid. Digging the tunnel is how the mined materials are acquired, and digging it as a torus is what allows the asteroid to be steered into a more desirable orbit over time, so that those materials can be sold to Earth/Mars markets.

The tunnel itself would be the most complex part of the construction, since most asteroids are rubble piles and the tunnel has to have both strength and rigidity for this to work, but there's upside if you combine this tunnel construction effort with asteroid mining: Most of the mined material is not going to be of value - there will be plenty of waste regolith that you're spending energy to move anyway - so combine the regolith with a polymer substrate to make bricks of a substance very similar to concrete (has already been done with Lunar regolith).

Step 1) An autonomous tunnelling machine + solar array/power craft to arrive at the asteroid. I envisage this as a pair of craft, connected by a detachable power umbilical.
Step 2) After the asteroid has been characterised, the pair take a circuit around the outside of the asteroid, where the tunnelling machine makes a number of radial bore holes down to the planned tunnel "depth".
Step 3) The tunnelling machine then creates the toroidal tunnel itself, harvesting water and other elements of value, reinforcing the walls of the tunnel with "regocrete" bricks, all while detaching and reattaching the power umbilical as necessary.
Step 4) Humans arrive with extra equipment to add value to the mined materials and reinforce the tunnels, since the "regocrete" would need bolstering by steel cables. Effectively the entire structure is a suspension bridge wrapped over on itself, so you would have some cables going through the centre of the asteroid too.
Step 5) Human habitat modules - hosting the crew doing the work - are moved into the tunnel itself.
Step 6) Train tests, at low speed, for low G. The habitat modules are probably already part of a spin-G habitat, so they are already designed to be part of a spin G station.
Step 7) Even whilst all this is going on, the tunnelling machine can be starting on the second tunnel and continuing to mine out more materials. Eventually you've mined out a substantial part of the core of an asteroid, and replaced it with multiple "train-car" habitat rings.

One of the interesting things about this concept I think, is that - if you pick an asteroid spinning slowly enough to start with - you eventually reach a point where you have full pointing control of the entire asteroid. At that point you really can start erecting megastructures like telescopes, solar sails, or mag sails.

Takeaway 3: There is an incentive to harvest asteroids with low spin rates.

Takeaway 4: We already know how to build high-speed trains, and train tunnels. If you suppose that the train cars are eventually able to move at fast-train speeds to produce 1xG, you end up at ~50m/s or around 180 kph, for a toroidal habitat 500m in diameter. (NB: there are a bit over 300 NEO asteroids with diameters 500m-1km)

Takeaway 5: If you suppose the modules have internal diameters of 6m (for transport in Starship), this 1570m circumference gives you at least one hectare of farmable area on a single habitat ring. A rule of thumb I learnt a while back is that one hectare, farmed with high productivity aquaponics/permaculture gives you about enough food to feed 60 people on an ongoing basis.

Takeaway 6: The end-state of this asteroid "mining" project, lets say with a dozen habitat rings, is that you've created a more-or-less self-sufficient settlement for 720 people, which is capable of self-pointing and hosting large megastructures on its surface. If, in centuries to come, fusion reactors and large-scale mag-sails like Wind Rider become feasible... it becomes a ready-made generation ship capable of interstellar travel.

Just to finish off this line of thinking, it should be clear that what I'm aiming for here is a program of a similar magnitude to Elon's Musk's city of 1 million people on Mars, except in this case it's tens of thousands of small asteroids being settled, each with several dozen people operating the machines that are building these habitat rings, and the "trains" that run within them. I personally think it's actually a better outcome, because these habitats provide Earth surface-level radiation shielding, they provide a healthy 1xG, and the people working on them also get the chance to work on the asteroid constructs that could eventually go to the stars. I'd like to see a program where the tunnel-building robots, and their human crews, are leaving the Earth-Moon system by the dozen, every week in the 2040's for a tour of a decade or two, before returning home to retire. I hope you found this vision compelling, and cheers for reading to the end.

[LMT]

The Earth-Moon system will remain the centre of activity, and Mars is clearly the destination with the most momentum at the moment. Any conversation about asteroid mining has to take place in that context, but orbital mechanics sets the rules. Will mined materials be returned to Earth or sent to Mars? Not unless they're very low mass and/or precious, or unless the delta V to move the materials is otherwise small. These conditions create a strong preference for choosing asteroids that can be maneuvered onto regular close approaches with Earth or Mars.

First takeaway: The mining architecture should have as its bi-product a way to maneuver the host asteroid - doesn't have to be by much, relatively speaking, we're talking "station-keeping" delta V for small mountains. There will be an incentive to select asteroids which are in orbits that are close to a regular ratio with Earth or Mars (say 2:3, 3:4, 3:5, 2:7, etc) so that they can be maneuvered to an orbit such close approaches occur regularly. This probably puts a reasonably small upper-size-limit on the asteroids that can be viably mined for profit on Earth-based or Mars-based markets.

What's a "close approach" here, and what's "small delta-v" here?

[TrevorMonty]

What's a "close approach" here, and what's "small delta-v" here?

Most of bulk ISRU metals and water would end up in CIS lunar space which means round trip from eg EML1 for closer ones is 2-4km/s.
In most cases the return trip should be fuelled from Asteriod water so only 1-2km/s to transport bulk materials to CIS lunar space.

