I think the comment about becoming a robot is accurate in its way, the 'pick' of a space miner is likely a semi-autonomous front loader equivalent which can process for a particular mineral/substance.
However, if you read the article (either the parent or the NYTimes one) you will see that there is some thought about bringing an asteroid to one of the Lagrange points or into a Lunar orbit (something that would make the chance of it getting away and hitting Earth unlikely). In that scenario one could imagine living in one of those inflatable habitats where you worked while you operated your remote mining pick.
Getting to and from that point would probably involve a 'loan' from the mining company, which you could pay off by mining the asteroid. Of course while you lived up there you would need things like food and stuff but you could get that at the company store. And rather than actually charge you for it they will just put it on your tab. You know, you load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. :-)
As part of one of the lunar exploration projects I was looking at various ideas for processing lunar regolith into something more useful than just dirt. Water is pretty straight forward, basically it sublimates off stuff in a vacuum and you collect it and store it. Platinum is a different story, some sort of chemical/catalyzing process is required that does not require re-charging the chemical packs either at all or very often.
If you're bringing an object that close to home, I don't know why you'd need someone up there just to teleoperate the equipment. At that distance, the lightspeed delay gets low enough that the person with the joystick could work from earth.
It might be worth having someone up there to fix the equipment when something goes wrong... unless by that time we've developed teleoperated robots with the flexibility and dexterity and sensitivity needed to make arbitrary on-site repairs. You might remember from the Hubble repair missions [1] that these relatively simple tasks you might expect to take a few hours in an Earth-based lab took /days/ of EVA time. Imagine how much more difficult such things would be when you have to squint at the job through a camera (not as good as an eyeball), use clumsy manipulators instead of your fingers (you'll have force-feedback if you're lucky, but forget about feeling textures), and with some lightspeed delay on top of that. Don't underestimate the value of other human senses, either; often the first indication of a machine failing is that it sounds or smells wrong.
I suspect this would be the likely case, and there would be repairs / refueling / retooling. If asteroid mining was anything like planet mining the ability to adapt tools on the spot and evolve quickly was a huge boon.
One of the places I like to camp is Plumas-Eureka State Park [1] which is the site of an old gold mine. The stamping mill is kind of still there. One of the things the blacksmith docent talked about was that there was a competitive advantage at a mine to having a creative blacksmith, since they could build tools well suited to the kinds of rock and conditions rather than relying on 'off the shelf' sort of designs.
It's wonderful to see people spending huge amounts of money to expand the reach of humanity instead of our capacity for narcissism. Startups like these give me hope for the future.
I'm pretty sure that if these people, with their background, were only looking to get even richer. They would use their time to invest on something here on earth.
What if it is? (I don't think it is, but let's assume for a moment). Does it matter? We will still advance as a species, regardless of the motivation of the original backers.
One of my favourite aspects of capitalism is that it can provide individuals with an incentive to achieve goals that benefit the species as a whole. Sure, the backers will get richer, and they will get loads of personal press out of it. But we will finally be expanding our resource gathering to the near solar system. That is worth feeding someone's ego IMO!
It doesn't. Just pointing out that much of what we do is driven by narcissism and it's better to accept this fact than to pretend that it is otherwise.
"One possibility the company is considering is to nudge a small asteroid, perhaps one as long as a football field, into an orbit around Earth closer than the moon."
Military applications may divert a couple billions into developing the technologies needed for peaceful applications. Even with traditional government inefficiencies, that's the equivalent of a couple hundred millions in private enterprise. Not entirely bad and consider we here at HN are not the first people to think about it.
Don't forget the Redstone and Atlas rockets that carried the Mercury capsules were (not very) modified ICBMs.
This scary thought makes up much of the backdrop for one of my favourite scifi stories, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Definitely worth a (re)read given this latest news!
If you're going to bombard something for military purposes, the most effective technique involves using a very large number of nuclear weapons, which is well within the capabilities of anyone who would try to bombard the earth from space.
Back during the Space Race, the idea that the Russians could put something into orbit wasn't just a wound to the national pride, it was a technical demonstration of the fact that they could build ICBM's. If you have the rocket power necessary to lift something into orbit, you have the rocket power necessary to put a warhead on a ballistic trajectory to any point on the earth's surface. So if you can go into space and redirect asteroids, you can obviously launch an ICBM. And at this juncture, it's probably easier to develop the technology for nuclear weapons than the technology to capture asteroids and bombard the earth with them. The only way you could do more damage more cost-effectively with asteroids is if you had an extinction-level asteroid, but there's obviously no strategic value to that.
