Platinum Group Metals (PGMs)

The beauty of the original AsterAnts proposal is that it does not require extensive robotics beyond Earth orbit. The AsterAnt's responsibility is limited to bringing the meteoroid from where it is back to Earth orbit. In Earth orbit, perhaps via crew members and/or telepresence, much more intelligence could be brought to bear on the materials processing problem.

The scheme you outlined requires more intelligence far from Earth. I prefer the original AsterAnts idea because it does not require that. In the original AsterAnts proposal, the parts (A) and (B) of your proposal would instead be in Earth orbit, perhaps controlled from the ground.

Ron Menich

"Dr. Omni"
09/27/01 02:47 PM

[snikt]
> How low do launch prices have to be before return of PGMs to Earth becomes
> economically viable?
>

Another question: how small can an ore processing plant be? Suppose that we
can compact such a plant to the size of a car or even a refrigerator (no, I
haven't the slightest idea whether that is possible or not). Then, maybe we
could modify Al Globus' AsterAnts idea in the following way:

Instead of having a single robot that hatches to a meteoroid and bring it
back to HEEO, we could send a robotic system composed of three interacting
agents: (A) the automated ore processing plant, (B) a small mobile robot to
collect regolith and drop it inside A and (C) a robotic tug that would
transport the whole system to the NEO.

When the system arrives, B starts collecting regolith and feeding A, which
starts to produce, say, platinum pellets. When there is an amount of
platinum equal to the size of A plus B, then the tug transports the platinum
back to Earth. Considering that launch cost are about US$ 10,000/Kg and
platinum, according to your table, is around US$ 50,000/Kg, then the owner
of the system would have a fivefold profit. (Not considering the costs of
the system and R&D to produce it, which may be enormous, by the way.) With
more roundtrips of the tug, the profit would be larger.

>
> Ron Menich

Lucio Coelho