At these low DV ranges simple low ISP water fuelled thrusters become viable.

[LMT]

What's a "close approach" here, and what's "small delta-v" here?

Most of bulk ISRU metals and water would end up in CIS lunar space which means round trip from eg EML1 for closer ones is 2-4km/s.
In most cases the return trip should be fuelled from Asteriod water so only 1-2km/s to transport bulk materials to CIS lunar space.

At these low DV ranges simple low ISP water fuelled thrusters become viable.

Delta-v from a given metal NEA orbit to EML1 would almost certainly be far greater.  Likewise, outbound.  Metal NEA choices are few:  two are noted below, with orbits shown.  Ballpark relative speeds at closest possible approach.

Metal NEAs seem rather dry thus far.  See 6178 (1986 DA) and 2016 ED85.  Even a carbonaceous NEA, Ryugu, proved dry.  Water is more abundant out in the asteroid belt.

[libra]

It is still there and running, and watching it is kind of hypnotic.

https://www.asterank.com/

I LOVE playing and toying with that thing.

Mandatory soundtrack:

 

[floss]

First decent design for asteroid mining.

[mikelepage]

The Earth-Moon system will remain the centre of activity, and Mars is clearly the destination with the most momentum at the moment. Any conversation about asteroid mining has to take place in that context, but orbital mechanics sets the rules. Will mined materials be returned to Earth or sent to Mars? Not unless they're very low mass and/or precious, or unless the delta V to move the materials is otherwise small. These conditions create a strong preference for choosing asteroids that can be maneuvered onto regular close approaches with Earth or Mars.

First takeaway: The mining architecture should have as its bi-product a way to maneuver the host asteroid - doesn't have to be by much, relatively speaking, we're talking "station-keeping" delta V for small mountains. There will be an incentive to select asteroids which are in orbits that are close to a regular ratio with Earth or Mars (say 2:3, 3:4, 3:5, 2:7, etc) so that they can be maneuvered to an orbit such close approaches occur regularly. This probably puts a reasonably small upper-size-limit on the asteroids that can be viably mined for profit on Earth-based or Mars-based markets.

What's a "close approach" here, and what's "small delta-v" here?

Obviously there are many variables in the trade space, but assumptions are 1) the payload leaves the asteroid at ~50m/s (since that's how fast the "ring train" is moving - tow it behind the train, then eject the same way as "spin launch"), 2) have it aerocapture on the planet end, 3) eject the payload six months before close approach.

Given those assumptions, a close approach of ~2 Lunar Distances should be plenty close enough, although you could increase it somewhat by expending a small amount of thruster propellant to speed the payload on its way and fine tune the trajectory en route. Also, it's not like metal (/ore) has to be packaged especially carefully - you just want enough of a heat resistant material/shell to stop any metal vaporising and destroying the envelope you put it in. In this context, a shipment of a couple tons of relatively pure platinum group metals is probably worth the expense.

[LMT]

Inbound:

What's a "close approach" here, and what's "small delta-v" here?

...a close approach of ~2 Lunar Distances should be plenty close enough...

But how many known metal NEAs actually do this?

Try to find a "two-lunar" approach date.  JPL's database lookup shows the animated 3D orbits, cleanly, for reference.

--

Outbound:

High outbound delta-v for heavy mining cargo doesn't discourage asteroid mining enthusiasts, despite the high attendant cost.  Mars delta-v is much lower, hence cheaper, yet ignored here.

It's all the same ore, but only free-flying asteroids garner enthusiasm.  The dissonance is weird.

[mikelepage]

Inbound:

What's a "close approach" here, and what's "small delta-v" here?

...a close approach of ~2 Lunar Distances should be plenty close enough...

But how many known metal NEAs actually do this?

None that I know of. Hence why I wrote a very long post about on selecting asteroids for mining that can be maneuvered into such close approaches. I even suggested a method - 1) mining a toroidal tunnel, then 2) using that tunnel to host a rotating crew habitat train, 3) which acts as a giant reaction wheel and exerts limited control on the asteroid's Yarkovsky effect, 4) aiming to gain sufficient control authority over the asteroid to hit the gravity keyholes that would allow maintenance of an orbit with regular close approaches to Earth or Mars.

Outbound:

High outbound delta-v for heavy mining cargo doesn't discourage asteroid mining enthusiasts, despite the high attendant cost.  Mars delta-v is much lower, hence cheaper, yet ignored here.

It's all the same ore, but only free-flying asteroids garner enthusiasm.  The dissonance is weird.

If delta-V was the only measure that counted, then we wouldn't have sent probes to Pluto or Mercury. The trade space has more than one variable.

Also, I would have thought it's obvious that the vast majority of asteroid mining products will be used in situ to support the creation of asteroid settlements, the same way that the vast majority of Mars mining products will be used in situ to support the creation of Mars settlements. Very little if any of it is being exported back to Earth in the near term, but solar system settlement is an infinitely more interesting prospect if you have hundreds or thousands of asteroid colonies in addition to Lunar and Mars colonies.

