Planetary Resources

[RonM]

Anyway, I think people are taking an intellectual shortcut here by just assuming it belongs to scifi fantasyland instead of figuring out how it could be done most cheaply. I did the same thing before deciding to think about it seriously. If you aren't interested in it, fine, but otherwise I'd prefer substantive critiques instead of mere opinion.

I'd prefer a substantive plan instead of hand waving ignoring the difficulties of engineering industrial processes in zero gee.

If you have really thought this out, show the math or quote some papers. Otherwise, your concept is just opinion. The impact energy versus temperature for various alloys is a good start.

I don't have to prove your idea is too expensive to work, you have to prove that it is viable.

[Robotbeat]

Fine, but critiques should be substantive, not mere opinion.

[sghill]

There are two flaws in your logic:

1) A claimed asteroid has any value at all only when there's a potential buyer. There's no market for asteroid mining rights, because right now there's only one known asteroid mining company on Earth (one serious company – *cough*DSI*cough*), so PR cannot sell the rights to anyone but themselves.

2) Asteroids that are good candidates for mining are not exactly rare – unlike good oil fields – and PR cannot possibly stake a claim on all of them. So what's stopping a potential mining company from simply choosing the next-best one? => No market for asteroid rights.

The key word you missed was controlling the asteroid.  Without the ability to control it (either by navigating the asteroid, or navigating their own ships to and from the asteroid, or both) the claim is worthless.  Once they establish control, then the claim becomes something other than worthless.

they need to actually mine the asteroid, and do it in a way where the valuable gases don’t escape

See here. Mining volatiles is most likely a lot simpler than mining metals.

Didn't say it wouldn't be.  Getting it to another spacecraft who wants to buy it is another matter entirely.  Delta-v isn't free, and if access to space costs drop, the "purchaser" will just put more into space from earth instead of buying it from a space gas station.

[ChrisWilson68]

There are two flaws in your logic:

1) A claimed asteroid has any value at all only when there's a potential buyer. There's no market for asteroid mining rights, because right now there's only one known asteroid mining company on Earth (one serious company – *cough*DSI*cough*), so PR cannot sell the rights to anyone but themselves.

2) Asteroids that are good candidates for mining are not exactly rare – unlike good oil fields – and PR cannot possibly stake a claim on all of them. So what's stopping a potential mining company from simply choosing the next-best one? => No market for asteroid rights.

The key word you missed was controlling the asteroid.  Without the ability to control it (either by navigating the asteroid, or navigating their own ships to and from the asteroid, or both) the claim is worthless.  Once they establish control, then the claim becomes something other than worthless.

I'm not sure why you quoted Adrian since nothing you said really addressed his two points.

I find Adrian's points compelling.  Controlling an asteroid in the sense of being able to move it around in space does not make it "something other than worthless" if you can't extract anything from it.  If in the future someone develops the technology to extract something from it, you as the controller of one or a few asteroids don't have a monopoly on control of all asteroids.  The party that develops the ability to extract resources from the asteroid can choose instead to take control of some other asteroid.  They'll buy the asteroid from you only if it's cheaper than just going and grabbing some other asteroid.

Lets say PR spends $100 million taking control of an asteroid.  Then lets say 15 years from now some other company develops the technology to extract resources from asteroids cheaply enough to be financially viable.  They can spend $100 million to just take control of their own asteroid, so PR can only sell it for less than this price.  Or, more realistically, if some other company has developed the technology to extract resources from an asteroid, there's probably more volume in the space transport market, so by that time 15 years from now it's probably even cheaper to control an asteroid.  They might be able to go grab some other asteroid for $20-$50 million.  So, 15 years later, that asteroid that PR spent $100 million grabbing control of is now worth less than $20-$50 million.  That's not a good ROI over a 15 year period.

The only way grabbing and controlling an asteroid today for future sale to someone else to extract the resources makes financial sense is if it will be more expensive at that future point for others to grab other asteroids -- enough more expensive to pay for the opportunity cost of that investment.  I just can't see how that could happen.

[Borklund]

I think a lot of you are too narrowly focused on just the cost to PR of taking control of an asteroid for themselves and then how much they can sell whatever they extract from it for, assuming that PR takes all of the cost and they have no other sources of revenue. Take a step back for a moment and consider that NASA and other national space agencies would be very interested in any number of scientific information pertaining to asteroids, which PR could sell as it searches for and prospects asteroids. Add to that the fact that before any additive manufacturing, refining, extraction or maybe even prospecting an asteroid takes place, launch costs are going to have come down, maybe (hopefully) by an order of magnitude, which lowers PR's costs even further. PR are not in a rush to get going to an asteroid in a costly manner.

[Robotbeat]

Launch costs (domestically) have already (or very soon will) come down nearly an order of magnitude. Compare FH to D4H or Titan IV Heavy or Shuttle.