Bear in mind, I'm only talking about how scary it is, which isn't quite the same as discussing how militarily effective it is. By which I mean--obviously orbital bombardment can be worthwhile, but it would cause no more damage than nuclear weapons, and any magnitude of orbital bombardment that wouldn't trigger a MAD reaction would have to cause strictly less damage.
However, it's easier to claim that a mining asteroid crashing into your enemy was an act of sabotage/accident/non-national terrorism than a rain of nukes with your signature on them.
> If you're going to bombard something for military purposes, the most effective technique involves using a very large number of nuclear weapons...
Only if you don't intend to occupy that land in the next 500 years, though. I'd imagine a tungsten telephone pole dropped from orbit has better deep-ground penetration than a nuke, too.
Sorry, this is a common misunderstanding. Modern nuclear weapons are generally very fuel efficient, while there are some short lived nucleotides that are brought on by the activation of elements exposed to the gamma ray flux during detonation, unless you actively try to make it 'dirty' (and thus long lived) you can go back to living there in a couple of months. The only cities which were atomically bombed are completely livable today (much less than 500 years).
The dangers of a large nuclear exchange are widespread climate change and economic disruptions brought about by entire supply chains being removed. Not 'wastelands' of bombed out cities too radioactive to visit.
An interesting thing is that ballistic missiles that go through space, like the V2 and Scud, are dramatically easier than getting into orbit. Like 10% of the energy cost. Getting your ballistic missile to the other side of the Earth, though, does seem like it would require only epsilon less energy and precision than putting it in orbit. (I haven't done the math, so I could be wrong.)
A couple founders raising money and taking pre-orders can be cash flow positive. Then they will build out the team, it likely will be cashflow negative for a while (or else they wouldn't have raised money), and then hopefully it will be cashflow positive again.
No, according to the NY Times article, "the company employs about 25 engineers and has development contracts for technologies like laser communications that it believes it will need for prospecting and mining missions."
It's a slightly deceiving statement. A company can be "cash flow positive" as long as they are bringing in more cash (by any means) than they are paying out (for any reason).
A company that gets a $1m loan then spends $100k would be "cash flow positive".
It sounds totally insane, but I read somewhere that the backers just bought a bunch of platinum puts and then announced their plans to mine it from space...
Yeah, that's true. Maybe it will work if they keep their plans secretive until right before they are able deliver large amounts of platinum-group elements? They're only going to make a significant amount on these options if very few people buy these options, otherwise a large rush would shift the market prematurely.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one that was curious about this, so:
> There are very limited laws against "insider trading" in the commodities markets, if, for no other reason, than that the concept of an "insider" is not immediately analogous to commodities themselves (e.g., corn, wheat, steel, etc.). However, analogous activities such as front running are illegal under U.S. commodity and futures trading laws. For example, a commodity broker can be charged with fraud if he or she receives a large purchase order from a client (one likely to affect the price of that commodity) and then purchases that commodity before executing the client's order in order to benefit from the anticipated price increase.
[edit]
From the Times article:
this one has the distinct advantage in that it has technical savvy and adequate capitalization to get started.
Gotta feel bad for the guys who provided the "inadequate capital" to the earlier companies that never had the "technical savvy" to make it happen.
I see the imaginations of the hackers here burning, and it excites me. I only wonder if the human species as a whole isn't too cynical to try risky space ventures again.
The public might not endorse risk that's Government sponsored, but I doubt we'll ever have a shortage of people willing to take extreme risks in the name of exploration.
Asimov would probably start kvetching about how long it took, but otherwise, probably.
The one who'd really be chortling, though, would be Heinlein, who was (almost) always a terrific proponent of privatized (almost) everything, especially space exploration.
I wouldn't say that there's much of a funding barrier in this, many of the people involved have more money than has been transmitted over kickstarter in its entire history :-). I think if you want to really help with this, you should offer to work on the project with them. I'm sure they're going to need a large amount of code written, research done, mechanical widgets made, and so on, depending on your specialty.
My inner ten-year old is leaping up and down with excitement right now. I've got visions of OMNI magazine illustrations from the 1980s in my head, with watercolors of mining ships and stylish orange-suited astronauts.
It's been so long since the future felt like it would match up to the optimistic sci-fi of a few decades ago, that I'd nearly forgotten. I know this is just one announcement of an intention, but I don't care, I'm going to go ahead and start dreaming again about seeing space elevators and terraformed moons and planets in my lifetime.
It's activities like these that inspire the Human race as a whole. I don't even care if it's successful. Just to attempt such a grand idea is a great achievement.
