Firstly, this isn't the first time Amun 3554 mining has come up [1].
Look, I'm a sci-fi fan like so many other HNers but the economic reality just doesn't add up.
Amun 3554 has a highly eccentric orbit [2], even though it does cross Earth's orbit. JPL has data [3].
You need to consider that:
1. It's expensive to get into orbit. Even at SpaceX's prices, you're talking ~$1000/kg for LEO insertion;
2. You need to get equipment to the asteroid;
3. You need to get to the asteroid. Proximity to Earth isn't the problem here. The problem is the delta-V required to match velocities;
4. You either need to bring back the entire asteroid, which would require a massive amount of delta-V, or you need to mine the asteroid, which would take a massive amount of equipment;
5. If you get raw materials back to Earth orbit, depending on the application, you may then need to get them back to Earth, which granted is significantly easier than escaping Earth's gravity; and
6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.
I am assuming this would be an automated operation as the cost of manned spaceflight is significantly higher and automated systems should hopefully improve in the intervening years.
Now, compare this to some other materials we have on Earth. Iron is pretty abundant (both on Earth and in the universe, due to it's energy relationship with fusion). On Earth, we dig up iron for under $30/ton and can ship it anywhere on Earth for another $50-100/ton (IIRC).
For the cost of a single SpaceX launch you'd need to bring back about a million tons of iron to be on the same scale.
Obviously that's why they're targeting much more valuable materials like platinum but I hope that puts things in perspective.
Our society is built on cheap and plentiful resources (fossil fuels, metals and minerals). As abundant as they might be in space, increasing the cost of iron 1000 times is going to have profound implications for our entire species. At some point of course recycling makes more economic sense but that's just a temporary cushion (eg you lose materials through corrosion).
I believe we're coming to a resources-crunch within the next 100-200 years that will result--one way or another--in a massive drop in population and a fundamental change in our society. Let's just hope we survive it.
As much as I'd wish otherwise I have a hard time envisioning space mining or even prolonged living in space as being economically viable in any way, shape or form.
I wonder if all of the challenges you've just listed aren't what makes this an attractive problem for highly speculative investment. The rock has value, but solving the problems of economically acquiring, transporting, and selling the materials will produce innovations that can be applied in more mundane terrestrial businesses. You may never mine the rock but you might end up with stronger and lighter materials, more efficient fuel, automated manufacturing, automated transportation, or even just economic models for maximizing profits when you have enough supply of a resource to devalue an entire market.
If using Python used to be a way for entrepreneurs to find top programmers, perhaps being conversant in some or part of this kind of space problem is a way for entrepreneurs and investors to find people with breakthrough ideas.
I agree with you on the issues regarding the orbital mechanics of getting to the asteroid and getting the goods back to Earth, but I think you've missed one important idea regarding how these materials could be used.
Assume $1k/kg for LEO insertion. That means a metric ton of iron, in space, would cost a million dollars if you had to ship it from Earth.
Let's now say that you wanted to build a large space-based manufacturing facility, focused on producing high-value goods like zero-gravity metals and pharmaceuticals. Shipping the raw materials from Earth to build the facility would cost around a half-billion dollars, and then afterwards, you'd need to ship them the additional materials from which to produce the goods.
Or, you can do something crazily ambitious -- figure out how to get the materials from somewhere in near-earth-orbit, and use that to bootstrap both interplanetary travel and space-based industry.
It's crazy. I know. It's crazy enough that it just might work.
Personally, I'm excited. This kind of ambition is what we need as a species right now, and I'd rather see the money spent on this than on yet another collection of mega-yachts.
So, I don't know about zero-gravity metals and pharma, but space-based mining and manufacturing is absolutely essential for producing large-scale stations, spacecraft, and other things. It costs a ton to put things into space and during that time they're subjected to a considerable amount of force. By building in space, you don't have to build for gravity (look ma, no support structures!) and don't have to concern yourself with the cost of launches.
Imagine building a massive spacecraft for long distance travel. It'd never land on a planet, just go between them; you'd take a shuttle from your planet up to the craft and leave from there. This is possible with space-based manufacturing.
Putting millions of tonnes of material into orbit is an absolutely trivial problem compared to actually making that massive spacecraft travel anywhere meaningful.
You're missing his point entirely. If there's no real market for zero-gravity metals and pharmaceuticals, the whole venture will fail fast because it can't make money.
If all you can do is build more space stuff but the stuff is more expensive than earth stuff then it's not going to work.
