Asteroid Mining Architectures

[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