[LMT]

I wrote a very long post about on selecting asteroids for mining that can be maneuvered into such close approaches. I even suggested... control on the asteroid's Yarkovsky effect...

Oh, I thought you'd moved on from that.  No, Yarkovsky effect wouldn't shift orbit as desired, not in a civilizational timespan.  It's < 1 N.

If delta-V was the only measure that counted, then we wouldn't have sent probes to Pluto or Mercury.  The trade space has more than one variable.

Don't straw-man, with "If [x] were all that counted..."  You haven't really explored the trade space, yourself.

Re: counting:  Count the landers on Pluto and Mercury.

[LMT]

ECOCEL

a database for the aspiring asteroid miner

[TrevorMonty]

I assume starting location is LEO but its never stated.

[sdsds]

I assume starting location is LEO but its never stated.

Yes, the website has popups that say things like, "LEO departure delta-V is the Earth departure manoeuvre from a 400 km altitude circular parking orbit, calculated using the two-body patched conics approximation."

Note also for rendezvous missions: "The total mission delta-V in km/s includes the sum [of] departure and arrival v-infinities. Choose a specific object to see the computed delta-v manoeuvres for departure from the parking LEO." They are assuming trajectories of the type found by solving Lambert's Problem. They don't appear to be considering mid-course inclination change burns which for high inclination asteroids might make a considerable difference.

[mikelepage]

I wrote a very long post about on selecting asteroids for mining that can be maneuvered into such close approaches. I even suggested... control on the asteroid's Yarkovsky effect...

Oh, I thought you'd moved on from that.  No, Yarkovsky effect wouldn't shift orbit as desired, not in a civilizational timespan.  It's < 1 N.

Not sure why you'd think I'd moved on - but fair point re Yarkovsky effect. I hadn't seen it quantified and wasn't aware it was quite that small. I've heard the effect brought up in multiple conversations concerning the uncertainty estimates of whether 99942 Apophis would hit the 2029 gravitational keyhole (for impact in 2036), so have assumed it was of a scale that could shift the trajectories of 160m asteroids by 10s to 100s of km over single-digit year timescales. Plan B would be to "upgrade" asteroid control authority by erecting solar sails/mag sails on the asteroid in order to achieve the same navigational outcome.

If delta-V was the only measure that counted, then we wouldn't have sent probes to Pluto or Mercury.  The trade space has more than one variable.

Don't straw-man, with "If [x] were all that counted..."  You haven't really explored the trade space, yourself.

Re: counting:  Count the landers on Pluto and Mercury.

Let's back up a bit here, and I'll try not to be flippant this time. I'd note that I think those plots of Fe-rich asteroids are a particularly bad example to choose if one was making the case for asteroid mining and export (because Earth/Mars have iron in abundance). Also, perhaps I'm using the term "trade space" a little too loosely for your liking so let me try again.

Mars gravity well, while smaller than Earth's, is not insignificant. To me, (and I suspect, many asteroid settlement enthusiasts), humans don't become a "space faring species" until we're spending more time at the top of gravity wells than at the bottom. We still need resources and radiation shielding though, so that leads us to asteroids.

My long post above was all contingent on the idea that - a priori - people want to create settlements elsewhere in the solar system apart from planetary surfaces. I think it gets us on the path to being a space-faring civilisation much faster if we are not hyper focussed on Mars but instead have a large number of potential (radiation-shielded) transit paths through the solar system that people can take to go places - including Mars - essentially a large network of cycler habitats. I wrote about this in the first post of the asteroid transit map thread.

The point I was trying to make in response to your post above, was that mining ≠ exporting.

So, for all the people who are creating asteroid settlements, they will be mining the asteroids, but not exporting what they mine. Not only are they not exporting what they mine, but mining is not even the main reason why they are there in the first place. Instead they will be using all materials in situ.

Having said all of that... there are many asteroids to choose from, so it would make sense to choose those asteroids that - eventually - will be able to export some of the most valuable mined products to planetary surfaces, hence why I proposed choosing those asteroids whose trajectories are easier to manipulate into regular rendezvous opportunities with Earth/Mars or other asteroids.

[TrevorMonty]

I assume starting location is LEO but its never stated.

Yes, the website has popups that say things like, "LEO departure delta-V is the Earth departure manoeuvre from a 400 km altitude circular parking orbit, calculated using the two-body patched conics approximation."

Note also for rendezvous missions: "The total mission delta-V in km/s includes the sum [of] departure and arrival v-infinities. Choose a specific object to see the computed delta-v manoeuvres for departure from the parking LEO." They are assuming trajectories of the type found by solving Lambert's Problem. They don't appear to be considering mid-course inclination change burns which for high inclination asteroids might make a considerable difference.

Most operations are likely to be based at EML1 in which means their are quite a few &lt;4kms.

[LMT]

...Fe-rich asteroids are a particularly bad example to choose if one was making the case for asteroid mining and export (because Earth/Mars have iron in abundance).

...eventually - will be able to export some of the most valuable mined products...

What are highly siderophile elements?

Current prices?

[mikelepage]

...Fe-rich asteroids are a particularly bad example to choose if one was making the case for asteroid mining and export (because Earth/Mars have iron in abundance).

...eventually - will be able to export some of the most valuable mined products...

What are highly siderophile elements?