I definitely care if it succeeds. If they're successful, then not only will they make a lot of money and make some materials much cheaper, but it will be the thing that funds the commercial space industry and makes large-scale investment in space economically viable. That's huge.
I'm surprised at how invigorated this news is making me feel, like a weight has been lifted. SpaceX is great, but until now they've mostly been talking about missions that would have to be paid for by the government and subject to the agonizing budget-cutting that seems to happen every time an exciting mission is planned. If these guys succeed, it will emancipate the future of space exploration from congressional budget meetings forever. I don't think I realized how depressed I was about that whole situation until now. This is almost absurdly audacious and I love them for it.
The interesting thing is, we have those budget cuts to thank for this. In the 50 years since we landed on the moon, we've put a massively expensive and questionably valuable series of tubes a few hundred kilometres from the Earth's surface, and sent a couple robots to Mars. These are both notable accomplishments, but they're hardly enough to give humanity any permanent presence in space. Space exploration has languished under the management of the federal government, and it has only been since the cancellation of the Shuttle that we've seen private enterprise truly step in with any sort of sustainable mission.
I have long argued that the cuts to NASA are short-sighted and a net loss for humanity; perhaps it's time to re-evaluate that notion. They may well have been short-sighted, but the hole left by the fading government monopoly is opening up some incredibly interesting opportunities.
I can see perhaps the Chinese and maybe the Russians looking to own asteroids, but that would require they pull out of several international treaties (not that big of a deal). For the West, their model has always been government-backed private monopolies (Hudson's Bay Company, East India Company, United Fruit, modern oil companies, etc). The American government would be more than happy to let Planetary resources do their own exploitation, while throwing its military weight behind them "to protect American interests". I'd be surprised if Europe makes much of an effort.
Given the ever growing need for money I can bet a tax would be put in place to where it might not even be profitable after all the regulation and such got put into position.
Think about it. They can lay levies for everything from managing the movement of objects in space to the environmental damage and insurance against such for returning materials gained in space. Then comes the whole "it belongs to all and none" type spiel that will surely follow.
You've outlined why the Secretary General of the UN might like this idea, but why on Earth would any of the space capable nations go along with this plan?
But it's hard for governments to have its sight range longer than the election cycle. Private companies can aim for longer than 4 years without worrying about not being reelected when it's time to collect the spoils of their hard work.
That's especially true if they're controlled and funded by people with long-term vision who care more about getting important things done than they care about short-term profits. That's how SpaceX could spend so long burning money out of Elon Musk's pocket before they started turning a profit. This company has the same kind of backing: some very rich people who really want to see asteroid mining happen, and don't give a damn which congressional district gets to manufacture the hardware for it.
Yeah, that might be it - the thought that I could live another 80 years and we'd still be doing the same old shit with different paint (now with more VR!) on Earth has been somewhat banished. It might be that I'm just too used to the results of the internet and telecom revolution to make it seem futuristic since I grew up with it, and that I haven't seen the big thing that completely separates the world of my adolescence and the world of my adulthood. This seems like it could be that big thing.
This is actually one thing I've always been wondering about as a non-native speaker when reading English headlines. Is there any reason newspapers prefer this style? It sounds weird to me.
It's weird for us native speakers too, don't worry.
My guess is that it puts the information in the title in order from the most eye-grabbing to the least. (The more readable "Google Execs and James Cameron unveil Asteroid Mining Venture" puts the holy shit part of the title at the end.)
I'm not sure that's it. I don't hear of wrecking crews smashing up a derelict corporate wasteland (arguably far uglier than any natural shape) and feel some peaceful, "all is right" sensation.
Maybe something to do with the serenity of the void.
But probably more related to this being a step forward? A sense of progression? Could come from growing up reading and imagining anything to do with space exploration.
How many people on HN want to grab their colleagues right now, shake them, and yell "Why aren't you currently amazed? We're going to be mining IN FRICKIN' SPACE within our lifetimes?"
I'm supposed to be teaching a class on introductory Python (students are doing their exercises now) and I want to scrap the rest of the day to talk about how phenomenally awesome this news is.
I'll settle for a strange, quiet sense of elation.
Agreed. I've been pondering ways to bootstrap space-based mining and manufacturing for a long, long time and while I believe that I have some solid ideas, I just don't have the capital to do anything about it in the least.
They'll probably be looking to hire engineers in the next few years tho. If you've got some skills and knowledge that could be helpful. Then there's still time. :-)
If you get billions of dollars, you'll be happy that the asteroid mining guys put the space infrastructure in place to allow you to do really cool things.
I'm curious about how they plan to bring these materials here. I assume changing the trajectory of the asteroid towards Earth wouldn't be a very good idea, considering the potential risk of impact. Maybe small chunks of material brought by numerous cheap reentry capsules are the way to go.
