News Is James Cameron launching an asteroid mining company? (Planetary Resources thread)

[Urwumpe]

You're assuming it has to lose money.
A key fact is the cost to space can be cut by two orders of magnitude by reusability as Elon Musk has been saying. This would majorly reduce the launch cost portion of the equation.

And cash does grow on trees and pigs can fly. Easily.

 

[RGClark]

And cash does grow on trees and pigs can fly. Easily.

I believe it can be done easily. Elon Musk believes it can be done, but not easily. Quite likely SpaceX will have tested their reusable Falcon 9 before this
asteroid mining venture gets to the full operational level. So we will have a better idea if his prediction of cutting the costs to space by two orders of magnitude holds valid.

Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

So we will have a better idea if his prediction of cutting the costs to space by two orders of magnitude holds valid.

A launch cost of 250,000 USD would just afford you about 5000 engineer hours (lowest bidder, in reality around 2000 hours only) if you ignore all material costs. That is one month of employment for 20 engineers, no R&D for improvements, no marketing, no legal department for the paperwork.

Unless you want to claim that the rocket will fly from love and Musks hot air alone, such launch cost claims are just marketing speech. Reducing the launch costs by factor 10 would already be an epic achievement.

 

[RGClark]

A launch cost of 250,000 USD would just afford you about 5000 engineer hours (lowest bidder, in reality around 2000 hours only) if you ignore all material costs. That is one month of employment for 20 engineers, no R&D for improvements, no marketing, no legal department for the paperwork.
Unless you want to claim that the rocket will fly from love and Musks hot air alone, such launch cost claims are just marketing speech. Reducing the launch costs by factor 10 would already be an epic achievement.

Actually, reducing the cost of a Falcon 9 launch by two orders of magnitude would take it to $500,000 per launch. He believes the turnaround time can be reduced to days with reusability; so this is well within the required labor costs.

Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

Actually, reducing the cost of a Falcon 9 launch by two orders of magnitude would take it to $500,000 per launch. He believes the turnaround time can be reduced to days with reusability; so this is well within the required labor costs.

Currently, they can't even assemble and launch a Falcon 9 in 3 months.

And $500,000 per launch isn't making his claims more realistic. Alone getting the first stage back to the launch site in his reuseable concept would cost more than half of the $500,000 when done by plane, and about $100,000 if done by ship.

 

[FADEC]

Quite likely SpaceX will have tested their reusable Falcon 9 before this asteroid mining venture gets to the full operational level.

Indeed. Especially because the asteroid mining venture likely will remain nothing more than a big viral campaign.

But I also think that SpaceX won't become what Musk is dreaming about: a company that flies to Mars in 10 to 15 years from now, and launching Falcon 9 and 9 heavy more than one time per month for customers all around the world.

It's great to see that people at least are dreaming about something and are willing to spend money on. But there is also a noticeable delusion of grandeur. It's a mixture of great stuff and unrealistic assumptions.

 

[T.Neo]

Wrong process, electrolysis is not very popular for bulk production. Steam reforming from methane is the primary process on Earth. Only 5% of the hydrogen on Earth comes from electrolysis.

I assumed that electrolysis is generally assumed for offworld ISRU concepts. What kind of on-site infrastructure is necessary for creating hydrogen and oxygen from water ice via this process?

they think that even if the cost is brought down to x/100 , they can earn money by selling water at x/100.

That is a pretty daring claim. Going by the figure they've stated in their promotional materials ($20 000 per litre, I believe), that'd be only 200 dollars per kilogram...

and Musks hot air

Perhaps if all this hot air can be captured in some manner, and directed through some sort of rocket nozzle... launch costs could be reduced by two orders of magnitude! :rofl:

 

[orb]

SPACE.com: Asteroid Mining No Crazier Than Deep-Sea Drilling, Advocates Say

 

[FADEC]

"They've literally created robotic cities on the bottom of the ocean, 5, 10 thousand feet below the ocean's surface — fully robotic cities that then mine 5 to 10 thousand feet down below the ocean floor to gain access to oil," Diamandis said Tuesday. "For me, that kind of work makes going to the asteroids to extract resources look easy."

:facepalm:

The ocean is not the solar system, and asteroids are farther away than 10 thousand feet.

They should better invest into deep-sea drilling and wake up. This viral campaign is going out of control :lol:

 

[Ark]

:facepalm:

The ocean is not the solar system, and asteroids are farther away than 10 thousand feet.

They should better invest into deep-sea drilling and wake up. This viral campaign is going out of control :lol:

Well, BP's busted well might as well have been on an asteroid for all they were able to do about fixing it.

 

[Hartmann]

The last time that i saw something like this was when Howard Hughes builded USNS Glomar Explorer with the porpouse to extract Manganese modules from the sea floor .This [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_geology"][/ame] cover story became very influential, spurring many others to examine the idea. But it was a secret plan to recover K-129 , a soviet submarine lost in April 1968. :hmm:

I hope that this could be for real and not a marketing operation or something like this.


[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule"][/ame]

 

[Mandella]

The last time that i saw something like this was when Howard Hughes builded USNS Glomar Explorer with the porpouse to extract Manganese modules from the sea floor .This cover story became very influential, spurring many others to examine the idea. But it was a secret plan to recover K-129 , a soviet submarine lost in April 1968. :hmm:

I hope that this could be for real and not a marketing operation or something like this.

Ya know, if they've detected a monolith out there on an asteroid, and this is the cover story to get Floyd and HAL out there to look at it...

Fine. We take what we can get.

