Author Topic: Diamandis and Simonyi Planetary Resources Company Announcement and Notes  (Read 227311 times)

Offline Robotbeat

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Remember Fritz Haber?  Brilliant chemist, engineer and innovator.  Thoughts that extracting gold from seawater would be a great way to pay of German debt.  The $$$ value of gold in seawater is immense and there was a proven market and a need to generate national income.  Great idea, came unstuck because of the process issues. 

This might be a good analogy for PR. Seawater contains about 1 ppm of gold, whereas an asteroid might have 100 ppm of Platinum; on the other hand, it might 100 times more difficult to extract the platinum from an asteroid than extracting gold from seawater.

And yes, in both cases, there are other valuable materials that would be extracted as by-products.

Desalination is pretty widely used in the Middle East and North Africa.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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Offline go4mars

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Anyone know if Planetary Resources, or its predicessor, are involved with the DARPA System F9 program?  F9 describes itself this way:

... efforts at designing an approach to building swarms of satellites flying in formation to coordinate actions, share resources, and adapt to changing populations (swarm members come and go), this gives an interesting insight.

I'll say it again.  Well, quote it anyways:
given what we know/speculate, this looks like a good candidate to be the next "Project Azorian". 

For those who don't know, Project Azorian was

 "a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean floor in the summer of 1974, using the purpose-built ship Hughes Glomar Explorer...The recovery operation commenced covertly (in international waters) about 6 years later with a supposed commercial purpose: mining the sea floor for manganese nodules under the cover of Howard Hughes and the Hughes Glomar Explorer." 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

Elasmotherium; hurlyburly Doggerlandic Jentilak steeds insouciantly gallop in viridescent taiga, eluding deluginal Burckle's abyssal excavation.

Offline rklaehn

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Remember Fritz Haber?  Brilliant chemist, engineer and innovator.  Thoughts that extracting gold from seawater would be a great way to pay of German debt.  The $$$ value of gold in seawater is immense and there was a proven market and a need to generate national income.  Great idea, came unstuck because of the process issues. 

This might be a good analogy for PR. Seawater contains about 1 ppm of gold, whereas an asteroid might have 100 ppm of Platinum; on the other hand, it might 100 times more difficult to extract the platinum from an asteroid than extracting gold from seawater.

According to the wikipedia article about gold, the concentration of gold in seawater is 0.004 ppb (that's b as in billion). If there was 1ppm of gold in seawater it would be trivial to extract.

An asteroid with a concentration of 100 ppm would be a huge discovery.

Offline Danderman

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Anyone know if Planetary Resources, or its predicessor, are involved with the DARPA System F9 program?  F9 describes itself this way:

... efforts at designing an approach to building swarms of satellites flying in formation to coordinate actions, share resources, and adapt to changing populations (swarm members come and go), this gives an interesting insight.

I'll say it again.  Well, quote it anyways:
given what we know/speculate, this looks like a good candidate to be the next "Project Azorian". 

For those who don't know, Project Azorian was

 "a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean floor in the summer of 1974, using the purpose-built ship Hughes Glomar Explorer...The recovery operation commenced covertly (in international waters) about 6 years later with a supposed commercial purpose: mining the sea floor for manganese nodules under the cover of Howard Hughes and the Hughes Glomar Explorer." 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian



If you are going to engage in conspiracy theories, you might want to consider that the swarm of small telescopes to be launched into orbit might instead be a 24 hour monitoring system for Homeland Security to watch you day and night.

Offline BrightLight

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Remember Fritz Haber?  Brilliant chemist, engineer and innovator.  Thoughts that extracting gold from seawater would be a great way to pay of German debt.  The $$$ value of gold in seawater is immense and there was a proven market and a need to generate national income.  Great idea, came unstuck because of the process issues. 

This might be a good analogy for PR. Seawater contains about 1 ppm of gold, whereas an asteroid might have 100 ppm of Platinum; on the other hand, it might 100 times more difficult to extract the platinum from an asteroid than extracting gold from seawater.

According to the wikipedia article about gold, the concentration of gold in seawater is 0.004 ppb (that's b as in billion). If there was 1ppm of gold in seawater it would be trivial to extract.