People are estimating £1000 per kg to get stuff into LEO. It costs less to get stuff back to Earth.
Surely they only have to beat $50,000 per kg to get the mining equipment up there and get the stuff back and they're in profit.
And they amortise the cost of getting the mining equipment up there over all the kg they mine and return. Since they're talking about 16000000000 kg of asteroid that's a lot of amortising.
And even if it doesn't have direct commercial value it has many other benefits - it is inspiring. Perhaps some children are seeing this and wanting to get into science. That's great.
But maybe I'm wrong, and I really welcome better information.
That only holds up until you start shipping a lot of Platinum down at which point the market crashes. Also, it's £620 or 1,000$ to LEO right now and 100$ /lb to LEO is possible if we scale things up far enough. What NASA found out from the shuttle program is we just don't need that much stuff in space, because once stuff is up there it can stay there for a long time.
Did you like read the thread? Point 6 in cletus' opening argument.
Rare materials will not make you as much money as you can make now because they will become not rare. So you have to make something which only can be made in space or you have to play the De Beers game, be an evil fucker and spend all eternity in hell if it existed.
Platinum is used in a lot of stuff. Catalytic convertors, electronics, but perhaps most importantly in fuel cells. Usage is going to increase dramatically, meaning people will need this stuff. Getting something in space down to Earth surface is not as expensive as escaping Earth gravity.
You really think platinum is going to drop from $50,000 per kg to something like $1,000 per kg before they've made their money back?
reduced and zero-gravity environments allow crystals to grow faster, and in more perfect configuration than gravity-bound locations. This could lead to some really interesting metal alloys.
Well, let's be cautious. The constraint of moving from the asteroid belt to near-Earth orbit is less "absurd amounts of energy" and more, "how fast do you want to get there?". More importantly, we're not necessarily going to choose the asteroid belt for our source, due to these time constraints. Measuring in terms of Earth's orbital radius ("astronomic units" or AU), the Moon is 2.5 mAU away, Mars and the asteroids are 1000+ mAU away, and the metallic asteroid (6178) 1986 DA approaches Earth's orbit within 161 mAU, which is to say nothing of Earth-crossing asteroids.
It's true that moving an asteroid would require a lot of energy simply because they're unbelievably massive; the space shuttle propulsion system might dish out something like 10^14 joules, but a typical mining asteroid is 10^13 kg or so. But apart from that, space is frictionless, and so moving a longer distance does not require much more energy, just much more time. Sending ships to and from asteroids shouldn't require an energy cost except to cut down the travel times, in principle.
Space does not have air friction, but it still has gravity, which you still need a large amount of energy to counter, if you want to move a massive object to a specific spot.
Low Earth orbit is proverbially "halfway to anywhere". That is, it's not an even more absurd amount of energy to get from elsewhere in space to LEO. (Also the idea is to mine asteroids with nearer orbits, not out in the belt.)
Which isn't to say I expect large-scale returns anytime soon.
Firstly, the article is misleading in mentioning iron, when platinum group metals are their stated focus. Platinum at $1550/oz is priced much closer to gold ($1650/oz) than to iron ($30/ ton), that's 50x the figure... 32,000x oz per ton... a combined factor of a million (1,600,000x). Note: I'm comparing refined to ore.
In addition some rare earth metals are considerably more valuable - but it's not just price, but also strategic value, as China currently is the only source for some rare earths. [Prices http://www.kitco.com/market/]
Secondly, the article is misleading in speculating on Amun. Planetary Resources is first sending telescopes (in a year or two). That's how very far they are from choosing their target.
An extremely low value-per-weight metal, in an expensive orbit, is not representative of their plans.
> but also strategic value, as China currently is the only source for some rare earths
China effectively subsidizes mining for strategic purposes. Cheaper mining = cheaper manufacturing = strong industrial base = higher employment and lots of foreign IP to acquire.
This blew up in their face for rare earths, because they are valuable enough that shipping isn't a big deal, so cheaper rare earths in China just means cheaper rare earths in Japan.
If they didn't subsidize mining, or they keep restricting exports, people will look elsewhere. I'm not sure if China has particularly good reserves, I think they just dig it up cheaper, because they want to feed their industrial base.
I said "effectively subsidizes". Environmental controls is one factor. Cheap land / water use is another. OH&S standards, favorable tax, there's a lot of ways it can be done if the government decides it's strategically important.
