Will asteroid mining be our next big achievement in space?

no the cost of sending people out is to high. the oxygen needed alone to go to the astroid belt and hang out for 6 months and come back is beyond all the space programs of earth put together to store up and put in space in 1 year

and most western nations have wing nuts like stephen hawking who fear monger about ai so no probe bots doing all the work either

also the cost for anything mined would be many times the normal rates and wouldnt sell

>>7640413
>20-40k$ per kilogram of payload transfered into low earth orbit
>asteroid mining
yeah dude it'll be totally worth it

>>7640454
Yeah, that's always my question re: this subject. WTF could you possible plan to mine that would make this anything resembling cost effective? Reminds me of bitcoin mining at this point.

>>7640461
>pull the asteroid near the earth
>spend the next dozens of years mining it

honestly what do asteroids have that we want?

>>7640488
Show me the cost/benefit analysis and convert me.

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>>7640488
>all dat delta V
>just to haul a space rock around

>>7640461
Gold, platinum, and iridium.

>>7640650
That's not a cost/benefit analysis.

Wouldn't bringing in lots of matter from space into Earth adjust it's mass and gravitational pull?

>>7641375
Yeah but at the point you could produce that much delta v you would need to have a HUGE manufacturing infrastructure in space and would be mainly supplying space colonies. Also who needs that much iridium? Seriously.

>>7640650
Gold is like 36K per kilo, good luck getting your extraction costs below 36K

>>7640413
For space application it would be a grand achievement as we advance into space.

For return mining for terrestrial applications it would signal the end of our civilization and likely the death of billions.

So be very clear on which type of space mining it is.

I think asteroid mining is the only option for extremely large scale space construction. I think a mining station that consumes, processes, refines, and manufactures a finished good would be excellent

>>7640686
Earth-based energy cost of getting to LEO is about $20/kg, with today's LNG prices. Efficiently reusable launch vehicles could reduce the launch cost to near the energy cost. Technological progress can reduce the price of energy.

There's lots of energy in space, in the form of 24/7 sunlight, and once you get to an asteroid with a substantial volatile content, there's lots of propellant.

You can't do a cost/benefit analysis when you can't estimate costs within multiple orders of magnitude. A plodding, crude, grandstanding NASA-style operation with present-day technology would be grossly uneconomical. An elegant, sophisticated, efficiency-oriented private operation with five or ten years more technological advancement might be wildly profitable.

>>7640432
>no the cost of sending people out is to high
You can do mining without sending people. What is wrong with robotic mining?


>>7640461
>cost effective
You have thought about cost going down, right? Right?

>>7640650
>Gold, platinum, and iridium.
And Helium 3. Quite a few years ago I read the value in terms of energy production when they get fusion going (sure, I know that is 30 years ahead) will be 3 billion dollars per tonne. So starting He3 mining on moon and then extending space activities to asteroid mining seems more cost effective with lower risk.

Asteroid Psyche is possibly mostly metal, perhaps the core of a destroyed planetesimal. That would be worth a fair bit.

>>7642208
Helium 3 mining on the moon is the realm of pop sci. You have to process ridiculous amounts of regolith to get even a tiny bit of He3. If you want to mine He3, you go to the gas giants. Floating airships in the clouds of Saturn, Neptune and Uranus would be much more productive. Not Jupiter though, gravity is too high for any practical rocket to escape.

>>7640432
Ah well gotta wait for that cheap reusable EMdrive rocket.

>>7642247
Just getting to Saturn takes a long time, Uranus and Neptune are even worse. And the gravity field is still substantial. It is not immediately obvious that gas giant mining is easier.

Researcher working on Titan are frequently contacted by people thinking of transporting hydrocarbons from Kraken mare so at least some people will consider long distance commuting. Still, the gravity is a lot less on Titan.

Long shot: any He3 on Titan?

>>7642718
Achieving Orbit on Saturn with a good Nuclear Thermal Rocket would only take a mass ratio of around 4 or so. (Compared to 20 for Jupiter) I don't have the numbers for Uranus or Neptune but I expect they're in the same ballpark as Saturn. As for time, that is a valid concern but if you're at the point where you can start work on He3 Mining the gas giants chances are you have a halfway decent propulsion system to cut travel time down.