I'd crash them into the moon (no atmosphere, so they wouldn't burn up on entry) for about a decade, then send ore-processing robots to smelt them down, then figure out later how to bring the results back.
Good idea at first look, but it would be tricky to get the trajectory right, though. The Moon's sphere of influence is tiny compared to the Earth's. You would need a guidance package and, perhaps more importantly in terms of cost, onboard rockets to change delta-v (and only one-use because they would be destroyed on impact).
I almost upvoted all of your comments - its incredible - as if someone was reading our mind and finally said, let's just do what all of us ever wanted to do!
> Planetary Resources wants to identify and characterize these top targets before it does anything else. To that end, it has designed a high-performance, low-cost space telescope that Anderson said should launch to low-Earth orbit within the next 18 to 24 months.
Wow, they are not wasting time. Last week, the idea of an asteroid mining company was still in the realm of science fiction. Today, an asteroid mining company announces that they are launching a survey telescope within two years. It feels like we are entering a new era of technological progress. It makes me wonder what other surprising announcements are coming over the next few years in other fields.
So I wonder where this puts us on the hockey stick curve of space exploration? Are we at the point of the spinning jenny or more towards the cotton gin in humanity's space timeline? Probably doesn't matter if you are sufficiently far enough into the future and have to squint backwards.
Still way, way over on the left side. We don't even have off-Earth colonies yet. We're on the cusp of being able to support cities in orbit, colonies on Mars, the Moon, and asteroids, etc. It'll be a fun ride.
Now seriously, as a software developer, what would be the best skill set to help these guys... As soon as I can afford it I would knock at their door and work for them for free. What would be most usefull for them (or spaceX)... A lot of C, C++, knowing NASA's open source repos in and out, doing MIT online courses on robotics and astrophysics... ?
Why don't you write to SpaceX and ask them what skills they are looking for? Once you work for one kind of space company, you can probably get into another one quite easily.
I'm a little surprised that billionaires haven't already done things like launched a couple more Hubble telescopes. The design is already done and debugged, just clone it, and launch it.
The same for several other successful interplanetary probes - build a (relatively) cheap fleet of clones of successful designs, and send them out to explore the solar system fully.
Heck, you don't even have to come up with all the money yourself. Sell advertising on the mission. Having a logo on the rocket, and logos on the returned pix, etc., are all fantastic opportunities for advertising.
Well yeah, it makes sense when you work it out; every fact makes sense once you work it out. And there's a certain pleasing symmetry in that control over information, and the business model of attaching advertising to that information, has made the Google execs rich enough to invest in mining asteroids. I was just reflecting on how big a change it was.
More hubble telescopes have a limited use. We can learn mysteries of the universe, sure, but they aren't great for finding readily-mineable asteroids.
Even with the James Webb telescope discovering habitable planets, we're centuries away from doing anything particularly useful at scale.
We need to focus on the the inner-solar system, the asteroid belt and a few outer moons. There are trillions of dollars in immediately-useful research to be done locally. None of which needs a deep space telescope to succeed.
No doubt with SpaceX leading the way to lower launch costs we'll see more private ventures and public/private partnerships.
However, more than likely there will need to be new designs purpose built: The manufacture of new telescopes and probes from old designs is not really practical. These craft were mostly "one offs"; their supply chains, tooling, and work groups are not waiting and ready to go. Their optical, structural, guidance, and computational technology is no longer state of the art, so you'd have to kludge together new systems based on old design docs and specifications. Not the kind of efficiency a privately funded venture would aspire to.
Far better to start anew, using the cumulative data of previous missions as a stepping stone, and employing lean design-build techniques such as SpaceX, Scaled Composites, and others have done.
I'm aware of one new generation of lean-manufactured, government-contracted observational satellites that are designed to be cheaper and replicable, but they're tactical in mission: they point towards targets on earth.
It's actually not so easy to operate a space telescope, let alone build one. More so, billionaires that would look to astronomical investments would usually be better served by merely investing in ground based instruments, which they do.
The Keck telescopes are named after the W.M. Keck foundation, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is named after the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, for example.
Space based observatories are still an enormously expensive (billion dollar) endeavor and are generally quite risky.
Even if you had blueprints that said "here's exactly how to build a space telescope" just building it and going through all the proper testing would be quite expensive. Certainly you could just privately fund, say, Johns Hopkins University's APL to build a spacecraft for you, but it would still cost hundreds of millions of dollars and still be a comparatively risky endeavor. More so when you consider that the operations side would run to the millions of dollars a month level, and require a substantial build out of infrastructure.
