Author Topic: Diamandis and Simonyi Planetary Resources Company Announcement and Notes  (Read 227296 times)

Offline neilh

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Would like to see a seperate updates only thread for Planetary Resources, nothing but the facts.

There basically is one:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28680.msg890214#msg890214

It is just that people seem to prefer this thread.  I am not sure I agree that we need as many threads as go4mars is suggesting but perhaps some split would be a good idea and moving the bulk of the future discussions out of the live events thread.  My suggestion would be to use the above thread for company updates (as SpaceXULA suggests), and then to have two more.

Planetary Resources non-mining general discussion
Planetary Resources mining related discussion

I'm not sure if this falls under the non-mining.discussion, but I'd definitely love a thread on third-party applications of Arkyd spacecraft.
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Offline Retired Downrange

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...Today, from their FB page:

Planetary Resources
Planetary Resources, Inc. is hiring! If you're interested in building spaceships and exploring asteroids, we have immediate needs in the following areas of expertise: Guidance, navigation & control, Flight & ground software and Optical & laser systems. Go to our web site to learn more!
www.PlanetaryResources.com/careers/

Offline Danderman

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My take on all this is that about 98% of the company is about building and flying a constellation of these mini-sats. If they discover some valuable asteroid, fine, but I think that the Google and Goldman Sachs interest in more mundane objects, such as the planet Earth (although I could see a Google Universe app coming out of this).

The complexity of laser intersatellite links, however, will keep these guys busy for a long time. The last time someone tried a constellation using such links was Teledesic, and they didn't have a lot of fun.

Also, given travel times to NEOs, unless they plan to launch yesterday, their first mission may not get there any time soon.

« Last Edit: 04/30/2012 03:32 am by Danderman »

Offline go4mars

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I highly recommend the book Peter Diamandis wrote if you'd like to get a better sense of the motivation and ambition of 'Planetary Resources'.  Title: 'Abundance'.    It's compelling.

I won't spoil it here.  Don't have time to do it justice over the next few days.

http://www.diamandis.com/abundance/

 
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Offline JohnFornaro

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The logical fallacy is the argument from authority. You figure that because Diamandis et al. aren't stupid, then mining asteroids must not be stupid. If something is too good to be true, it probably is.

(1) Argument from authority is what you were doing earlier with the notion of scientific consensus. I think that argument from authority has merit, within certain limits, .... But the word "authority" is misleading here. What we're talking about is argument from expertise.

Diamandis et al. are also behind the Google Lunar X-Prize. (2) They know all about the advantages and disadvantages of mining on both the Moon and asteroids and they've chosen to invest time and money in both. Mining in space is a lot more about the geology and these guys have obviously done their homework, leading them to the conclusion that asteroid mining is on a par with Moon mining.

These guys are smart, intelligent investors with a history of success and from that we can safely assume that mining asteroids is not stupid. They may end up being wrong, but the probability of that happening is likely to be very low. (3) One would need to provide extraordinary evidence to prove the contrary.

(1) Good eye there, Garret.  Bit of a split hair regarding "authority" and "expertise", tho.

(2) Yes, they are "authoritative" "experts", but they do not know "all" there is to know about this pre-nascent business.  Nobody does, at the moment.  Also, as you allude, past performance doesn't predict future performance.  It does seem likely to me that their first service, selling scope time, could work, and could provide the in-space experience, and provide an income stream as well, covering some of their expected exploration costs.  But that's just me saying it "seems", based on their past expertise.

(3) Here, you're wrong, I'd say.  PRI will have to provide the "extraordinary evidence" of profitability in the whole of their expected endeavor.  Here's wht:

"Moreover, while I applaud PRI's plans to send "swarms" of telescopes to swarms of asteroids, these will not be able to tell the difference between a 50 ppm asteroid and a 5 ppm asteroid. To do that will require in situ sampling, probably with sample return"

The assay and sample return would be quite the extraordinary accomplishment.  The other extraordinary accomplishment would be bringing back many tons of PGM's to the Earth's surface.

According to [PRI's] website, there are more than 1500 known that are easier to get to than the surface of the moon.  And more than 1000 new NEO's are discovered each year.  1500/20 years = an average of 75 per year that they could go for more easily than the moon's surface.

You appear to be conflating delta-vee with "easier in all aspects"; then you go on to project a simple straight line math equation, which even I could do, as if to suggest that line would be an accurate projection of future discoveries.