[Robotbeat]

... Your asteroid mine is a money loser...

As far as I can tell, that's the assumption that you started with, not a conclusion you arrived at.

[Robotbeat]

...

If you have really thought this out, show the math or quote some papers. ...

Fair enough. I did a fair amount of (quick, but satisfying to me) research on the topic before I posted, but I didn't link to it.

But I'm not looking for funding, here. I'm doing a thought experiment: If you HAD to find a way to profitably mine asteroids for PGMs, what approach has the greatest chance of success? (and no sneaky workarounds)

[Robotbeat]

But here's a major consideration: I'm not sure grinding is going to do it. If the PGMs don't clump together even microscopically, then grinding won't help you separate the PGMs from the iron-nickel.

If that is the case, then we are stuck with more energy-intensive methods relying on chemicals or melting the majority of the ore. That's not a showstopper, but it transforms the problem into a "how do I get lots of cheap energy in space" question instead of mainly just a materials processing question.

Now, on Earth we just grind the ore (which is mostly iron-nickel metal), so I believe that may hint that PGMs tend to clump away from the iron-nickel, but I'd prefer confirmation of this: http://www.life123.com/career-money/commodities-2/platinum/how-is-platinum-mined.shtml

[Borklund]

Launch costs (domestically) have already (or very soon will) come down nearly an order of magnitude. Compare FH to D4H or Titan IV Heavy or Shuttle.

This is true, but I was more referring to the potential (please come true) $5-7m launch cost of the future. Add to that very cheap, light and simple spacecraft and you've got yourself the right conditions to start thinking about asteroid mining, whether it be water - which PR themselves say is the likely first product - or fuel. To my mind they seem to talk about PGMs as a nice-to-have for humanity in the future, not as the first thing they're going to do to close their business case.

[Robotbeat]

BTW, water is considered super-valuable in space largely because launch costs are so high. Water won't be worth $20,000 per kg or whatever if launch costs are just $100-200/kg or so. It'd still be useful, but wouldn't be worth quite so much.

I did find evidence that Platinum (or is it PGMs?) do tend to clump into grains when in an iron-nickel matrix:
https://books.google.com/books?id=naUIAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA373&lpg=PA373&dq=platinum+grains+in+a+meteorite&source=bl&ots=-p8H_FhbFb&sig=csRMwEL5hZeFAv8sXRDWIZ0hYEo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qdXnVKakFMi-ggTX-oKgAw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=platinum%20grains%20in%20a%20meteorite&f=false

That means that grinding should be effective. Which is good since melting iron (from ~0C) takes about 300kWh/ton, at least an order of magnitude more specific energy required than efficiency-optimized cryogenic grinding.

[Robotbeat]

The richest meteorites have about 270ppm of precious metals (PGM and gold) in them:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168583X96004156

One, the Negrillos iron-nickel meteorite, has a Platinum concentration by weight of 122ppm: http://svr4.terrapub.co.jp/journals/GJ/pdf/3904/39040383.pdf
(page 384 of journal and page 2 of the pdf)

[Robotbeat]

...Again, whatever value asteroid-mined resources are going to have will depend on their practicality for conversion into finished products close to the point of acquisition, not the export of the material to Earth.

I disagree. That presupposes there's ALREADY a huge reason for stuff going on in space.

We need prime reasons to be in space. Expansion into space desperately needs new markets. Telecommunications is a huge one (trillion dollar annual revenue potential, if you can compete!), but that's very near-Earth and doesn't need much greater launch capacity than we already have.

Resource extraction WOULD be a significant new market for space. And if there's any possible way to export stuff to Earth for a profit, we should look into it because otherwise space is just a self-licking ice cream cone.

I mean, this isn't that compelling: "Why mine asteroids?" "So we can build stuff and provide propellant." "Why are we building stuff and using propellant in space?" "So we can mine asteroids!"

And the space tourism market hasn't really appeared. It'd be nice to truly start utilizing the vast resources in space, since it'd provide the engine of organic economic growth that is truly needed to expand into space.


... and mining PGMs isn't likely to be an enormous business (because the demand is fairly small, so it's easy to saturate the market), but it may be larger than the launch services market. Gold is significantly larger (the demand here being largely because humans are obsessed with gold rather than industrial uses), but still smaller than telecomms. But still, PGMs would genuinely be a new market in space that could help drive demand for the rest of the space economy. Once we have enough markets in space, we WILL start seeing demand for machinery and propellant in space as we become more self-sufficient in space, but if we rely solely on self-licking-ice-cream-coneness, then it's not nearly as persuasive as utilizing real resources.