That sort of thing will happen, but it'll probably take until after launch costs have dropped a fair bit.
I'm not sure which Mars landers you're referring to, I'm not aware of any that were so cheap. The Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) cost $2.5 billion. The total cost of the MER rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) was $820 million. The Mars Phoenix mission cost $420 million. The Mars Pathfinder mission cost $280 million in 1996 dollars, or $380 million adjusted for inflation. There have been no other successful Mars landers within the last 2 decades.
> Even if you had blueprints that said "here's exactly how to build a space telescope" just building it and going through all the proper testing would be quite expensive.
As launch costs go down, the cost of experimentation is going to go down, leading to faster turnaround and less on-the-ground testing. Rapid iteration will eventually be the norm.
Cannot explain how much this excites me... but can somebody familiar with the matter please elaborate on the economics of this? How, exactly, do they intend to make money?
I was under the impression (from previous articles) that the raw minerals from the asteroids were worth tens or hundreds of thousands $$, while the process of bringing them to Earth would be orders of magnitude higher (millions or billions). Wouldn't it be more economical to use the materials for space ventures/stations/etc? Or are the asteroids composed of some high value materials that can be hugely profitable?
Edit: this is not to say that the venture isn't utterly amazing - but there does seem to be quite a bit of focus on profit, and that confuses me.
"A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said."
Quick Wikipedia/Google math:
1 cubic foot of Platinum = 1330 pounds [1]
Total platinum mined ever = ~25 cubic feet [1] * 1330 lbs = 33250 lbs = 532,000 oz
Current price of platinum = $1,560/oz [2]
Total value of platinum in an asteroid = $829M
And that's just the one metal, which is not the only thing they're mining. Throw the water in there for the space station(s) and it's not impossible to assume that one asteroid can gross well over $1bn -- we're not talking $trillions yet, but I bet they've modeled this out to make it a profitable venture...
(of course this doesn't account for the fact that if you suddenly double the worldwide supply of platinum overnight, the price likely won't stay at $1560/oz....but still...)
Wow! I can't believe we've only ever mined 25 cubic feet of plat. Reading your source I'm not sure it's right, "The annual supply of platinum is only about 130 tons" "one cubic foot weighs a little more than 1,330 pounds"
23*1330lb = 13,875kg ever
130tons = 117,934kg per year
"basement of less than 25 cubic feet" Maybe them meant basement of 25 square feet or 250cuft which is still tiny basement.
So that's about 28.65 * 35.29 = 1011 cubic feet, JUST in South Africa and JUST between those years.
Other estimates visualise the total ever mined as a cube of 20 feet per SIDE ([2]), which sounds a bit more like it, given the numbers above - but still feels a little bit low.
I'm not saying I don't believe any of this (I certainly do), but this whole business has HUGE bubble or even scam potential. Think those damn "moon-plots" but on a larger, perhaps government scale. Imagine some of the poor smaller governments trying to invest in the future only to find out that whoops, our data was wrong and you can only make $500k on that giant rock...
Its more than that. Merely the technologies that will get developed to build such a venture can patented and billions can be made out of them.
Also they are talking of water, that means resources for the next permanent space stations. Building oxygen gardens in space and space colonies. Stuff and resources that require maintaining large space colonies.
Considering projects of such big ambitions, the investments and associated risks we are taking is chicken feed.
The raw materials are potentially worth trillions.
Economic growth in China and India has caused a huge increase the the price of many commodities, and economists have been projecting gloom and doom because he future looks to be resource-constrained.
But they weren't taking into account the one million asteroids in the solar system, many of which contain billions of tons of resources each.
This can really reshape fundamental assumptions about the future. Of course, it will happen slowly over the course of decades, and by the time we see results we'll all feel jaded about it.
The intent is to use the material in orbit. It costs loads of money to send stuff to orbit (e.g. for the ISS) and this could be cheaper, especially for bulky stuff.
Bringing it all the way back to the surface is not worth the energy required.
The intent is to use the water in orbit, but they're saying they'll bring the platinum down here. If you're already in earth orbit, going back to the surface doesn't take much energy.
If we want to move stuff around in space what matters is the delta v or change in velocity. Fortunately since we are de orbiting a satellite, we can use aerobraking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobraking. So we just need to slow down the craft and a make fall with a parachute. If we had to lift the mass off the moon or mars we would have to spend a lot of money. Just getting it to the surface of the earth from orbit is much much cheaper.
The calibre of the backers leaves me certain that this is not a PR stunt. Does the founder of one of the world's best known companies need any additional PR? How about the director of one of the all-time top grossing movies?