I doubt that there's appreciable amounts of He3, but I'd argue that Titan's hydrocarbons strengthen the argument for He3 Mining on Jupiter. Throw in the ice in the rings and Saturn is a gold mine. All of these would be able to share orbital infrastructure, and their products could be shipped out on the same ships.

>Will asteroid mining be our next big achievement in space?
>next
Not likely. I believe asteroid/planetary mining will be a valuable technology for ISRU, but I suspect our next big achievement will be some other form of ISRU (i.e. processing of the Martian atmosphere).

However, I think the notion of asteroid mining to support Earth's economy is utterly deluded and ludicrous. I just don't see any way it could ever be competitive.

>>7642247
>Helium 3 mining on the moon is the realm of pop sci.
Everything is pop sci until it is stocked on the shop shelves. experts seriously thought noone needed computers in their homes and other experts thought 5 computers would be enough for the US. Anything else was pop sci.

>>7642784
>a good Nuclear Thermal Rocket
Now that is a long, long way from here. Just launching tiny amounts nuclear material into space is a huge undertaking, launching enough uranium for a nuclear motor would be a major effort politically, and with the shielding needed also a technical feat. Unless of course you extract the uranium from the moon.

> Titan's hydrocarbons strengthen the argument for He3 Mining on Jupiter

Really? How? Jupiter's gravitational well is huge and the radiation field is enormous. There is more or less a gigantic spark going from Jupiter to Io and back again. Not surprisingly Jupiter is a major source of radio noise energy.

Saturn's rings are beautiful and deadly. Why not rather get the ice off Titan?

>>7640413

>Unexpected, frozen lifeform is mined accidentally out of an asteroid
>Said lifeform is able to use the proteins in DNA to rebuild itself
>Discovers a fossil after roaming the earth for many years
>Reconstructs itself into a fucking tyrannosaurus
>Earth is now ruled by intelligent dinosaurs that use humans as slaves since the lifeform developed similar characteristics to humanity

Can't wait.

>>7640413
Space is too expensive. There's nothing we can do in space that we can't do on Earth.

>>7645377
>intelligent tyranosaur

You can be dinoeinstein but if you cant into thumbs you are fucked desu senpai

>>7645388

That's why the enslaved humans.

>>7641375
Everyday tons of space dust falls on earth.

>>7640413
Yes.
First we gotta get the stellerator working

Once this baby is up and running and we can make more that work we can increase efficiency of hot fusion reactors.

With THAT much energy at our disposal we can ass blast most fuel costs and focus on the production of antimatter fuel

20 mg of the stuff will get you to mars and back.

20 MG!!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3290389/Stellarator-reactor-turned-time-Strange-twisted-design-finally-make-fusion-power-reality-say-scientists.html

>>7643953
No, He3 mining on the moon for fusion fuel really is silly.

If we had He3 fusion, we'd have the much-easier D-D fusion, which produces He3 and tritium, which decays into He3. The neutron surplus could also be used to make more tritium, from lithium, which would decay into He3.

There's no way it would be more economical to mine the traces of He3 on the moon than to collect He3 as a product of a D-D power plant.

>>7640432
So send robots?

>>7640492
Gold, Platinum, Iron, Alluminum, Water, Iridium etc...

Perhaps in the future. We need better technology to make the trip safer and more cost effective.

>http://www.asterank.com/
Entertaining website if nothing else.

>>7645384
Erase all money. Do things for free.

>>7649098
It's nice to dream.

>>7640432
>kill stephen hawking and send robots

sounds like a win-win to me

>>7640413
Nope. Even if the entire asteroid is made of gold it isn't worth trying to bring it back to Earth.

>>7640432
>western nations have wing nuts like stephen hawking who fear monger about ai

but "hawking" is an AI, the actual guy is long dead, its the chair talking now

>>7650169
0/10 b8 m8

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It's cheaper to get the same metals from the sea bed, which is why deep sea mining is already a thing but asteroid mining isn't

>>7641386
Iridium ammo, for shooting space banditos

>>7642795
>However, I think the notion of asteroid mining to support Earth's economy is utterly deluded and ludicrous. I just don't see any way it could ever be competitive.
Really? You can't think of any way?