An asteroid with a concentration of 100 ppm would be a huge discovery.
A meteorite retrieved and analyzed by neutron activation spectroscopy showed between 1 and 2 ppm of gold.  At this concentration meteorites could be mineable if there enough of them!
The citation is:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1949PA.....57..398L&db_key=AST&page_ind=1&plate_select=NO&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_GIF&classic=YES
This citation does not explicitly state what kind of meteorite - Iron or carbonaceous. I suspect that 1 to 2 ppm is not a upper limit for gold and from the article, gold might scale directly with PGM like palladium.
There has been discussion that asteroids could have PGM and/or gold concentrations up to 350ppm!!
Are the PGM's and gold volatile enough to out-gas as the meteorite makes landfall?

Offline Zond

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Remember the various schemes to mine Mn nodules on the seafloor?  Great in situ value, they are also rich in Ni and Co, the processing of the nodules poses no real challenges metallurgically, it is just the cost of mining them under 5 km of ocean makes them unattractive compared to on-land accumulations.

These guys are not planning to mine Mn nodules but Sulfide deposits (Copper, lead and zinc some gold and silver) and only in a water depth of 1600 m, but Deep Sea Mining seems like it will be a reality in the near future.
http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Home.asp

Offline Robotbeat

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As has already been noted, we're mining oil already deep under water, starting a mile underwater and then miles and miles through the ground below. It's really striking when you realize just how deep and how high the pressure is down there. It's all done robotically.
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Offline Robotbeat

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Off-shore diamond mining is already relatively common:
http://www.imcbrokers.com/blog/overview/p/detail/offshore-diamond-mining

We'll go for small near-Earth asteroids (or even temporary moons) before we go after larger game further afield. Just like we did shallow-water off-shore drilling before deep-water off-shore drilling.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline JohnFornaro

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If you are going to engage in conspiracy theories, you might want to consider that the swarm of small telescopes to be launched into orbit might instead be a 24 hour monitoring system for Homeland Security to watch you day and night.

Would the swarm have enough resolution to differentiate which finger I just went outside and raised?  Or do I need to wait ten years and go outside and try again?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Mongo62

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I just completed a spreadsheet on which I entered the measured elemental abundances of seven elements (Gold, Platinum, Rhodium, Iridium, Palladium, Osmium and Ruthenium -- I would have liked to include other metals in the same price range, such as Rhenium, but my source does not list them) for 120 iron meteorites of all types.  I then calculated the current values of all seven elements, and their totals, in dollars per tonne (= megadollars per megatonne).

These measurements, from The Platinum Group Metals in Iron Meteorites, are rather old (report published 1990) and hence might be underestimating the elemental abundances due to some of each element being missed.

In terms of total value per tonne at today's spot prices for these seven elements, the top six meteorites are:

Iquique (IVB) : $6,032.48
Hoba (IVB) : $5,807.44
Butler (Anomalous) : $4,068.73
Tlacotepec (IVB) : $4,020.45
Forsyth County (IIA) : $3,489.76
Skookum Gulch (IVB) : $3,298.30

and the bottom six meteorites are:

Lonaconing (Anomalous) : $374.46
Buenaventura (IIIB) : $370.79
Santa Luzia (IIB) : $262.90
Sao Juliao de Moreira (IIB) : $248.04
De Hoek (Anomalous) : $182.45
Bellsbank (Anomalous) : $138.42

A huge difference!  Proper prospecting is clearly a must.

For Platinum (currently $1570.50 per Troy ounce), the greatest concentration amongst these 120 meteorites is 86.4 ppm in the Iquique meteorite, closely followed by the 80.6 ppm of the Hoba meteorite.

For Gold (currently $1659.13 per Troy ounce), the greatest concentration is 6.3 ppm in the Butler meteorite, and for Rhodium (currently $1385.00 per Troy ounce), it's 17.4 ppm also in the Butler meteorite.

There are several meteorites with high concentrations of Iridium (currently $1085.00 per Troy ounce).  The highest concentrations are 28.9 ppm in the Forsyth County meteorite, 28.2 ppm in the Sierra Gorda (IIA) meteorite, and 26.4 ppm in the Tlacotepec meteorite.

I have created links to the ODS file and the XLS file of the speadsheet. (First time using this service, I hope they work!)
« Last Edit: 04/26/2012 09:51 pm by Mongo62 »

Offline Robotbeat

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Good post, Mongo. It's worth noting that some elements like Iridium are so incredibly rare on Earth that there may be a big market for them but we'd never know it because of the rarity.