Seriously, the chances of this being just a PR stunt are practically nil. If they did want to get some individual PR, there would be cheaper ways to do it - e.g. buying a popular TV network and broadcasting PageNews 24/7, while paying people to watch it.
Do you want to bet? Your 99% certainty seems to imply that you offer 1:99 offers? At those rates I am more than happy to bet 100 GBP on the other side.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 292 ms ] threadHowever, if you read the article (either the parent or the NYTimes one) you will see that there is some thought about bringing an asteroid to one of the Lagrange points or into a Lunar orbit (something that would make the chance of it getting away and hitting Earth unlikely). In that scenario one could imagine living in one of those inflatable habitats where you worked while you operated your remote mining pick.
Getting to and from that point would probably involve a 'loan' from the mining company, which you could pay off by mining the asteroid. Of course while you lived up there you would need things like food and stuff but you could get that at the company store. And rather than actually charge you for it they will just put it on your tab. You know, you load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. :-)
As part of one of the lunar exploration projects I was looking at various ideas for processing lunar regolith into something more useful than just dirt. Water is pretty straight forward, basically it sublimates off stuff in a vacuum and you collect it and store it. Platinum is a different story, some sort of chemical/catalyzing process is required that does not require re-charging the chemical packs either at all or very often.
It's hard to be satirical about the future when all this stuff keeps coming true. ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125#Extra-vehicular_activi...
One of the places I like to camp is Plumas-Eureka State Park [1] which is the site of an old gold mine. The stamping mill is kind of still there. One of the things the blacksmith docent talked about was that there was a competitive advantage at a mine to having a creative blacksmith, since they could build tools well suited to the kinds of rock and conditions rather than relying on 'off the shelf' sort of designs.
[1] http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=507
It's wonderful to see people spending huge amounts of money to expand the reach of humanity instead of our capacity for narcissism. Startups like these give me hope for the future.
When it finally happens, I'll say it was about time.
One of my favourite aspects of capitalism is that it can provide individuals with an incentive to achieve goals that benefit the species as a whole. Sure, the backers will get richer, and they will get loads of personal press out of it. But we will finally be expanding our resource gathering to the near solar system. That is worth feeding someone's ego IMO!
I hope they're careful. :-)
Don't forget the Redstone and Atlas rockets that carried the Mercury capsules were (not very) modified ICBMs.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rocks_Are_Not_Free!#.T5aK4Kf...
Back during the Space Race, the idea that the Russians could put something into orbit wasn't just a wound to the national pride, it was a technical demonstration of the fact that they could build ICBM's. If you have the rocket power necessary to lift something into orbit, you have the rocket power necessary to put a warhead on a ballistic trajectory to any point on the earth's surface. So if you can go into space and redirect asteroids, you can obviously launch an ICBM. And at this juncture, it's probably easier to develop the technology for nuclear weapons than the technology to capture asteroids and bombard the earth with them. The only way you could do more damage more cost-effectively with asteroids is if you had an extinction-level asteroid, but there's obviously no strategic value to that.
Bear in mind, I'm only talking about how scary it is, which isn't quite the same as discussing how militarily effective it is. By which I mean--obviously orbital bombardment can be worthwhile, but it would cause no more damage than nuclear weapons, and any magnitude of orbital bombardment that wouldn't trigger a MAD reaction would have to cause strictly less damage.
However, it's easier to claim that a mining asteroid crashing into your enemy was an act of sabotage/accident/non-national terrorism than a rain of nukes with your signature on them.
Only if you don't intend to occupy that land in the next 500 years, though. I'd imagine a tungsten telephone pole dropped from orbit has better deep-ground penetration than a nuke, too.
The dangers of a large nuclear exchange are widespread climate change and economic disruptions brought about by entire supply chains being removed. Not 'wastelands' of bombed out cities too radioactive to visit.
I've spent my life listening to people talk about scary scenarios of uninhabitable wastelands full of radioactive waste.
I don't know if the misunderstanding comes from intentional propaganda from the anti-nuclear folk, or a misunderstanding of what 'half life' means.
Either way, I routinely used to ask people : if nuclear bombs make a place uninhabitable, how come Mazdas are still made in Hiroshima?
How is this possible?
A couple founders raising money and taking pre-orders can be cash flow positive. Then they will build out the team, it likely will be cashflow negative for a while (or else they wouldn't have raised money), and then hopefully it will be cashflow positive again.
A company that gets a $1m loan then spends $100k would be "cash flow positive".
It says that Diamandis (the founder of Planetary Resources) may have been joking when he made these plans to buy options.