[Robotbeat]

Only as long as you only return small quantities. That market would be saturated soon, and then the price per mass will decrease quickly. They're envisioning (or dreaming of?) a hundreds of billion dollar market, not a tens of millions dollar one.

Small quantities are all that could possibly be returned for decades into the future, even under very optimistic estimates for reduction in launch and spacecraft costs your looking at costs in the range of $10k to $100k per kg of collected material. ...

That's not really true. The Asteroid Redirect Mission will snag an asteroid up to around 1000 tons, and is expected to cost $2.6 billion, according to estimates by NASA Glenn. The upper end of your calculation puts returning that at $100 billion, which doesn't really seem to fit under "very optimistic estimates for reduction in launch and spacecraft costs" but rather pessimistic assumptions.

I think we can make some big reductions in cost to return asteroid material. To use the most obvious example, if you assume SpaceX is at least minimally successful with reuse, with BFR, and with building their constellation, then that implies one or two orders of magnitude reductions in launch costs and spacecraft costs. If your asteroid snatcher only costs about $10 million (extrapolation from SpaceX's satellite costs), and you can launch 10 of them on a reusable BFR flight for about $20 million, and you can reuse them several times each (say, 10 times collecting 1000 tons each) refueling their arcjets (or whatever) with water they collect in orbit, then you've collected 100,000,000kg of material for about $120 million, for cost of about $1.2/kg. THAT is the optimistic estimates you should be using to see if this idea has any merit at all.

[Impaler]

I'd say that's some numbers you pulled out of thin air to arbitrarily match the $1.20 valuation per kg of Asteroid material I came up with earlier.

Hyabusa not ARM is the basis for comparison as I was talking about return of Asteroid material to Earth surface.  ARM MIGHT put an asteroid in high lunar orbit, that is very different and very distant in Delta V from bringing it to Earths surface.  The SpaceX satellites are going to mass ~250 kg, that's tiny compared to the ARM vehicle, and we don't have any in-situ propellent production from asteroids to give us things like 10x reuse.  All of that would take the decades, which was my point, the breakthroughs might happen but they won't happen FOR DECADES so anyone thinking about Asteroid retrieval now has to think in small amounts, 1 ton max.

[Robotbeat]

I'd say that's some numbers you pulled out of thin air to arbitrarily match the $1.20 valuation per kg of Asteroid material I came up with earlier.
....

Honestly, it's complete coincidence. I didn't know you had suggested $1.20/kg.

[llanitedave]

... Your asteroid mine is a money loser...

As far as I can tell, that's the assumption that you started with, not a conclusion you arrived at.

I arrived at this conclusion well before the thread began.  I'm sure a previous conclusion brought into a new discussion can look a lot like a starting assumption.


I would have loved for you to convince me to change my mind.  I think asteroids and comets are the key to the future of humanity, long-term.  But taking those first steps is going to be very difficult, and your case here is simply not compelling.

[Impaler]

$100 a GRAM

From where are you getting that number? Apparently, asteroid specimen typically sell for 1-2 $/gram [1][2], rare types for more [3][4] (with the emphasis on rare – once you bring down a tonne of that stuff, it's price will plummet significantly).
Needless to say, this makes the raw asteroid material market a non-starter.

[1] http://www.meteorites-for-sale.com/gebel-kamil.html
[2] http://www.meteorites-for-sale.com/imilchil-meteorite.html
[3] http://www.aerolite.org/articles/how-much-is-a-meteorite-worth.htm
[4] http://www.meteorites-for-sale.com/dorbigny-meteorite.html

Did you examine your own links??? You have $400 a gram examples!  As to rarity, first off ANYTHING brought back by artificial means is immediately the rarest type EVER SOLD, you see Meteorites like most collectables thrive off PROVENANCE, if a Meteorite was witnessed when it fell to Earth that alone increases it's value, if it crushed some car when it landed (true story), again more value, it's ALL about the STORY.  And Asteroids recovered by a company like Planetary Resources would be a darn good story, every person on this forum would value such a specimen ABOVE that of naturally fallen meteorite.

I would actually expect $1000 a gram to be within reason but you see I was being conservative at $100 a gram, break even on the value you can get for any Meteorite and make your profit margin on the extra value from the provenance.  I assumed only that Planetary Resources could and would do the minimum prospecting and bring back an Iron or stony-Ion and not a lump of featureless rock looking like cement.

With regard to the size of the market, your estimate that 1 ton of material would make the market plummet is clearly baseless speculation.  I  have some first hand experience having been to the Tucson gem and mineral show in which TRUCK LOADS of meteorite material are brought in every year for whole-sale.  The quantities are simply staggering and the market can absorb many tons of new meteorite every year, indeed it already absorbs that much from meteorite hunters.  I do not have a number for the total sales volume but I would wager it to be in the multiple millions, and it is a rapidly growing trade too.