Current prices?

Really…? Okay. You win.

[LMT]

...Fe-rich asteroids are a particularly bad example to choose if one was making the case for asteroid mining and export (because Earth/Mars have iron in abundance).

...eventually - will be able to export some of the most valuable mined products...

What are highly siderophile elements?

Current prices?

Really…? Okay. You win.

You created the "Exodus financial model".  You can spreadsheet space-commerce ROI and breakeven, CEO Mike.

Years of asteroid posts, but now, no numbers?  What's the story there?

[mikelepage]

I'm remembering why I stopped responding to LMT the first time, but for anyone wondering, I'm just going to leave this here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b2wu1d/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_argue_in_bad_faith/

If anyone actually wants to talk about asteroid mining architectures, I'll be around.

[LMT]

...Fe-rich asteroids are a particularly bad example to choose if one was making the case for asteroid mining and export (because Earth/Mars have iron in abundance).

...eventually - will be able to export some of the most valuable mined products...

What are highly siderophile elements?

Current prices?

Really…? Okay. You win.

You created the "Exodus financial model".  You can spreadsheet space-commerce ROI and breakeven, CEO Mike.

Years of asteroid posts, but now, no numbers?  What's the story there?

I'm remembering why I stopped responding to LMT the first time, but for anyone wondering, I'm just going to leave this here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b2wu1d/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_argue_in_bad_faith/

If anyone actually wants to talk about asteroid mining architectures, I'll be around.

That's a transparent economic admission, but your architecture may be worse off than your economics and astrodynamics.  Robots fabricating pressurized tunnel-habs from and within microgravity debris are not mechanically plausible, or needed.  Polymer can give a reliable pressurized hab by itself.  There's no need to risk the production mysteries, mechanical strength variability, and hazard of gritty polymer "bricks".  Also, a meter of water gives cosmic-ray protection for year+ hab transits; no need for rocky mess there, either.  Explore efficient mining and distribution of water outside of gravity wells.
 

...asteroids are rubble piles and the tunnel has to have both strength and rigidity for this to work, but there's upside if you combine this tunnel construction effort with asteroid mining: ...combine the regolith with a polymer substrate to make bricks of a substance very similar to concrete (has already been done with Lunar regolith).

Step 1) An autonomous tunnelling machine + solar array/power craft to arrive at the asteroid. I envisage this as a pair of craft, connected by a detachable power umbilical.
Step 2) After the asteroid has been characterised, the pair take a circuit around the outside of the asteroid, where the tunnelling machine makes a number of radial bore holes down to the planned tunnel "depth".
Step 3) The tunnelling machine then creates the toroidal tunnel itself, harvesting water and other elements of value, reinforcing the walls of the tunnel with "regocrete" bricks, all while detaching and reattaching the power umbilical as necessary.
Step 4) Humans arrive with extra equipment to add value to the mined materials and reinforce the tunnels, since the "regocrete" would need bolstering by steel cables. Effectively the entire structure is a suspension bridge wrapped over on itself, so you would have some cables going through the centre of the asteroid too.
Step 5) Human habitat modules - hosting the crew doing the work - are moved into the tunnel itself.
Step 6) Train tests, at low speed, for low G. The habitat modules are probably already part of a spin-G habitat, so they are already designed to be part of a spin G station.

[mikelepage]

Robots fabricating pressurized tunnel-habs from and within microgravity debris are not mechanically plausible, or needed.  Polymer can give a reliable pressurized hab by itself.  There's no need to risk the production mysteries, mechanical strength variability, and hazard of gritty polymer "bricks".  Also, a meter of water gives cosmic-ray protection for year+ hab transits; no need for rocky mess there, either.  Explore efficient mining and distribution of water outside of gravity wells.

If you'd responded with this upthread, I might have responded differently. You're still making an art-form out of rudeness, condescension and putting words in my mouth, but at least you're actually responding to the core thrust of my proposal this time. Note that I never said anything about pressurising the tunnel itself, and this would have been obvious if you were reading to understand, rather than to criticise. I proposed having pressurised "train car" modules moving within the tunnel to produce spin-gravity. This would require some structural reinforcement of the tunnel in the same way that railway sleepers stabilise rails, and creating "bricks" out of asteroid regolith would be one way to use the majority of waste material from the mining process.   

The tunnel itself needn't be much below the surface of the asteroid, and could even come above the surface in some spots if the topology of the asteroid worked out that way - the point is that mining implies the harvesting of asteroid material, so you might as well do that in a way that will yield other benefits - like the ability to produce spin gravity. When you have enough of these train cars, they can link nose-to-tail to handle the hoop stresses of higher speeds/greater acceleration.

Years of asteroid posts, but now, no numbers?  What's the story there?

Asteroid mining is not Exodus's business. It's as much a science fiction concept as terraforming Mars is. It would be silly to try and make an actual business case out of either. It can be fun to imagine and discuss how these things might progress in a qualitative sense, among those of us who are educated enough on the necessary concepts to brainstorm these ideas without taking it too seriously, but if it isn't fun, then I'm not going to respond (duh). Needless to say, I don't try to get feedback on Exodus core IP on an internet forum, because it's inimical to the point of the forum to put something up for discussion when the proposer can't discuss key parts of it.