That attitude will start changing now that they have plenty of IP, and they no longer suck at engineering low cost stuff.
>> ... like so many other HNers but the economic reality just doesn't add up.
It's very difficult to predict what technology is gong to be available in 15-25 years. And making long-term economic predictions in the techy areas is even more difficult. A famous example: "I think there is a world market for about five computers.", Tom Watson, IBM chairman, 1958.
There is also an analogy with early days of aviation, 1905..1912. An idea that airplanes could possibly be used as a means of transportation was considered as pretty ridiculous at the time. Certainly not economically viable.
For example: "In 1905, when the Wright brothers offered their invention to the United States Army, it was rejected without any consideration. Even the patent office was skeptical; an application filed in 1903 was finally approved and granted in 1906 for a "flying machine.", from "The Spirit of Innovation", by Curtis Wright corp.
Yet technology improved. And things that haven't been economically viable "in any way, shape or form" time and time again became such.
> 6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.
For comparison, back in 2010 or so it was estimated that all the money in the world was about 70 trillion. That asteroid, if brought in it's entirety and valued at 20 trillion would represent around 30% of the world's money.
They'd have to do some pretty ingenious financial tricks to keep it from extreme devaluation: at the current prices and money supply, there just isn't enough money in the world to sell it off within the next 50-100 years - possibly more.
I think everyone here is confusing of 'total supply' with 'supply available for purchase'.
There is an analogy : the US bullion reserves are something like 12,000 tons of Gold. Obviously if this was all offered for sale at once, then the price of gold would crash. But it doesn't, because they don't.
Assuming someone is sitting on a massive lump of platinum, the market price would only be affected if they chose to dump it all on the market at once. Knowledge that the large supply of platinum exists wouldn't cause the market to crash.
There would likely be some effect of releasing more supply of platinum onto the market, but the company wouldn't be stupid enough to offer it all for sale at once. They would hold it in reserve and sell it according to demand.
So yes, increased supply would affect prices. No, it wouldn't cause chaos.
Of course, this assumes that whomever is in charge has the discipline to do it properly. Perhaps, though, human frailty would win out and your scenario would come to pass. For this, we can look back to the Spanish conquest of the gold and silver mines of South America.
> 6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.
True, but who says they have to sell it? The way I see it, if they bring that platinum back to earth, they might be better off just using it themselves. That way, yes, they are not making the market value of it in cash - instead, they are saving the market value of it in cash.
Platinum is so expensive because it is rare and you can build awesome stuff with it. If you take rare out of the equation, you can still build awesome stuff - and awesome stuff will surely always sell at a good price.
Exactly this. Think about the kind of industries that abundant platinum would make possible. Invest in those industries. Then go get the platinum... Profit!
It's the Netscape strategy. Jim Clark said "I'm selling printing presses, but first I've got to teach people to read".
The so-called browser wars were irrelevant really - Netscape's strategy was to seed the world with browsers then sell servers. My employer at the time spent millions on those servers - but as of version 3, they dropped the ball, and all their customers deserted them. That's the real story of Netscape's failure.
Sure: I understand your proposal to be that they should—after getting it to Earth—use the platinum to manufacture and sell products (rather than just selling the raw platinum) so as to maximize the value they extract from it. But that assumes that the platinum is worth (massively) more to them than it would be to the existing manufacturers of the world. Which would seem to only be the case if they were particularly skilled with manufacturing using platinum—and had the designs to do so—in some way that every other manufacturer isn't.
To put it another way: there's a reason that most of the world's terrestrial mining companies sell raw materials to manufacturers rather than manufacturing end-user products themselves.
True, but it did make me wonder: Maybe they only do that because it IS so much more profitable to just sell it off. Any company that had access to dirt-cheap platinum would surely have a huge market advantage.
Furthermore - The companies that mine the platinum may not be the technologically most advanced while Planetary Resources will surely be the most technologically advanced to have dirt-cheap platinum at their hands.
They may lose money on the first asteroid, but once they have the first one, everything should become exponentially cheaper as very little will need to be launched into LEO, and once they have a water rich rock, they can manufacture all the fuel they need, virtually for free. Once they have brought enough metals into LEO, along with some sort of manufacturing plant, they can build more miners, and they will only have to launch the complex parts into LEO, building the rest in orbit.
At some point, mining these asteroids will, for all intents and purposes, be free.
Edit: Another alternative is that these bored billionaires want to actually change the world just for fun, or to see if they can.
