Curious?????

From:
To:
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 1:34 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Curious?????

[snikt]
> Could a spacecraft be launched from Earth, rendezvous with and land
> on a Near-Earth Object (or perhaps the moon, though probably more
> complicated and expensive), mine the object and "fire" the raw
> material back to Earth (not LEO) for collection and processing?
>

I'm not sure that *one* spacecraft doing all this is the best option - I
would think that sending many different equipments to the asteroid in
several trips would be more likely. Ignoring those details, however, the
answer to general question "Is it possible to mine an asteroid and
profitably export the ores to Earth?" is "yes", at least in theory.

> Assuming that's possible, are there products that could be
> manufactured from the raw material that are in high demand? In other
> words, COULD such a project make money; specifically, enough money to
> bootstrap further commercial space activities?
>

Yes. With the traditional remark: with current technology, the startup
investment would be *huge*, and even though it would pay itself in, maybe,
some years, there are not much people that would have the money and, mainly,
the guts to invest in asteroid mining currently.

[snikt]
> 2. There are several planned missions to return samples from NEOs
> (ASR is one notable commercial endeaver - they intend to turn a
> profit).

Fascinating! Do you have the URL of this ASR mission? (I'll search for that
anyway.)

[snikt]
> 1. Any clever reentry and collection processes you might suggest?

There are several suggestions of process that could do that, but they are
kind of excessively complicated, IMHO - they always involve processing the
ores at the extraction site and then sending the metals and other stuff
extracted from the ores to Earth. On the other hand, I would think that
simply packing your raw ores in a big ball of dirt, fusing the outer layer
of the thing with focused sunlight till it gets hard rock, and then
mass-driving the ore ball to Earth, were it would crash on a desert and be
mined by conventional means, perhaps would be cheaper for a large-scale
mining endeavor. But I had not done the calculations, so maybe its is just
an intuitive misjudgment.

Also, of course the "crash method" described above would make sense only if
you're planning to mine ore by the thousands of tons - like mining iron and
nickel. If you're planning to mine extremely rare ores, then you really need
to process the ores in space and then send your riches carefully
encapsulated to Earth. If you're sending a payload of a few tones, then
conventional means like capsules splashing down in the ocean or landing in
deserts will suffice.

> 2. Potential products? Rare and/or precious metals? He-3?

He-3 is science fiction. Nobody really knows how to do a He-3 fusion reactor
and, besides, if you can mine asteroids and you also plan to enter the
energy business, why can't you just build space solar power stations and
beam energy to Earth?

On the other hand, there are several elements that are incredibly valuable
on Earth and are less rare in asteroids than on Earth. Ian already mentioned
rare metals (platinum, osmium, iridium, etc) and I'm adding to the list
things used in the semiconductor industry, like germanium, gallium, arsenic,
etc. Those minerals with weird names cost something like $ 20,000 per kilo.
As you can see, it is the same launch cost per kilo that we have nowadays,
so that one could have her investment paid after returning to Earth the same
mass that she had to launch for starting her asteroid mining business...

> 3. Are there products that could be made only in LEO or HEO that
> would be much more profitable? Could the products be manufactured
> remotely (avoiding manned presence early on to reduce cost)?
>

Personally, I would not put my money in a, say, robot
mining-and-ore-processing facility - perhaps because I've been working in
the AI/Robotics field for the past six years and that has convinced me that
robots simply don't work in unstructured environments ;-). If I were to
invest in mining a NEA, I would send human miners to operated telepresence
mining rigs. (They could not do that from Earth, since the average distance
of a NEA from Earth introduces to much telecomm delay.)

> Any ideas, suggestions or comments would be very welcomed. Keep in
> mind, I am a first-class layman who doesn't know his delta-v from his
> Isp.
>

At least, overall you're asking very clever questions for a first-class
layman!

> Thanks in advance.
>

You're welcome.

> Jack
[snikt]

Lucio