To match world production of 200 mT Pt/year would require finding and processing an entire metallic asteroid massing several million mT with a diameter on the order of 100 meters--per year.
That's correct -- and this is a problem how?

The problem is not the number of possible tons of material to be acquired.  The problem, as I mentioned above, is bringing back many tons of PGM's to the Earth's surface.

Seriously guys, all this back and forth over the specific economics of asteroid mining misses the point.  That is stuff that is far enough in the future that it doesn't matter much at this point, they might never even try or if they do mine enough to matter.

From this article, the following is what matters:

Quote
...they’re bringing current approaches to building spacecraft into the 21st century by focusing on mass production and taking advantage of technologies available from other companies so that they don’t have to develop everything in-house. "In space exploration, it has been the case that you build a machine fine tuned to a mission and just build one. That has contributed to the cost."

That is the real news here ...  If they can demonstrate the business case for the above and that there is a market for that sort of thing others will follow.  Increasing payloads will drive decreasing launch costs ... and both in turn will feed more investment in the industry.

The value in what they are doing is from the fact that they are demonstrating a low cost spacecraft business model, and that will help change the perception of how space is done and who can do it.

QFT.

One quibble: It will be the ability to mine and manufacture in space which will enable there to be sufficiently massive infrastructure to protect humans for their long term inhabitance of off world destinations.  All the talk about the supposed benefits of lo delta-vee destinations avoids the gorilla in the room:  Sending and receiving tons and tons and tons of mass from Earth's gravity well.
« Last Edit: 04/30/2012 01:45 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline go4mars

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According to [PRI's] website, there are more than 1500 known that are easier to get to than the surface of the moon.  And more than 1000 new NEO's are discovered each year.  1500/20 years = an average of 75 per year that they could go for more easily than the moon's surface.
You appear to be conflating delta-vee with "easier in all aspects"; then you go on to project a simple straight line math equation, which even I could do, as if to suggest that line would be an accurate projection of future discoveries.
In fact, I expect the rate of discovery to take a giant leap and go exponential for a while when they get a bunch more eyes up there.  Especially since many of these new eyes will be looking sunward, which hasn't really been done before.  1000 new NEO's per year will seem like few.  Once these are well categorized, there's the asteroid belt, kuiper belt, oort objects, exoplanets, etc.

One quibble: It will be the ability to mine and manufacture in space which will enable there to be sufficiently massive infrastructure to protect humans for their long term inhabitance of off world destinations.  All the talk about the supposed benefits of lo delta-vee destinations avoids the gorilla in the room:  Sending and receiving tons and tons and tons of mass from Earth's gravity well.
It will be the ability to mine and manufacture in space (ISRU) which will enable mega-scale delta-vee solutions for sending mass to earth.  And presumably, lower delta-vee will remain a comparative benefit when moving thousands of tonnes of metals.  Receiving them at earth is the easy part.
« Last Edit: 04/30/2012 02:01 pm by go4mars »
Elasmotherium; hurlyburly Doggerlandic Jentilak steeds insouciantly gallop in viridescent taiga, eluding deluginal Burckle's abyssal excavation.

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Offline Mongo62

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I have a question that I've been wondering about for some time now. PRI have stated that they will be going after the PGMs when they mine asteroids.  Are they actually going to limit themselves to only those elements, or are they going to separate and send back to Earth everything that is worth the expense of sending (which is basically all of it)?

Keep in mind that the entire asteroid would be pulverized and processed for PGMs already, so it would be hardly any extra effort to separate out all the other goodies contained within it.  There is certainly enough oxygen, hydrogen and carbon in a typical chondritic asteroid to manufacture all the O2 and CH4 (plus CO) propellant you would need to boost the entire remaining NEO to Earth. To be sure, much of the oxygen would be tightly bound in the form of silica and alumina, but the nearly limitless supply of solar energy should suffice to free it for use as propellant.

The only reason I can think of to NOT send the entire mass to Earth would be if the earlier delivery time resulting from sending only the more valuable elements to Earth reduces the overall interest expenses by enough to outweigh the extra income that would be earned from the lower-value elements.  And even then, I would send the higher-value materials first on a propellant-intensive high-speed trajectory, which should more than pay all expenses including interest charges, and the lower-value materials using the remainder of the manufactured propellant in a lower-energy trajectory that when it arrives, can be sold for pure profit.