> Now, compare this to some other materials we have on Earth. Iron is pretty abundant (both on Earth and in the universe, due to it's energy relationship with fusion). On Earth, we dig up iron for under $30/ton and can ship it anywhere on Earth for another $50-100/ton (IIRC).
> For the cost of a single SpaceX launch you'd need to bring back about a million tons of iron to be on the same scale.
> Obviously that's why they're targeting much more valuable materials like platinum but I hope that puts things in perspective.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Obviously it's silly to spend the money to go to space and get something that's commonly available on Earth. (Although capturing an asteroid for science would be good.)
Platinum costs about $1570USD per troy ounce. There are about 32150 troy ounces in one metric ton. 32150 * 1570 == $50475500USD per metric ton.
Amun has about 16000000000 metric tons. That's about 8.07608 × 10^17 USD; with no adjustment for obvious market trashing effects of dumping that much platinum on the markets.
The problem: how much does it cost to get a metric ton from that asteroid's orbit to Earth? More than $50m. Probably more than $50b.
Failing to mention that little fact makes the article a fluff piece, and unless the company has some very convincing proposals on how to deal with it, it's little more than a scam.
If I was them, I would try to move the whole asteroid. Maybe Amun is too big, but there will be smaller ones. Whith a little billiard playing with gravity, they could be "smoothly crashed" into the Moon, or even some deserted Earth location. Maybe ideal result would be placing it in not-so-low Earth orbit and make the extracted materials go spiraling down to the surface.
Disclaimer: I haven't the faintest idea of the amount of energy needed to move celestial bodies, but I guess it could be made so the first targets will be small ones and using the resources obtained from them, create stronger and stronger infrastructure to capture bigger ones.
EDIT: Archimedes already said it. To move worlds they first need a big enough lever and a place to put it.
"Mining the Moon" as in digging holes there is not the same as picking up the pieces of a crashed metal mountain. Anyway, forget that. Put the asteroid in Earth's orbit and work from there. What about the value of a new moon that could be used as a gigantic station?
Not that I disagree with your conclusion, but increasing the actual supply doesn't necessarily have to wreak havoc on the economy if limited number of distributors are willing to control the release of the supply (which could be considered the perceived economic 'supply').
See (at least formerly) the diamond industry.
(I am not an economist, so somebody correct me if I'm terribly off base here.)
But then it's not worth a bajillion dollars anymore.
If you can only sell, let's say, 1 ton each year (worth $53 million), then the present value of the platinum needs to be discounted (because you have to finance the recovery cost upfront).
Assuming a discount rate of 5% (ridiculously low for such a high-risk operation), the present value of 1 ton of platinum delivered 364 years from today is 1 dollar. The present value of an infinite stream of annual deliveries of 1 ton of platinum is $1.1 billion.
The fact of the matter is that platinum has limited uses and even more limited supply, that's why it's very expensive. If you managed to find a huge supply of it, it wouldn't be very expensive anymore, unless you also found thousands of other extremely high-value applications for it. If you can find a way to make platinum entertain people, give them better sex lives, give them better food, help them get to work faster, help them teleport, and help them become famous, then you'd have a $20 trillion opportunity.
The main reason we aren't driving cars powered by fuel cells is that the platinum makes them too expensive. So there's one use for a high volume of platinum.
With a little googling, it looks like platinum can also be used for producing hydrogen and absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere to produce hydrocarbon fuels.
With lots of cheap platinum, we could make the whole transportation sector carbon-neutral, even if we never manage to make those 600-mile batteries.
I cannot agree with (4.) "You [..] need to bring back the entire asteroid, which would require a massive amount of delta-V".
You don't need a rocket nor fuel for the full delta-v to put the asteroid into a near earth orbit. Look how mars probes arrive: just use a tiny rocket motor to steer into the athmosphere and perform aero braking. Takes long, could even take years to reshape the orbit, but it doesn't neccessarily take much fuel. I'd just place a light-weight ion engine on the asteroid.
You still need to refine it to within the specs of something the ISS can accept. Your water might also be radioactive after having stayed millions of years in space.
Even if it costs $500 billion, or more, to create - if it's successful and you increase natural resources on Earth by $2 trillion + create a whole heck a lot of innovation in the process, it'll be a huge overall positive / success.
Perhaps though this is all a coverup plan to visit a spaceship that crashed on the moon...