BTW, there's the possibility of other materials in asteroids, for instance black diamonds (carbonados) go for around $1000 per carat, which translates to $150,000 per troy ounce, are thought to have formed far from Earth and arrived via a meteorite a couple billion years ago: http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0612-mystery_diamonds.htm

A single metric ton of carbonados would be worth (at current prices) $5 billion.

I only bring that up to say that we don't know the upper limit of what sort of mineral riches lie in the asteroids, even if we have a rough idea of some of the individual asteroids' elemental composition (and even that is woefully incomplete). We find new ones all the time, and new space telescopes devoted to finding new asteroids will help tremendously.

I'm not saying that diamonds are a good thing for them to mine.
« Last Edit: 04/26/2012 09:15 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline BrightLight

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I just completed a spreadsheet on which I entered the measured elemental abundances of seven elements (Gold, Platinum, Rhodium, Iridium, Palladium, Osmium and Ruthenium -- I would have liked to include other metals in the same price range, such as Rhodium, but my source does not list them) for 120 iron meteorites of all types.  I then calculated the current values of all seven elements, and their totals, in dollars per tonne (= megadollars per megatonne).

These measurements, from The Platinum Group Metals in Iron Meteorites, are rather old (report published 1990) and hence might be underestimating the elemental abundances due to some of each element being missed.

In terms of total value per tonne at today's spot prices for these seven elements, the top six meteorites are:

Iquique (IVB) : $6,032.48
Hoba (IVB) : $5,807.44
Butler (Anomalous) : $4,068.73
Tlacotepec (IVB) : $4,020.45
Forsyth County (IIA) : $3,489.76
Skookum Gulch (IVB) : $3,298.30

and the bottom six meteorites are:

Lonaconing (Anomalous) : $374.46
Buenaventura (IIIB) : $370.79
Santa Luzia (IIB) : $262.90
Sao Juliao de Moreira (IIB) : $248.04
De Hoek (Anomalous) : $182.45
Bellsbank (Anomalous) : $138.42

A huge difference!  Proper prospecting is clearly a must.

For Platinum (currently $1570.50 per Troy ounce), the greatest concentration amongst these 120 meteorites is 86.4 ppm in the Iquique meteorite, closely followed by the 80.6 ppm of the Hoba meteorite.

For Gold (currently $1659.13 per Troy ounce), the greatest concentration is 6.3 ppm in the Butler meteorite, and for Rhodium (currently $1385.00 per Troy ounce), it's 17.4 ppm also in the Butler meteorite.

There are several meteorites with high concentrations of Iridium (currently $1085.00 per Troy ounce).  The highest concentrations are 28.9 ppm in the Forsyth County meteorite, 28.2 ppm in the Sierra Gorda (IIA) meteorite, and 26.4 ppm in the Tlacotepec meteorite.

I have created links to the ODS file and the XLS file of the speadsheet. (First time using this service, I hope they work!)
There is only one order of magnitude between the best and worst case scenario!.  Radar albedo can distinguish between carbonaceous and metallic meteorites.  Most importantly, your analysis shows that reasonable amounts of valuable metals are available and consistent with other estimates - that valuable metals are out there with concentrations substantially above 1 ppm.  At 1 ppm, concentration methods are mature for terrestrial techniques - what are the costs for modifying them to zero G environments?

Offline Mongo62

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I only bring that up to say that we don't know the upper limit of what sort of mineral riches lie in the asteroids, even if we have a rough idea of some of the individual asteroids' elemental composition (and even that is woefully incomplete).

There definitely are other high-value substances in asteroids.  I had mentioned Rhenium, which currently is worth $4600 per Kg ($143 per Troy ounce).  Wikipedia says:

Quote
Nickel-based superalloys for use in jet engines contain up to 6% rhenium, making jet engine construction the largest use for the element, with chemical industry catalytic uses being next-most important. Because of the low availability relative to demand, rhenium is among the most expensive metals, with an average price of approximately US$4,575 per kilogram (August 2011).

Quote
Rhenium improves the properties of tungsten. Tungsten-rhenium alloys are more ductile at low temperature, allowing them to be more easily machined. The high-temperature stability is also improved. The effect increases with the rhenium concentration, and therefore tungsten alloys are produced with up to 27% of Re, which is the solubility limit.