Speaking of which, I had to go check out your Lake Matthew 2036 thread again (imagine my surprise at finding it locked), because you clearly believe your "proprietary unobvious (sic) method" of shifting asteroids around is far more effective than anything I've proposed. One might imagine you'd be promoting it for a wide range of different applications if it actually worked. Why start with the hard task (moving a main-belt asteroid for the purpose of Mars terraforming) when you could become the go-to method for planetary defence? If you can hit Mars with a redirected asteroid, then it's also plausible to set up the regular rendezvouses I was talking about, that would take asteroid mining closer to being economical.

As I was reading through the Lake Matthew thread again (in the context of the recent DART mission), I had a connect-the-dots moment and wondered if maybe your "proprietary plan" is to maneuver your targeted asteroid into Phobos, causing Phobos itself to deorbit a few million years early and create the new crater. In which case... COOL! But also... why on Earth would you think it's a good idea to keep that a secret? You could have had a legion of supporters on this site and beyond. You'd still have a snowflakes chance in hell of getting it done, but at least you wouldn't have antagonised a good portion of the NSF forum users.

Anyway Gary, It got me curious if you've made any actual progress on the Lake Matthew concept in the last 6 years? You know, investors, customers, hardware, or a team? Of course, three chapters in a book isn't nothing, but at RRP $275 (!), it seems as though you don't much care if it is read or not. Hopefully you're a bit more forthcoming in the book than you have been on this forum, but as you seem to have internalised some terrible advice about the relative pros and cons of being cagey about your ideas, I can't imagine why you would be.

[JohnFornaro]

I'd note that I think those plots of Fe-rich asteroids are a particularly bad example to choose if one was making the case for asteroid mining and export...

I broadly agree, but here's my question:  Got any Fe-rich asteroids that you don't need?

I'm trying to "build" a huge ring station over on another thread.  The main structure, not yet finalized, will use millions of tons of 316L steel, as currently envisioned.  One of my contacts at TransAstra is of the opinion that mining the NEA's for volatiles for use as propellant will be a profitable enterprise in the foreseeable future, where many flights between the cis-lunar space and Mars become common. 

If asteroids can be mined for metals using some variant of the STR asteroid bag methodology, they will also leave behind huge blobs of slag. 

Will these slag blobs accrete naturally?  We don't have to worry about it yet, but at what point will asteroid waste become a flight hazard?

The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

[JohnFornaro]

ECOCEL

a database for the aspiring asteroid miner

Dead link as of 11-24-22

[TrevorMonty]

[

The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

Vapor deposition.  The other alternative is make wire feed stock for 3D printers.
Two books worth a read on asteriod mining.
Mining the Sky by John Lewis. Non Fiction.
Delta V by Daniel Suarez. Sci Fi.

Edit also checkout Mond Process can be used on other metals beside Nickel. Electrostatic Separator (works best in zero G).

Space provides high vacuum, zero G and extreme temperature ranges for free. All of which are very useful for these processes.

[JohnFornaro]

How does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

1. Vapor deposition. 

2. The other alternative is make wire feed stock for 3D printers.

3. Checkout Mond Process can be used on other metals beside Nickel.

4. Electrostatic Separator (works best in zero G).

Space provides high vacuum, zero G and extreme temperature ranges for free. All of which are very useful for these processes.

1 & 2 require high temperatures, just like casting does.  My 3D printer guy tells me that 3D printing is very slow in space.  He had done a BOTE for the tension ring structure I proposed for a ring station; he guessed it would take 8 years to print it here on Earth, if one could imagine printing pieces that large.  He suggested casting in a large rotating mold of refractory material.

3. A cursory look at the Mond Process suggests it's for Nickel only.

4. A quick look at Electrostatic Separation suggests it could be a way to get the Fe out of ilmenite, which is found on the Moon in good quantities.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/electrostatic-separation

If anybody's working on in-space metals refinement and foundries, they are way below the radar.

[lamontagne]

How does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

1. Vapor deposition. 

2. The other alternative is make wire feed stock for 3D printers.

3. Checkout Mond Process can be used on other metals beside Nickel.

4. Electrostatic Separator (works best in zero G).

Space provides high vacuum, zero G and extreme temperature ranges for free. All of which are very useful for these processes.

1 & 2 require high temperatures, just like casting does.  My 3D printer guy tells me that 3D printing is very slow in space.  He had done a BOTE for the tension ring structure I proposed for a ring station; he guessed it would take 8 years to print it here on Earth, if one could imagine printing pieces that large.  He suggested casting in a large rotating mold of refractory material.

3. A cursory look at the Mond Process suggests it's for Nickel only.

4. A quick look at Electrostatic Separation suggests it could be a way to get the Fe out of ilmenite, which is found on the Moon in good quantities.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/electrostatic-separation

If anybody's working on in-space metals refinement and foundries, they are way below the radar.

There was some work done for the Moon.  As far as I know, there is Philip Metzger and Alex Ellery that are working on this type of question.