The whole thing reminds me of the Spanish in the New World. They spent a lot of time and effort mining silver, the price crashed to 20% of what it had been, and as a country they were outcompeted badly by the Netherlands, their former possession (and somewhere that had few resources and little manufacturing). Good for the world as a whole, but not so good for Spain.
The problem was that Spain misjudged what was valuable in the New World. They colonized it in order to loot it, when the real value was actually in the enormous economic productive potential.
I believe we're coming to a resources-crunch within the next 100-200 years that will result--one way or another--in a massive drop in population and a fundamental change in our society. Let's just hope we survive it.
I don't believe this, and you didn't give any kind of evidence for this.
Speculatively, I think the opposite is far more likely: Not only will oil, minerals, etc. not run out, but technology will advance quite rapidly, so it will be less and less an issue. I think the big threat is unrelated sociopolitical developments that constrain freedom, innovation, and technology.
7. You need to achieve revenue at some point. No one can afford millions of "loss" forever.
If they succeed, this will be one of the longest market bet in a long while. Longer term than financing land caravans to India to buy spice, clipper to china for tea, or caravels to the americas.
>>4. You either need to bring back the entire asteroid, which would require a massive amount of delta-V, or you need to mine the asteroid, which would take a massive amount of equipment;
I was thinking they'd crash it into the far side of the moon. Is that an option?
Planetologists might dislike this option (think how archeologist would react if you offered to air drop an atom bomb on their search site).
"Practically", you would have to ship your ore / ingots back up the moons gravity well, then to earth. You would need to build a moon base, a moon maglev cannon for shipping your final product, and then, make sure you miss all this infrastructure when you "land" your bundle of resource.
This (mobile) processing plant would need to resist debris from the impact (no air = no slowing down of the debris) and the moon-quakes generated by the impact of millions of tons of dense metal ore at high speed in the vicinity. If your processing plant is far from your impact site, you need your many "harvesters" to transport your ore for a long while.
But at least you don't have to undock your processing plant from your asteroid, only its tug.
Depending on Delta-V it might also dirty up the moon's orbit.
Also, any equipment stuck on the rock is lost (equipment up there cost A + weight-in-kg(A) * 1.n * $1000, unless made "on-site"). But you might end up with an already melted pool of material.
all I hear is "blah blah blah, never been done before, too hard, no money" - same things said about flight prior to the Wright Bros. These guys (who are smarter than us) see an opportunity. I, for one, would like to see them succeed. We need to get heavy industry off of the Earth.
Look, I'm a sci-fi fan like so many other HNers but the economic reality just doesn't add up.
Amun 3554 has a highly eccentric orbit [2], even though it does cross Earth's orbit. JPL has data [3].
You need to consider that:
1. It's expensive to get into orbit. Even at SpaceX's prices, you're talking ~$1000/kg for LEO insertion;
2. You need to get equipment to the asteroid;
3. You need to get to the asteroid. Proximity to Earth isn't the problem here. The problem is the delta-V required to match velocities;
4. You either need to bring back the entire asteroid, which would require a massive amount of delta-V, or you need to mine the asteroid, which would take a massive amount of equipment;
5. If you get raw materials back to Earth orbit, depending on the application, you may then need to get them back to Earth, which granted is significantly easier than escaping Earth's gravity; and
6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.
I am assuming this would be an automated operation as the cost of manned spaceflight is significantly higher and automated systems should hopefully improve in the intervening years.
Now, compare this to some other materials we have on Earth. Iron is pretty abundant (both on Earth and in the universe, due to it's energy relationship with fusion). On Earth, we dig up iron for under $30/ton and can ship it anywhere on Earth for another $50-100/ton (IIRC).
For the cost of a single SpaceX launch you'd need to bring back about a million tons of iron to be on the same scale.
Obviously that's why they're targeting much more valuable materials like platinum but I hope that puts things in perspective.
Our society is built on cheap and plentiful resources (fossil fuels, metals and minerals). As abundant as they might be in space, increasing the cost of iron 1000 times is going to have profound implications for our entire species. At some point of course recycling makes more economic sense but that's just a temporary cushion (eg you lose materials through corrosion).
I believe we're coming to a resources-crunch within the next 100-200 years that will result--one way or another--in a massive drop in population and a fundamental change in our society. Let's just hope we survive it.
As much as I'd wish otherwise I have a hard time envisioning space mining or even prolonged living in space as being economically viable in any way, shape or form.
[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/27/technology/business2_guideto...
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3554_Amun
[3]: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=3554+Amun