Heres one... costs are halved.

That was hard.

>>7647013
>dailymail
Heh...

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>>7650166
>implying Hawking is even alive
>implying his chair isn't being controlled by ayy lmaos

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>>7650212

All the elements in question came from space to begin with. Earth didn't natively have any of them - our current quantity came from accidental asteroid mining.

Just crashing asteroids into the middle of nowhere would cover a vast but confined region in valuable dust. You can prepare the ground, so that the dust doesn't settle into the soil, and the entire impact could take place in a valley. We might also be able to control the weather so that the wind carries away as little as possible.

Or, just admit that asteroid mining is something you do after you get into space - you send robots, build a return craft and a place to live on the asteroid, and then step aboard and get ferried to your enormous mound of wealth.

There are trillions of Oort cloud objects with diameters larger than 1km. Why the Oort cloud? Carbon - for graphene. Aside from organic molecules, all you really need is some uranium for nuclear fission - or a fusion reactor. Boeing says they have one.

In space, there's a wealth beyond our imagination. The elite and their pet nation states don't want to put people beyond their instantaneous surveillance, or give them the equipment to become economically and industrially independent of Earth. 3D printing is exactly the kind of thing you need to do this in a compact space probe, and so man's colonization of space is inevitable.

Those who don't see that inevitability simply don't want to imagine what comes next after their society's day in the sun is over.

>>7651080
If costs were halved for space travel, I recall reading that a single iron-nickel asteroid would have enough metal, if sold at current iron ore prices of about $0.05/1000kg, to give every man, woman and child on Earth alive today $1,000,000 each. Of course, so much metal would possibly collapse the price of iron, unless the demand rose at the same time. Heck, you might even get paid by the industry to NOT being an asteroid to Earth orbit....

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>>7651479
>In space, there's a wealth beyond our imagination. The elite and their pet nation states don't want to put people beyond their instantaneous surveillance, or give them the equipment to become economically and industrially independent of Earth
yeah dude, it's the government keeping the common man from asteroid mining his way to personal wealth
fucking /sci/zos and their ever-retarded shitposts

>>7652843
>Strawman
>Things the guy never said; THE POST

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>>7652887
>Things the guy never said
>The elite and their pet nation states don't want to put people beyond their instantaneous surveillance, or give them the equipment to become economically and industrially independent of Earth

>>7652843
>yeah dude, it's the government keeping the common man from asteroid mining his way to personal wealth
Imagine a different world where the government had taken as much control over aviation as it has over rocketry.

>yeah dude, it's the government keeping the common man from flying from continent to continent just for a vacation

Regardless of the excuse-makers, rockets aren't any special kind of hard. If people had tried to skip straight from the Wright Flyer to the 747, they'd have had a hell of a time with that as well.

Try to picture the history of aviation if the government had thrown enough money at the Langley Aerodrome, an expendable aircraft with no landing gear, to make it work. In a few key applications, mostly military ones, expendable aircraft could have been worth using.

There might even have been an "Apollo Project" of aviation: fly men across the ocean and back, at a billion dollars a shot, and nobody tries it again for decades. Or a "space shuttle": the government decides to develop a reusable aircraft, but also insists on making this first try at reusability one of the biggest aircraft and highest performance that has ever flown, and directives come down from the top level to give fat contracts to favored contractors even though their work is inferior, so it ends up being more expensive than an expendable aircraft.

Even in today's relatively friendly regulatory regime, you can't just build a little rocket of a few hundred pounds or a few tons and try it out. Hobbyist "high-power rockets" aren't just limited by size, but also by performance. They're kept as toys by law. If you want to build a *real* rocket and aim for space-capability, you had better have some millions of dollars to hire professional engineers and deal with the paperwork.

Can you imagine the Wright Brothers pushing through something like that to develop a manned craft today? Neither got their high school diploma, let alone any higher education.