Also the collection rate for one mission is not the per year sale rate, as I've said repeatedly once you have the material you let it out into the market at YOUR chosen rate, like De Beers, it is thus trivially easy to avoid flooding the market for collectables.  Most rare mineral and specimens are already dispersed into the market in this way due to the intermittent nature of their discovery, the prospectors need a steady income and would be doubly foolish to try to sell everything they have as soon as it's collected.

The goal of Planetary Resources would be to validate tech, generate publicity and public interest, establish legal precedent for ownership and chain of custody, all while turning a modest profit on something that can be done reasonably near-term.

I think some people are expressing disdain for sale of meteorites as souvenirs simply because it doesn't fit into their shiny 'vision' for space, that souvenirs are crass and not 'real' utilization of space resources which must be 'practical' like making propellents or the hulls of spaceships.  But this is a misguided view, ANY utilization advances the general goal of getting more utilization of every kind, we must crawl before we can walk.  By any objective standards ALL government activity in space so far has been to collect souvenirs, we just call them 'scientific samples' and put them in museums rather then private collections.  The ability for private industry to do what was once so expensive only governments could do it is supposed to be the hallmark of improving access to space, so why would we disdain the collection and sale of private souvenirs?  It is nothing more then the replication of what governments did before.

[ChrisWilson68]

I think some people are expressing disdain for sale of meteorites as souvenirs simply because it doesn't fit into their shiny 'vision' for space, that souvenirs are crass and not 'real' utilization of space resources which must be 'practical' like making propellents or the hulls of spaceships.  But this is a misguided view, ANY utilization advances the general goal of getting more utilization of every kind, we must crawl before we can walk.  By any objective standards ALL government activity in space so far has been to collect souvenirs, we just call them 'scientific samples' and put them in museums rather then private collections.  The ability for private industry to do what was once so expensive only governments could do it is supposed to be the hallmark of improving access to space, so why would we disdain the collection and sale of private souvenirs?  It is nothing more then the replication of what governments did before.

I think discussions go so much better when people confine themselves to responding to what other people have said, not what people imagine someone else is secretly thinking.

[AdrianW]

1) Did you examine your own links???
2) You have $400 a gram examples!
3) And Asteroids recovered by a company like Planetary Resources would be a darn good story, every person on this forum would value such a specimen ABOVE that of naturally fallen meteorite.

1) Yes, I did. Please assume good faith in this discussion.

2) I know, I actually refered to them in the very post you quoted: "rare types for more [3][4] (with the emphasis on rare – once you bring down a tonne of that stuff, it's price will plummet significantly)".
Look at the weight of the asteroid: 16.55 kg. Now what's going to happen once you put 100 times that on the market? Then it'll be worth as much as the cement-like stones, maybe a bit more if it's the beautiful kind. I will discuss your "rate to market" argument below.

3) Story of specimen #1: "It was brought down to Earth in a capsule and was processed industrially. It's the first of it's kind!"
Story of specimen #2: "It was brought down to Earth in a capsule and was processed industrially. It's from the first asteroid of its kind!"
...
Story of specimen #100,000: "It was brought down to Earth in a capsule and was processed industrially."
...
Story of specimen #10,000,000: "It was brought down to Earth in a capsule and was processed industrially."

Once you do that on an economically feasible scale, there's not a good story anymore.

I have some first hand experience having been to the Tucson gem and mineral show in which TRUCK LOADS of meteorite material are brought in every year for whole-sale.

At what price/mass? I'm not denying that you can sell tonnes of asteroid material; I'm saying that you cannot do it on that scale and still demand 100 $/g.

once you have the material you let it out into the market at YOUR chosen rate, like De Beers, it is thus trivially easy to avoid flooding the market for collectables.

Now there is a major problem you seem to be forgetting. PR cannot just hop from asteroid to asteroid and collect 100kg here, 100kg there. Getting to an asteroid and tapping it takes a large investment in time and money. Once they are there and have setup their material gathering facilities, they will have to make the most of it.

Now let's assume that they have gathered material from ten different asteroids, and per year, they can sell 10kg (=~10,000 portions) per asteroid at 100 $/g without crashing the price. That's 10m$/year in revenue, hardly enough to even cover their running costs.

Asteroids are not diamonds. It would take an incredible amount of marketing to make them so.

I think some people are expressing disdain for sale of meteorites as souvenirs simply because it doesn't fit into their shiny 'vision' for space, that souvenirs are crass and not 'real' utilization of space resources which must be 'practical' like making propellents or the hulls of spaceships.

If you're talking about me: you're wrong. My girlfriend gave me a piece of an asteroid as a Christmas present, a gesture so nice and thoughtful it nearly made me cry.
I didn't care about its rarity or price, and I don't look down on people buying or selling asteroids.