> There are very limited laws against "insider trading" in the commodities markets, if, for no other reason, than that the concept of an "insider" is not immediately analogous to commodities themselves (e.g., corn, wheat, steel, etc.). However, analogous activities such as front running are illegal under U.S. commodity and futures trading laws. For example, a commodity broker can be charged with fraud if he or she receives a large purchase order from a client (one likely to affect the price of that commodity) and then purchases that commodity before executing the client's order in order to benefit from the anticipated price increase. [edit]
Gotta feel bad for the guys who provided the "inadequate capital" to the earlier companies that never had the "technical savvy" to make it happen.
I see the imaginations of the hackers here burning, and it excites me. I only wonder if the human species as a whole isn't too cynical to try risky space ventures again.
The one who'd really be chortling, though, would be Heinlein, who was (almost) always a terrific proponent of privatized (almost) everything, especially space exploration.
It's been so long since the future felt like it would match up to the optimistic sci-fi of a few decades ago, that I'd nearly forgotten. I know this is just one announcement of an intention, but I don't care, I'm going to go ahead and start dreaming again about seeing space elevators and terraformed moons and planets in my lifetime.
Great story to read before bed.
It's activities like these that inspire the Human race as a whole. I don't even care if it's successful. Just to attempt such a grand idea is a great achievement.
I have long argued that the cuts to NASA are short-sighted and a net loss for humanity; perhaps it's time to re-evaluate that notion. They may well have been short-sighted, but the hole left by the fading government monopoly is opening up some incredibly interesting opportunities.
If governments get a clue of how valuable space real estate, energy and resources can be. Expect a space race, like weapons race.
In fact you can expect wars on the basis of who controls which asteroids and who gets to stay where on mars.
Given the ever growing need for money I can bet a tax would be put in place to where it might not even be profitable after all the regulation and such got put into position.
Think about it. They can lay levies for everything from managing the movement of objects in space to the environmental damage and insurance against such for returning materials gained in space. Then comes the whole "it belongs to all and none" type spiel that will surely follow.
It really is a powerful feeling to know the push to space is back on.
"Google execs have backed an asteroid mining venture. In other news, James Cameron has been unveiled."
Then, after that horrendous attempt at comprehension, it came up with this, which was only slightly better:
"James Cameron has unveiled an asteroid mining venture that is backed by Google execs."
My guess is that it puts the information in the title in order from the most eye-grabbing to the least. (The more readable "Google Execs and James Cameron unveil Asteroid Mining Venture" puts the holy shit part of the title at the end.)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/fanfare-for-...
Maybe something to do with the serenity of the void.
But probably more related to this being a step forward? A sense of progression? Could come from growing up reading and imagining anything to do with space exploration.
How many people on HN want to grab their colleagues right now, shake them, and yell "Why aren't you currently amazed? We're going to be mining IN FRICKIN' SPACE within our lifetimes?"
I'll settle for a strange, quiet sense of elation.
1. extract raw materials
2. apply labor + capital + innovation + time
3. sell final product for more than cost of inputs
4. Profit!!!
This announcement takes #1 literally out of this world. Still dirty perhaps, but beautiful.
Seriously. Space mining and pressure from environmentalism is going to turn this whole field into rivers of gold ... in the sky.
If I had a few billion dollars I'd (like to think I'd) happily plonk my cash into space mining. Even if I was unlikely to see a return before I died.
As a scientist, I am so thrilled about this idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Education_(novel)
Wow, they are not wasting time. Last week, the idea of an asteroid mining company was still in the realm of science fiction. Today, an asteroid mining company announces that they are launching a survey telescope within two years. It feels like we are entering a new era of technological progress. It makes me wonder what other surprising announcements are coming over the next few years in other fields.
So I wonder where this puts us on the hockey stick curve of space exploration? Are we at the point of the spinning jenny or more towards the cotton gin in humanity's space timeline? Probably doesn't matter if you are sufficiently far enough into the future and have to squint backwards.
The same for several other successful interplanetary probes - build a (relatively) cheap fleet of clones of successful designs, and send them out to explore the solar system fully.
Heck, you don't even have to come up with all the money yourself. Sell advertising on the mission. Having a logo on the rocket, and logos on the returned pix, etc., are all fantastic opportunities for advertising.
Even with the James Webb telescope discovering habitable planets, we're centuries away from doing anything particularly useful at scale.
We need to focus on the the inner-solar system, the asteroid belt and a few outer moons. There are trillions of dollars in immediately-useful research to be done locally. None of which needs a deep space telescope to succeed.