Quite a bit of work was done Earlier by Frietas. There is a lot of material here:
http://www.rfreitas.com/

[DanClemmensen]

The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

"large Fe-rich structures' are usually steel, not cast iron. Large steel elements are usually forged, not cast. This implies that quite a few industrial processes will need to be adapted for the space environment. Other large steel structures are welded starting from sheet steel: look at Starship as an example. Creating sheet steel is a multi-step process that will also need to be adapted for the space environment.

[lamontagne]

I'm in the 'enrich is place' camp.  Moving slag from the asteroids seems costly in deltaV versus moving it from the Moon's surface for most construction projects.  And it can always be re-used later when the belt is settled, it doesn't go away.

Most interesting minerals are in PPM or small % concentrations,  Minerals required in larger concentrations are readily available from the Moon, except for carbon and lithium, perhaps.

Psyche might be the exception, and I am really looking forwards to that mission.  https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/psyche

[JohnFornaro]

The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

"large Fe-rich structures' are usually steel, not cast iron. ...

You've overlooked that I have been proposing 316L, which is "Fe rich".   So... How do you propose casting the sections?

[JohnFornaro]

I'm in the 'enrich is place' camp.  Moving slag from the asteroids seems costly in deltaV versus moving it from the Moon's surface for most construction projects.  And it can always be re-used later when the belt is settled, it doesn't go away.

Most interesting minerals are in PPM or small % concentrations,  Minerals required in larger concentrations are readily available from the Moon, except for carbon and lithium, perhaps.

Psyche might be the exception, and I am really looking forwards to that mission.  https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/psyche

I'm currently leaning toward the "leave the slag in the bag" architecture. Move your feedstock only.

[LMT]

Vapor deposition...

Space provides high vacuum, zero G and extreme temperature ranges for free. All of which are very useful...

The Brokkr-1 platinum refinery launched on April 15 2023.

During this mission, AstroForge will demonstrate their refinery capabilities with the goal of validating our technology and performing extractions in zero gravity. The spacecraft will launch pre-loaded with an asteroid-like material that the refinery payload will vaporize and sort into its elemental components.

No status reports thus far.  None.  It seems the space miners got their first taste of the microgravity mining challenge.

Dedicated AstroForge thread.

--

...your "proprietary unobvious (sic) method" of shifting asteroids around... if it actually worked... could become the go-to method for planetary defence...

Confused talk.

It's the terraformation mission plan that's unobvious; hence, IP, obviously.

DE-STARLITE itself was invented for planetary defense.

All stated up front.  OT.
 

[LMT]

Cross-post:  AstroForge Provides an Update on its Brokkr-1 Demo Mission

[Coastal Ron]

...
The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

Curious why you want to cast 316L in stead of drawing it and then welding it into the shapes for your designs? Less weight (i.e. less material), which might be important.

But if you want to cast, why not use space versions of investment casting?

[lamontagne]

...
The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

Curious why you want to cast 316L in stead of drawing it and then welding it into the shapes for your designs? Less weight (i.e. less material), which might be important.

But if you want to cast, why not use space versions of investment casting?

I would think that what we want to produce as far as steel goes may have more to do with I beam and plates, and not complex parts? 
We can mine for low volume high value, or low value high volume.  If we are mining steel, we might move some of the other minerals as well for low mass penalties, as we might have 20-50% iron ores.  But if we are mining materials at 50-100 ppm, we would want to remove the largest amounts of material possible so we only move a few percent of the mineral mass.
If we are mining high value metals , we are probably not yet in an intensive space occupation paradigm.  but if we are mining iron to make steel, then even the silica becomes valuable as radiation shielding.  The only elements in a space occupation scenario that we might want to do away with are oxygen and possibly sulfur oc chlorine?  As we are likely to have an overabundance of these.
Carbon and nitrogen, however, will be valuable bulk materials.

[Coastal Ron]

...
The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

Curious why you want to cast 316L in stead of drawing it and then welding it into the shapes for your designs? Less weight (i.e. less material), which might be important.

But if you want to cast, why not use space versions of investment casting?

I would think that what we want to produce as far as steel goes may have more to do with I beam and plates, and not complex parts?

No doubt there will be a need for complex parts, but yeah, overall if you are building a rotating space station you need linear meters of material, so rolled and drawn would seem to be the form of material needed.

[JohnFornaro]

...
The other question is: how does one cast large Fe-rich structures in space, using Solar Thermal technology?

Curious why you want to cast 316L in stead of drawing it and then welding it into the shapes for your designs? Less weight (i.e. less material), which might be important.

But if you want to cast, why not use space versions of investment casting?

(1) I would think that what we want to produce as far as steel goes may have more to do with I beam and plates, and not complex parts? 

(2) We can mine for low volume high value, or low value high volume.  If we are mining steel, we might move some of the other minerals as well for low mass penalties, as we might have 20-50% iron ores.  But if we are mining materials at 50-100 ppm, we would want to remove the largest amounts of material possible so we only move a few percent of the mineral mass.

If we are mining high value metals, we are probably not yet in an intensive space occupation paradigm.  But if we are mining iron to make steel, then even the silica becomes valuable as radiation shielding. 

(3) The only elements in a space occupation scenario that we might want to do away with are oxygen and possibly sulfur or chlorine?  As we are likely to have an overabundance of these.  Carbon and nitrogen, however, will be valuable bulk materials.