This assumes that the processing plant would be capable of separating all the elements contained in a million-tonne asteroid, but it need not be as big and expensive as you might think.  A million-tonne asteroid is not that big, maybe 70m in diameter.  If the plant could crush and process 1000 tonnes of asteroid material per day (a cube about 7-8 metres on a side), it would take under 3 years to completely process the asteroid.  The propellant needed to send the entire mass of products to Earth could be manufactured on site and contained in several ~50m diameter spherical tanks.

What is essential would be very advanced (by today's standards) AI and robotics, the processing plant needs to be fully autonomous and the mining robot(s) capable of dealing with any problems that come up.  But by the time such a robotic expedition is ready to be sent, commercial AI should be much more capable than it is today.

Offline Robotbeat

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http://www.spaceflightservices.com/Pricing.php

This shows explicit pricing for secondary payloads. Very handy.

Looks like Arkyd will cost between $1-3 million to LEO and $2-6 million to GTO (for the next version with propulsion capable of flyby of a NEO which comes very close to Earth). Of course, if they're planning on flying a dozen of them, they can probably get a bulk discount.

(Arkyd 100 looks to be volume-limited in launch costs, not mass-limited.)
« Last Edit: 04/30/2012 10:28 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline simonbp

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I have a question that I've been wondering about for some time now. PRI have stated that they will be going after the PGMs when they mine asteroids.  Are they actually going to limit themselves to only those elements, or are they going to separate and send back to Earth everything that is worth the expense of sending (which is basically all of it)?

The cost/benefit will probably be a function of additional cost of separating things out. So, if all the PGMs can be extracted with the same process, they'd return all of them, but they wouldn't nessisarily return, say, gold, which might need its own separate extraction process.

So really it boils down to how clever they are in designing the extraction equipment.

Offline Danderman

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I have a question that I've been wondering about for some time now. PRI have stated that they will be going after the PGMs when they mine asteroids.  Are they actually going to limit themselves to only those elements, or are they going to separate and send back to Earth everything that is worth the expense of sending (which is basically all of it)?


They will mine anything that makes a profit.

Offline RocketmanUS

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What is the orbit's for the ARKYD 100?

How do they plan on deorbiting them when they need to?

Online jabe

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i bet they may use something like this..cool stuff
http://lmts.epfl.ch/microthrust
jb

Offline Robotbeat

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What is the orbit's for the ARKYD 100?

How do they plan on deorbiting them when they need to?
They may just naturally deorbit (which can be helped by turning the solar arrays so they act as a big sail to increase drag). Small satellites like that in LEO will decay pretty quickly, depending on their altitude.
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Offline go4mars

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http://www.spaceweather.com/

This website often highlights smallish stuff that flys past earth at less than lunar distances. 

I think it's reasonably likely that an early approach would be to nudge a SMALL  chunk that is almost going to smack earth onto a collision course with a remote and politically feasible part of Earth.  Antarctica would seem the natural target, but if geopolitics forbids, Northern Greenland or the Arctic Islands would be good runner-ups. 

Small as in less than ten meters.  Metal rich would be nice (less fragmentation upon entry).  In my experience, it's a lot easier to see the fragments when they land on thin skiffs of snow or on ice.  http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/utoday/dec1-08/asteroid   
« Last Edit: 05/01/2012 08:31 pm by go4mars »
Elasmotherium; hurlyburly Doggerlandic Jentilak steeds insouciantly gallop in viridescent taiga, eluding deluginal Burckle's abyssal excavation.

Offline JohnFornaro

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They will mine anything that makes a profit.

Naaaaaahhhh.  Ya think?

I think it's reasonably likely that an early approach would be to nudge a SMALL  chunk that is almost going to smack earth onto a collision course with a remote and politically feasible part of Earth.

Politically feasible?  Like, say, DC?  Just askin'.

I gotta go now....
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline iamlucky13

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i bet they may use something like this..cool stuff
http://lmts.epfl.ch/microthrust
jb

I just wanted to comment the link is very intriguing. I somehow missed reading about it when the Cleanspace concept was announced.

Offline Retired Downrange

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via FB:

Since April 24, Planetary Resources, Inc. has received close to 2,000 job applications. Thank you for overwhelming interest in asteroid mining. We'll redefine natural resources together! www.planetaryresources.com

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