Quote
Rhenium in the form of rhenium-platinum alloy is used as catalyst for catalytic reforming, which is a chemical process to convert petroleum refinery naphthas with low octane ratings into high-octane liquid products. Worldwide, 30% of catalysts used for this process contain rhenium. The olefin metathesis is the other reaction for which rhenium is used as catalyst. Normally Re2O7 on alumina is used for this process. Rhenium catalysts are very resistant to chemical poisoning from nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus, and so are used in certain kinds of hydrogenation reactions.

I am sure that its use in industry would explode if it were less expensive and more available.
« Last Edit: 04/26/2012 09:23 pm by Mongo62 »

Offline Robotbeat

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There's probably no use in separating platinum from the other valuable platinum-group metals before you get it to Earth, so that saves you a step or two.
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Offline BrightLight

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There's probably no use in separating platinum from the other valuable platinum-group metals before you get it to Earth, so that saves you a step or two.
+1
Once the PGM is separated from the iron/nickel, just bring home the alloy and finish the process on earth, since the alloy has very high value.

Offline Danderman

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There's probably no use in separating platinum from the other valuable platinum-group metals before you get it to Earth, so that saves you a step or two.
+1
Once the PGM is separated from the iron/nickel, just bring home the alloy and finish the process on earth, since the alloy has very high value.

What is the degree of difficulty in separating the PGM from the nickel/iron?  Is there any way to use magnetism to separate such metals?

« Last Edit: 04/26/2012 09:35 pm by Danderman »

Offline go4mars

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Nice work Mongo!

In the same vein as black diamonds (probably not literally), natural moissanite fetches a high value. 

If rhenium was plentiful and cheap, it would go into steel every time.  The strength boost exceeds that given by molybdenum. 

Plentiful rhenium would allow much deeper oil and gas drilling programs.  It would find its way into all kinds of applications.

As I understand it, it's a fairly common additive to jet engine parts that need to stay tough at high temperatures. 

I think I read somewhere that it is even getting blended into inconel. 
« Last Edit: 04/26/2012 09:45 pm by go4mars »
Elasmotherium; hurlyburly Doggerlandic Jentilak steeds insouciantly gallop in viridescent taiga, eluding deluginal Burckle's abyssal excavation.

Offline BrightLight

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There's probably no use in separating platinum from the other valuable platinum-group metals before you get it to Earth, so that saves you a step or two.
+1
Once the PGM is separated from the iron/nickel, just bring home the alloy and finish the process on earth, since the alloy has very high value.

What is the degree of difficulty in separating the PGM from the nickel/iron?  Is there any way to use magnetism to separate such metals?

I am not sure of the process be it chemical, magnetic etc.
but since the melting point of platinum (1772 C) is higher than iron (1553 C) or nickel (1453 C), a retort might be usable.

Offline Bill White

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There's probably no use in separating platinum from the other valuable platinum-group metals before you get it to Earth, so that saves you a step or two.
+1
Once the PGM is separated from the iron/nickel, just bring home the alloy and finish the process on earth, since the alloy has very high value.

What is the degree of difficulty in separating the PGM from the nickel/iron?  Is there any way to use magnetism to separate such metals?

If the Ni & Fe are in metallic form rather than oxides then carbon monoxide can be used to "digest" those metals into carbonyl gas.

Ni (s) + 4 CO (g) → Ni(CO)4

Fe (s) + 5 CO (g) → Fe(CO)5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonyl_metallurgy

If  there are oxides then an intermediate step is needed to remove the oxygen atoms.

Thereafter the carbonyl gas can be vapor deposited leaving behind pure nickel or iron and recoverable carbon monoxide. That metal can also be deposited on template allowing the fabrication of intricate parts.

= = =

I recall once reading a NASA funded study at an obscure Michigan university where meteorite fragments were digested by carbon monoxide in this manner.

The chemistry is well established. The engineering needed to apply the chemistry to actual asteroid fragments is more problematic however doing research on this should be within the capability of any US college or university chemistry department.
« Last Edit: 04/26/2012 09:54 pm by Bill White »
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Offline ChefPat

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A steady supply of PGM's could run the price down far enough to make Fuel Cells inexpensive enough to displace oil.
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