(1) My station design still imagines large cast sections that are bolted together.  Even investment casting wouldn't be appropriate at that scale.  While my current thinking is that the steel is created from lunar ilmenite, along with chromium and such, those materials could also be mined in the asteroid belt. 

In either case, I'm now thinking more along the lines of an accretion process using ribbons or pellets. The rough limits of STR travel and power generation lie in the asteroid belt.  I haven't done more than mention the trade of Fe mining on the Moon or the asteroid belt, but it's a trade that needs to be contemplated.  Nor have I yet sketched out the ribbon versus pellet trade.  If only I had a team.

(2) The choice of 316L steel over iron is largely due to tensile strength:

https://www.makeitfrom.com/compare/AISI-316-S31600-Stainless-Steel/Grey-Cast-Iron

(3) The abundance of N is far fetched:

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/yoss_act_4.pdf

[Twark_Main]

(1) My station design still imagines large cast sections that are bolted together.  Even investment casting wouldn't be appropriate at that scale.

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"

Any reason you chose to concentrate all your strength at the surface (like an eggshell), rather than distributing the strength throughout the entire volume (like wood on a microscopic scale)? Because the other advantage of a structure "like wood" is that you manufacture lots and lots of identical pieces that are 3-10 m in scale, rather than a few large expensive irreplaceable ("Battlestar Galactica") components that are 10-100m in scale.

Plus it's easier to split up the interior into pressure-isolated sections. With distributed structure, each section is automatically strong enough to contain its own atmosphere.

Plus you don't get the troubling failure mode where your (presumably much weaker) interior gravity structure pancakes down and unstoppably punches a hole in your eggshell, which vents all the air because the remaining gravity structures are far too weak to contain 1 atm = 2000 lbs/ft² plus dynamic overpressure. 


Safer, cheaper, better.  Build it like a skyscraper, not like The Pantheon*.   


_{* before you start gushing over its longevity, the Pantheon is made of un-reinforced concrete which is terrible in tension, it only survived to the present day because of constant religiously-motivated maintenance, and it's so expensive a method of construction that we only have one of them...}

[JohnFornaro]

Doctor, it hurts when I do this!

You didnt' bother to read a few more lines:

I'm now thinking more along the lines of an accretion process using ribbons or pellets.

I had discussed such enormous pieces with a capable 3-D printing outfit.  Interestingly enough, they accepted the fantasy of scaling up to that size, but they kept the manufacturing rate the same.  They estimated that one of those "cast" sections would take about eight years to print!

Plus it's easier to split up the interior into pressure-isolated sections.

Which has already been done.  Pressure blockheads about every 200 feet, similar to building codes here on Earth.  And the general structural engineering about resisting the gravity loads has already been done as well.

None of which means that my design is complete.

[Asteroza]

Strangely enough, I just remembered there was some interesting talk about prestressed cast iron structures, in a discussion about reactor pressure vessels using prestressed (wire reinforced) ductile cast iron over in the Energy from Thorium forums. If mass-wise that's more attractive in the presence of iron asteroid sources, that might be interesting structural technology to pursue.

[Coastal Ron]

So, if the topic is architecture, may we begin with a few categories by which we can distinguish alternatives?

1) Robotic missions
2) crewed missions

3) survey missions
4) mining missions (extraction on location)
5) retriever missions (relocate the entire or substantial chunk to different orbital location for harvesting)

6) refineries

Personally, I see robotic surveys, with a mix of crewed mining and retriever missions used by different commercial teams. Centralized crewed refineries.

Crewed missions will be long term assignments (1-3 years) with some spin-based gravity mechanisms to aid both extraction, refineries, and living.

I think I'm new to this topic, but wanted to start out agreeing with this viewpoint.

The only way to make asteroid mining affordable is to use robotic systems, definitely at the beginning. Maybe humans will be needed later on to validate the finds, and to help set up processing facilities.

If humans are needed for asteroid mining, I think they will be living on a rotating space station, and making excursions to the mining and processing sites as needed.

And I do think that some processing will be done locally, near where the mining is occurring. It makes sense from a transportation standpoint, where it is cheaper to ship finished goods vs raw material.

[Asteroid Mining ideas]

After two years of trying, I was able to publish an article describing an economically feasible solution to space mining.

The rapid reusability and relatively inexpensive space lift capacity (SpaceX Starship) will eventually change a lot of minds and give the space mining industry a second look.

"REVIEW ON QUARRYING METHODS SUITABLE FOR SPACE MINING MISSIONS"
https://jsm.gig.eu/journal-of-sustainable-mining/vol23/iss2/8/



Abstract:
...
The central proposal of this research is a methodology to carve out a solid iron-nickel quarry slab, properly shaped to enter Earth’s atmosphere and land independently, without spacecraft or landing capsule, thus offering an economically feasible solution to space mining.

[JulesVerneATV]

How Asteroid Mining Could Make the World's First Trillionaire

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/asteroid-mining-could-worlds-first-181605388.html

[floss]

Iradium is the only stuff worth moving to Earth's surface to enhance Earth's food production as the population grows to 11 billion.

[Vultur]

Iradium is the only stuff worth moving to Earth's surface to enhance Earth's food production as the population grows to 11 billion.

