Resources from outer space?

[Neonanocyborgasm]

El_Machinae got me thinking about this.

Are there any resources in outer space that would be worth the expense and effort to cart them back to Earth?

If so, what and why?

Just curious, this is something I never really thought of before.

The asteroid belt, Mars, and the Moon have massive deposits of minerals. Some worlds have deposits of Helium-3, which is a theoretical fuel for future fusion reactors. The problem is designing a freight system that is economically efficient enough such that mining these worlds would be worth the cost. It costs millions of dollars right now just to launch into space and return, but with the recent success of SpaceShipOne, this may decrease only into the thousands.

 

[The Fjonis]

My mistake. I shouldn't have introduce the Greenhouse effect.

BUT, another resource we can use from space is manufacturing. Done right, there will not be any problematic pollution, since (done right) it doesn't matter if we pollute into space. We won't be wreaking any ecosystems, just hindering where we can expand to (since we won't move where the pollution is). That means that the cost of goods that's normally devoted to pollution cleanup will go down, making goods cheaper.

Who cares about sound pollution in space? Who cares if we displace a bunch of soil on the moon? No one, and that's good for us down here.

You'd need oxygen for combustion to take place, though. Which eliminates most of space.

 

[Ultima Dragoon]

H20 combines very nicely with C02 to make sugars/plants, etc.

But you need the chemical chlorophyll to make sugar from water and carbon dioxide.

 

[Lotus49]

"Just go get the materials... and bring them here." You make it sound so simple, even if we had the practical means. The only thing that comes to my mind, is bureaucracy. Corruption, favoritism and scandal at the "Planetary Customs Federation." They'd have too much control over world markets, they could manipulate them.

"Sir, where did you get this 100k-ton load of platinum? I'm sorry, we're going to have to detain it, for inspection and analysis. You understand."

Meanwhile, this breaks the news, platinum prices go up all over the world (of course, those in league with the "PCF" have already heavily invested in platinum) - then they sell, just before the load is unleashed into the markets, driving prices downwards. Insider trading, and corruption... ugh.

The world mercantile exchanges would be volatile as h3ll.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's worth it. We're looking at a cornucopia of metals

The long-term possibilities are even more celestial. Ever heard of 3554 Amun? It's a space rock about 2 kilometers in diameter that looks as if it might have fallen straight out of The Little Prince. There are three key things to know about 3554 Amun: First, its orbit crosses that of Earth; second, it's the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroid yet discovered; and finally, it contains (at today's prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. And if you time your journey right -- 2020 looks promising -- it's easier to reach than the Moon

CNN article

 

[Urederra]

Excellent news El Mac_. I am concerned about platinumlike metals cos I use them in my reactions. They are expensive, and we cannot let run out off them

Plus, we can bake doughnuts at zero gravity over there. They will have perfect doughnut shape.

 

[El_Machinae]

Platinum is my big one, actually. It's an amazing metal with a million uses. By making platinum as cheap as we can, we make it available for all those uses. And that can be a good thing.

 

[jamiethearcher]

We can just build automated spacecraft to "guide" the asteroids into Earths atmosphere, we can use Iran as a landing pad for the incoming minerals.

LOL - If we could just find a way to do that before they get nuclear weapons, we could save ourselves ALOT of trouble down the road!

 

[Abaddon]

Bringing back an alien would sure bring in the bucks at the freak circus!?!

 

[El_Machinae]

Discovering ET life would likely change a lot about the world, my friend.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

I'm sure that there's some ore that could be harvested from meteors or something. Some sort of alloy that is rare or non existant here on earth.

 

[El_Machinae]

See my article I posted a few posts up.

I think $6 trillion in platinum-type metals fits the bill!

 

[Sidhe]

H20 combines very nicely with C02 to make sugars/plants, etc.

The beauty is that both H20 and C02 are greenhouse gases. The problem with our current system is that we're using water that's locked underground to grow our plants - so we're increasing the water supply in the air too, instead of decreasing both.

I was under the impression though that unlike the CO2 cycle the H20 cycle accomodates nicely large increase of water vapour by making it rain more, so any increase doesn't usually lead to increased warming as there is equilibrium in both warming and water levels.

 

[betazed]

See my article I posted a few posts up.

I think $6 trillion in platinum-type metals fits the bill!