However, more than likely there will need to be new designs purpose built: The manufacture of new telescopes and probes from old designs is not really practical. These craft were mostly "one offs"; their supply chains, tooling, and work groups are not waiting and ready to go. Their optical, structural, guidance, and computational technology is no longer state of the art, so you'd have to kludge together new systems based on old design docs and specifications. Not the kind of efficiency a privately funded venture would aspire to.
Far better to start anew, using the cumulative data of previous missions as a stepping stone, and employing lean design-build techniques such as SpaceX, Scaled Composites, and others have done.
I'm aware of one new generation of lean-manufactured, government-contracted observational satellites that are designed to be cheaper and replicable, but they're tactical in mission: they point towards targets on earth.
The Keck telescopes are named after the W.M. Keck foundation, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is named after the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, for example.
Space based observatories are still an enormously expensive (billion dollar) endeavor and are generally quite risky.
Also, the Mars landers cost $250M, well within the budget of a billionare investor.
That sort of thing will happen, but it'll probably take until after launch costs have dropped a fair bit.
I'm not sure which Mars landers you're referring to, I'm not aware of any that were so cheap. The Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) cost $2.5 billion. The total cost of the MER rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) was $820 million. The Mars Phoenix mission cost $420 million. The Mars Pathfinder mission cost $280 million in 1996 dollars, or $380 million adjusted for inflation. There have been no other successful Mars landers within the last 2 decades.
As launch costs go down, the cost of experimentation is going to go down, leading to faster turnaround and less on-the-ground testing. Rapid iteration will eventually be the norm.
I was under the impression (from previous articles) that the raw minerals from the asteroids were worth tens or hundreds of thousands $$, while the process of bringing them to Earth would be orders of magnitude higher (millions or billions). Wouldn't it be more economical to use the materials for space ventures/stations/etc? Or are the asteroids composed of some high value materials that can be hugely profitable?
Edit: this is not to say that the venture isn't utterly amazing - but there does seem to be quite a bit of focus on profit, and that confuses me.
"A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said."
Quick Wikipedia/Google math:
1 cubic foot of Platinum = 1330 pounds [1]
Total platinum mined ever = ~25 cubic feet [1] * 1330 lbs = 33250 lbs = 532,000 oz
Current price of platinum = $1,560/oz [2]
Total value of platinum in an asteroid = $829M
And that's just the one metal, which is not the only thing they're mining. Throw the water in there for the space station(s) and it's not impossible to assume that one asteroid can gross well over $1bn -- we're not talking $trillions yet, but I bet they've modeled this out to make it a profitable venture...
[1] - http://www.gold-eagle.com/analysis/platinum.html [2] - http://www.kitco.com/market/
(of course this doesn't account for the fact that if you suddenly double the worldwide supply of platinum overnight, the price likely won't stay at $1560/oz....but still...)
23*1330lb = 13,875kg ever
130tons = 117,934kg per year
"basement of less than 25 cubic feet" Maybe them meant basement of 25 square feet or 250cuft which is still tiny basement.
According to [1], 614,631 kg were mined in South Africa (which accounts for about 80% of world production) between 2002 and 2009.
Density of platinum = 21.45g/cm^3 = 21.45 * 10^6 g/m^3 = 21.45 * 10^3 kg/m^3
=> total volume mined 2002 - 2009 = 614631 / 21450 = 28.65 m^3 approx.
So that's about 28.65 * 35.29 = 1011 cubic feet, JUST in South Africa and JUST between those years.
Other estimates visualise the total ever mined as a cube of 20 feet per SIDE ([2]), which sounds a bit more like it, given the numbers above - but still feels a little bit low.
[1] http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?country=za&product=p...
[2] http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm
So, for $1BN you could have: Instagram, SpaceX, or small asteroid. Ha!
Also they are talking of water, that means resources for the next permanent space stations. Building oxygen gardens in space and space colonies. Stuff and resources that require maintaining large space colonies.
Considering projects of such big ambitions, the investments and associated risks we are taking is chicken feed.
Economic growth in China and India has caused a huge increase the the price of many commodities, and economists have been projecting gloom and doom because he future looks to be resource-constrained.
But they weren't taking into account the one million asteroids in the solar system, many of which contain billions of tons of resources each.
This can really reshape fundamental assumptions about the future. Of course, it will happen slowly over the course of decades, and by the time we see results we'll all feel jaded about it.
But tonight I feel positively thrilled.
Bringing it all the way back to the surface is not worth the energy required.
Seriously, the chances of this being just a PR stunt are practically nil. If they did want to get some individual PR, there would be cheaper ways to do it - e.g. buying a popular TV network and broadcasting PageNews 24/7, while paying people to watch it.