>>7652900
>implying that was said about individuals
>implying an ever-growing number of people are not under "instantaneous" surveillance in the developed world
>implying that if you somehow were to become economically and industrially independent, someone would not find an excuse to attack and/or invade you
>implying the argument does not have a kernel of painful truth in it.

>>7640521
Well, here's the thing: there are quite a few meteors that only need small adjustments to be brought to a collision course with Earth, and that contain lots of volatile material.

You could redirect one with solar-thermal propulsion (boiling some of their volatile contents with concentrated sunlight to make a simple rocket), then cut it up, wrap the pieces, and built heat shields on them (using the asteroid's own materials) to do aerocapture into low Earth orbit. Or you could just do the in-situ reaction mass trick to propulsively brake it into a loose Earth orbit and figure things out from there. If the volatiles are too scarce and valuable, you could build a gun to launch chunks of rock or iron as reaction mass.

With something like Falcon Heavy, you could put five or ten tons of equipment on one of these asteroids per launch. A program of a few billion dollars could put a hundred tons of robotic equipment onto a target asteroid, bringing back maybe hundreds of thousand tons of raw material to Earth orbit for space industry.

>>7642247
No dropping nanocarbon nets into Jupiter's atmosphere and reeling it in like a giant fishing boat?

>>7642208
I can see robotic mining being a problem for a while. Think about transmission times from earth to the curiosity rover. The robot would need to either be completely ai to the point that it doesn't need commands (not likely), or the human operator would need to sequentially log 20 minutes of actions prior to the being performed - leaving a lot of room for error and no chance to respond with rectifying commands.

>>7640461
Wouldn't need to be something particularly rare, even if we simply got a big copper asteroid but at a high enough assay (say, 40%) that processing costs could be slashed relative to the composition of processing earth copper ores (2% is lucky now, 50 years ago anything under 5% wasn't worth mining).

>>7640488
Aren't most asteroids tiny as fuck? Unless they're made of 100% pure gold or something I don't how that would be affordable.

>>7653215
Tiny as fuck is very relative in cosmological terms.

A tiny as fuck asteroid can be the size the of los Angeles easily.

>>7653215
Well, Vesta and Pallas are over 500 km in diameter and hundreds of trillions of tons each.

There are lots of asteroids in the trillion-ton range, and they're more numerous as they get smaller.

As for ones that are relatively easy to reach, there have been nearly 1,000 "near-Earth objects" of over 1 km diameter catalogued. Anything over 1 km in diameter should be at least a billion tons.

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>>7652843

>yeah dude, it's the government keeping the common man from asteroid mining his way to personal wealth

Yes, actually. There are tons of great mines all over the planet - if I try to mine there, the government will protect the property rights of other people.

That's why the trillions of Oort cloud objects are so important - more than one per person alive today. 3D printing doesn't have to replace traditional manufacturing to allow the construction of industry on comets and asteroids - it simply has to build the absolute basics, and let traditional manufacturing do the rest.

In this thread, people have asked the very good question of where the oxygen is going to come from for years in space - the answer is, the destination itself. You prepare your habitat before you ever go there.

>/sci/zos

Private space travel proves that there is no conspiracy against people doing it themselves - the government maintains moral righteousness by virtue of the fact that it's currently too expensive to bother regulating.

It's not going to be governments that do this, because there's no benefit for them. No one is ever going to bring this wealth back to Earth, because it's a waste. The spacers are going to be wealthy from the very start, no matter how poor they were on Earth.

And this isn't a pie in the sky fantasy - graphene ejects electrons when shot with a laser. The era of ultra-cheap, solar spacecraft is here. You could even launch payloads into orbit with this technology.

Schizophrenia would be if I thought the government was going to take mah rockets - all I'm saying is that they're not going to give me a free ride to a place where I can successfully declare independence.

>>7653653
People who lived independently in space couldn't only successfully declare independence, they could also drop some pretty big rocks on Earth fairly easily, while being largely immune to reprisal from earthbound powers.

The bottom of a gravity well is a lousy place to fight from.