I do not see how this would help; I don't think iridium is used by plants at all.

Even if it somehow did help, world hunger is a distribution problem not a production problem; I don't think adding more advanced and capable food production to the areas that already have more than they need would solve it.

[DanClemmensen]

Iradium is the only stuff worth moving to Earth's surface to enhance Earth's food production as the population grows to 11 billion.

I do not see how this would help; I don't think iridium is used by plants at all.

Even if it somehow did help, world hunger is a distribution problem not a production problem; I don't think adding more advanced and capable food production to the areas that already have more than they need would solve it.

World population is projected to peak at about 10 Billion, in about 2080, with a fairly wide uncertainty.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
It's unlikely that we can predict which commodities will be especially valuable as inputs to the luxury-for-all economy that may evolve. Since I'm a singularitarian, I don't think human civilization will last that long anyway. I keep pretending because I have nothing better to do.

[Eric Hedman]

Iradium is the only stuff worth moving to Earth's surface to enhance Earth's food production as the population grows to 11 billion.

I do not see how this would help; I don't think iridium is used by plants at all.

Even if it somehow did help, world hunger is a distribution problem not a production problem; I don't think adding more advanced and capable food production to the areas that already have more than they need would solve it.

World population is projected to peak at about 10 Billion, in about 2080, with a fairly wide uncertainty.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
It's unlikely that we can predict which commodities will be especially valuable as inputs to the luxury-for-all economy that may evolve. Since I'm a singularitarian, I don't think human civilization will last that long anyway. I keep pretending because I have nothing better to do.

You have to take these projections with a grain of salt.  They don't foresee technological breakthroughs, wars, pandemics or changes in culture that could greatly affect population growth.  The limits to growth crowd was proven wrong in the 60s due to people like Norman Borlaug and his green revolution that hugely boosted global food production.  A lot can happen between now and 2080.  So as you mentioned "a fairly wide uncertainty."

[DanClemmensen]

Iradium is the only stuff worth moving to Earth's surface to enhance Earth's food production as the population grows to 11 billion.

I do not see how this would help; I don't think iridium is used by plants at all.

Even if it somehow did help, world hunger is a distribution problem not a production problem; I don't think adding more advanced and capable food production to the areas that already have more than they need would solve it.

World population is projected to peak at about 10 Billion, in about 2080, with a fairly wide uncertainty.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
It's unlikely that we can predict which commodities will be especially valuable as inputs to the luxury-for-all economy that may evolve. Since I'm a singularitarian, I don't think human civilization will last that long anyway. I keep pretending because I have nothing better to do.

You have to take these projections with a grain of salt.  They don't foresee technological breakthroughs, wars, pandemics or changes in culture that could greatly affect population growth.  The limits to growth crowd was proven wrong in the 60s due to people like Norman Borlaug and his green revolution that hugely boosted global food production.  A lot can happen between now and 2080.  So as you mentioned "a fairly wide uncertainty."

Certainly. I pointed to that Wikipedia article because those curves represent a consensus analysis by a wide range of experts and IMO are better than picking a random number from a randomly-selected web page somewhere. As I said, my personal belief is that human-based civilization will end prior to 2080. Elon's "make life interplanetary" is a desperate long-shot attempt to salvage something, but we have run out of time. We may as well keep trying since there is nothing better to do.

[JulesVerneATV]

Mining gas giants, comets, asteroids for deposits of helium-3 has also been proposed


Mining Company Says It’s Identified Hugely Valuable Material on Surface of the Moon
https://futurism.com/space/mining-company-valuable-material-surface-moon-helium
It could be the key to establish a permanent presence there.


Interlune has a tough task ahead of it to prove that harvesting helium-3 on the Moon is economically feasible. For one, the company’s excavators may have to chew through millions of tons of regolith to harvest enough of the isotope, as Forbes reported last month, as it’s not exactly abundant. Getting the required equipment to the Moon could prove to be astronomically expensive, making it a high-risk bet.

Interlune is far from alone. There’s a whole ecosystem of companies planning to mine lunar resources. For instance, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin signed an agreement late last month to map resources, including helium-3 and water ice, from orbit, “assess them on the ground, and harness them in situ.”

“In addition to helium-3, water ice on the moon is a critical resource because it can be processed into drinking water, oxygen and rocket fuel,” Bilal wrote. “Therefore, against incredible odds due to technical difficulties, a combination of private and state interests is pushing ahead with the commercialization of moon mining.”

Resources like helium-3 could allow nations to establish a more permanent presence on Earth’s natural satellite, which experts have argued could determine the winner of the ongoing space race. For one, lunar bases won’t be able to rely entirely on solar panels since night lasts two Earth weeks, making nuclear power there more lucrative.

“For this reason, the first nation with a nuclear power source on the moon would in fact be able to impose de facto if not de jure a ‘keep out zone’ for safety purposes, and thus would set the precedent for the legal environment of lunar operations in which subsequent entrants would operate,” Bilal wrote.



Lunar helium-3 in marine sediments: Implications for a late Eocene asteroid shower
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103507001509

[JulesVerneATV]

A Pioneering Study Assesses the Likelihood of Asteroid Mining
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/a-pioneering-study-assesses-the-likelihood-of-asteroid-mining