:lol:

 

[RGClark]

In regards to the reason for this endeavor, several studies have shown many of the important metals for high technology such as platinum at present global growth rates, especially in the emerging economies such as China, will be depleted within decades:

Earth's natural wealth: an audit
23 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
David Cohen
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm

If these reports are true, and there is some uncertainty in the estimates, then such asteroid mining missions might turn out to be not amusing topics of discussion, but actual necessities.


Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

In regards to the reason for this endeavor, several studies have shown many of the important metals for high technology such as platinum at present global growth rates, especially in the emerging economies such as China, will be depleted within decades:

I would be careful with extrapolations. Some century ago, people estimated that in the year 2000, we would be living below meters of horse excrement.

Also your study ignores the development of platinum recycling - a lot of the platinum is actually in old cars and can be recycled, though with a hefty price.

 

[T.Neo]

Asteroid Mining No Crazier Than Deep-Sea Drilling, Advocates Say

I don't know much about deep-sea drilling, and I don't think anyone really knows that much about how to mine asteroids at this point, but that sounds like a pretty bad analogy to me. The environment they're working in is totally different, the resources they're trying to extract have a totally different nature, the hardware on the asteroid has to face an entirely different set of challenges and needs entirely different solutions.

Not to mention the fact that getting your hardware to the work site is a whole lot more expensive. Sinking stuff is so cheap that people do it even when they don't want to.

 

[Urwumpe]

Also, even the deepest point of the ocean is now just 2 hours away - in two hours we can't even reach the moon currently.

 

[Sky Captain]

I don't know much about deep-sea drilling, and I don't think anyone really knows that much about how to mine asteroids at this point, but that sounds like a pretty bad analogy to me. The environment they're working in is totally different, the resources they're trying to extract have a totally different nature, the hardware on the asteroid has to face an entirely different set of challenges and needs entirely different solutions.

Not to mention the fact that getting your hardware to the work site is a whole lot more expensive. Sinking stuff is so cheap that people do it even when they don't want to.

I think they were comparing deep sea drilling to asteorid mining because both operations are extremely challenging and require massive multi billion initial investment to turn profit, the profit part being big unknown in case of asteorid mining. In both cases major mistakes and screwups also cost billions to fix.
Deep sea drilling had the advantage it developed incrementaly, people didn't immediatly go from land drillling to deap sea drilling requiring fully robotic operations. They started in shallow waters easily accesible to human divers and then gradually built up technology and experiance to access gas and oil reserves located in deep ocean.
In case of asteorid mining even first steps are multi billion endeavours and probability of multi billion failure very high because nothing like that has ever done before.

 

[RGClark]

I would be careful with extrapolations. Some century ago, people estimated that in the year 2000, we would be living below meters of horse excrement.

Also your study ignores the development of platinum recycling - a lot of the platinum is actually in old cars and can be recycled, though with a hefty price.

True. And that article seems to imply the uncertainty in the estimates is due to how the producers are reporting their stocks and expected remaining mine-able ore. So clearly it must be determined how accurate these reported amounts are, i.e., if there really is impending scarcity or if the mine companies are reporting scarcities to artificially keep the prices high.

Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

True. And that article seems to imply the uncertainty in the estimates is due to how the producers are reporting their stocks and expected remaining mine-able ore. So clearly it must be determined how accurate these reported amounts are, i.e., if there really is impending scarcity or if the mine companies are reporting scarcities to artificially keep the prices high.

Bob Clark

Or even the opposite, like we have the phenomena of peak oil in data, despite producers claiming exactly the opposite.

Also, you should not regard "Business as Usual" as a good base for extrapolations... markets adapt pretty fast, especially in time frames beyond one decade. And asteroid mining is just the most expensive form of getting such minerals.

 

[RGClark]

True. And that article seems to imply the uncertainty in the estimates is due to how the producers are reporting their stocks and expected remaining mine-able ore. So clearly it must be determined how accurate these reported amounts are, i.e., if there really is impending scarcity or if the mine companies are reporting scarcities to artificially keep the prices high.

Bob Clark

But with some of these key minerals predicted to run out within two decades clearly this is something that needs to be determined definitively. Maybe we need to send in UN inspectors into their accounting departments and into their actual mines like we send in inspectors for rogue nuclear states.

In any case, here are some peer-reviewed papers that discuss this issue:

Metal stocks and sustainability.
R. B. Gordon*,
M. Bertram†,‡, and
T. E. Graedel†,§
PNAS January 31, 2006 vol. 103 no. 5 1209-1214.

Abstract
The relative proportions of metal residing in ore in the lithosphere, in use in products providing services, and in waste deposits measure our progress from exclusive use of virgin ore toward full dependence on sustained use of recycled metal. In the U.S. at present, the copper contents of these three repositories are roughly equivalent, but metal in service continues to increase. Providing today's developed-country level of services for copper worldwide (as well as for zinc and, perhaps, platinum) would appear to require conversion of essentially all of the ore in the lithosphere to stock-in-use plus near-complete recycling of the metals from that point forward.

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/5/1209

An impending platinum crisis and its implications for the future of the automobile.
Chi-Jen Yang
Energy Policy.
Volume 37, Issue 5, May 2009, Pages 1805-1808.

Abstract
The global demand for platinum has consistently outgrown supply in the past decade. This trend likely will continue and the imbalance may possibly escalate into a crisis. Platinum plays pivotal roles in both conventional automobile emissions control and the envisioned hydrogen economy. A platinum crisis would have profound implications on energy and environment. On the one hand, inadequate platinum supply will prevent widespread commercialization of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. On the other hand, expensive platinum may enhance the competitiveness of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-powered electric cars. Policymakers should weigh the potential impacts of a platinum crisis in energy policy.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421509000457

And of course also if such scarcity estimates are valid, then this clearly would have a major impact on the question of the profitability of the space mining ventures.


Bob Clark