Also, we do not actually need to bring the materials from the asteroids back to earth. Why should we? We use stuff up there to build stuff up there which is much cheaper than using stuff up there to build stuff down here. And once we learn how to build large scale self-sufficient structures up there there is no need to build anymore structure down here.

 

[El_Machinae]

Baby steps my friend, baby steps.

There are plenty of resources available in space for when you and I go out there. However, to make space viable in the short term, we will need to justify ground-based investments with ground-based profits.

 

[betazed]

Baby steps my friend, baby steps.

There are plenty of resources available in space for when you and I go out there. However, to make space viable in the short term, we will need to justify ground-based investments with ground-based profits.

True dat!

 

[MrCynical]

The problem seems to be that this isn't going to be economically viable when you take into account the costs of the research and construction. Take the platinum type metals, which are the most valuable given their mass. Platinum is worth about $30 a gram, so $6 trillion is going to weigh on the order of 200,000 tonnes. The shuttle has the largest payload of any existing spacecraft but even it can only carry 21.3 tonnes of cargo. It costs $300 million just to get the shuttle into geosychronous orbit and it isn't even capable of reaching the asteroid in question. Granted shifting mass down to Earth is cheaper than launching it, but it still has to be encased in a spacecraft unless you want it to arrive as a rain of molten metal across half a continent.

With existing technology you could probably build something more efficient that the shuttle, but even allowing for increasing the payload tenfold you're going to need 1000 flights. To break even you've got to make the flight for $6 billion. Now that sounds fairly feasible with existing technology, but you've got to lift your mining and extraction equipment from Earth. It costs on the order of $25 million to lift a tonne from Earth to geosynchronous orbit, and it'll be a lot more to get it to this asteroid. You've got to lift the spacecraft from Earth each time, for a cost which is probably going to be higher than that of the shuttle. You're going to have to design and build a spacecraft from scratch, since nothing existing is suitable.

The big problem seems to be the huge research and construction costs upfront. On paper if we had a spacecraft with the efficiency and reusability of the shuttle (which is lousy on the former and not great on the latter) capable of reaching this asteroid it might work. I can't see such a craft being developed for less than the cost of the shuttle or Apollo program, which were on the order of $130 billion at current rates. While that still may seem OK given the value of the cargo (and presumably the craft and mining gear could be reused for other less valuable metals), I can't see anyone investing that much upfront on what seems a risky endeavour.

In any case it is simply not economically viable to transport the less valuable metals like iron. It's only worth a few hundred dollars a tonne, so a load of it in the theoretical spacecraft is only worth maybe $100000 compared to a load of platinum at $6 billion. It's irrelevant that there's $8 trillion of it up there as it weighs about 16 billion tonnes. At a very optimistic $5 million a tonne it would cost $80000 trillion to transport it. In space mining only the most valuable materials for their mass can be transported like platinum, gold (maybe) and a few rare things like He-3. I can see the platinum becoming economically viable to mine, but the iron and nickel is far too cheap for it's mass to transport with any conceivable technology. Even if the space elevator lives up to the theory and cuts launch costs by 98% the iron is still not going to be worth shifting. I can't see how we are ever going to be able to mine a tonne of iron in orbit and land it for the $600 it's currently worth when mined on Earth.

EDITED to add paragraphs and correct a pounds to tonnes conversion error.

 

[betazed]

@MyCynical: All those numbers are correct; but what if we can cut down the cost of taking something to geo-synchronous orbit to say $10/kg?

Check El_machinea's sig - the space elevator link.

 

[MrCynical]

Most of the projections on a space elevator take launch costs down to about $225/kg. The platinum, and many other metals would obviously be worth mining at that price. I'm not sure iron would be viable even under those circumstances (though you could attach the asteroid to the elevator itself). If you did that then all you've got to do is make sure the metal doesn't accelerate to a dangerous velocity on the descent, so it could be conceivable that dropping it straight down to Earth could cost much less than $10/kg (though that would still be $10000 a tonne and 20 times the value of the iron).

The space elevator unfortunately still falls into the category where we cannot build it yet even in theory. If it is built (and that is conceivable in the next century, then yes, orbital iron and and similar mines would be possible).

 

[betazed]

The space elevator unfortunately still falls into the category where we cannot build it yet even in theory. If it is built (and that is conceivable in the next century, then yes, orbital iron and and similar mines would be possible).

I will let El_Machinae expound on the viability of the space elevator.