making money on asteroids

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
wrote:
> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Ed Minchau"
> wrote:
>
> [snipped excellent summary of Archimedes Institute claim
> process/hierarchy]
>
> > This is why I say that legitimization of something like
Archimedes
> > is crucial: you want to spread the meme that real people can own
> > their own asteroid, and actually do something with it - and that
> for
> > a relatively small investment. And you want to spread enough
> > interest that you can have a high launch volume to drive up
> > competition among your launch suppliers and thus drive down
launch
> > costs.
>
> I don't have many issues with the hierarchy or process. My issue
is
> that Archimedes is jumping the gun. Once a property rights regime
is
> established and enforced, then open the flood gates say I.

Right. But what will force the establishment of a property rights
regime in space? Only one step: a private company or individual
must land a functional teleoperated or autonomous robot on an
asteroid or moon and lay a claim on it. Right there is nine-tenths
of the law.

If the first private entity does such a mission, its teleoperated
presence on that body gives it de facto posession of it. If it
registers its claim with a registry like Archimedes (by which I mean
any such registry with clear, simple, and fair rules), that registry
then becomes much like the WWWconsortium, the de facto standard.

>
> As it is, TangoMan's Claim Company will give anyone a duplicate
> certificate that is just as valid as an Archimedes claim. That's
why
> Archimedes is like the Lunar Embassey. It has no legal validity.

Right, not until the first private entity registers with one of
Archimedes, or TMCC, or the Lunar Embassy. Whichever registry is
chosen automatically gains legal validity, particularly if others
follow suit. Having that teleoperated robot working for you on your
asteroid or chunk of lunar real estate carries a lot of weight for
whatever registry is chosen.

Suppose for instance that a company lands a rover somewhere on the
moon, say the Artemis Project lands at Angus Bay. Suppose further
that they own the deed sold by the Lunar embassy. If the Artemis
project respects the boundaries, then that carries weight in
legitimizing the Lunar embassy.

But what if Artemis doesn't own the deed sold by the Lunar embassy?
What if they register with TMCC instead? And what if other private
companies do the same thing? Then the Lunar embassy deeds become
nothing more than curiosities, and it is TMCC that is legitimized.

Being first is a big plus, but even that is no guarantor of market
success; Beta predated VHS. Even so, it is essential that some
private property regime be set up for there to be a large market.
It doesn't matter which registry becomes the standard, as long as
one of them does. Let Archimedes and the Lunar Embassy and TMCC
duke it out for market share.

>
> What you described in your post seems awfully familiar to Wasser's
> Space Settlement Initiative where he carves up the moon. He
> recognizes that property rights are necessary condition for
economic
> development, but he errs in thinking that they are a sufficient
> condition.
>
> If I gave you the property rights to 50 tons of well rotted fish
and
> was willing to drop it on your front lawn, how would you profit
from
> that?

I used to be a cowboy. I'd grind it up and sell it as protein
supplement for cattle feed.

>
> Once a property rights regime is established you may legitimately
> own an asteroid by the means you previously described, but why
would
> you want to own it if there was no economic utility in the
> ownership? Perhaps vanity or novelty.

Vanity and novelty are two legitimate reasons for which people will
part with their money - look at license plates. However, to drive a
large launch market (by which I mean more than 100 customers per
year, at two or three per launch), they will not suffice.

Of course, there won't be a hundred per year for the first few
years. Even after the first few are launched, it is still on the
order of several months before data comes back from any asteroid.
Therefore the first few missions would likely to be to near-earth
asteroids. Most likely these first few missions would not be for
vanity or novelty (those markets come later), but for equipment
tests and asteroid analysis.

The data returned from the first few missions is itself valuable for
calibrating remote-sensing equipment (like the gamma-ray
spectroscopy that started this thread), and as scientific data - the
few $million cost of a mission means that average universities could
afford a mission.

Any discovery of a precious metal (almost certain given less than a
few dozen missions) would start that steep phase of growth, where
people seek to make money. The major investment will be in mining
projects.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned the "De Luxe" package for a
customer: two or more mission packages delivered to the same
asteroid. Some of these packages could be purely cargo: large
foldable reflective surfaces, rock-crushing equipment, heat engines,
flywheels, replacement parts, that sort of thing. Make it possible
to bring the costs of getting to an asteroid and utilizing it down
to a reasonable level, so that people can invest a relatively small
amount, and they will buy mining packages.

It doesn't take somebody bringing a huge chunk of gold back to earth
to start a gold rush; it only takes the verifiable knowledge that
there is gold (or something else precioussss) out there and that it
is possible to get in the game.

>
> I think property rights will develop when there is orbital
commerce
> which requires the establishment of the regime. The market will
> press for property rights. If those rights were established right
> now they'd provide a necessary condition for orbital development,
> but not a sufficient condition.
>
> TangoMan

Yes, gotta get physical possession of asteroids in the hands of
people first before any of these property regimes gets legitimized.
That is why earlier in the thread I suggested the approach of a
common chassis and modular components, as well as cheap launch.
Take the R&D costs out of the customer's hands and outsource it to
the companies that become your eventual suppliers/ partners/
competitors. Drive total mission costs low enough that individual
universities can get payloads launched, or private businesses.

Space industry has been in a catch 22 for decades - no cheap
launches until there is a market, no market until there are cheap
launches. Well, it is time to change that.

This common chassis/modular components idea changes space access
from a one-off, "handcrafted" approach to an "assembly line"
approach. Costs for design, testing, and manufacturing of all
components drops due to amortization over a large number of units.
Modular design allows for tailoring specific missions to specific
requirements, broadening the range of potential missions and thus
potential customer base. Multiple packages on a single launch
lowers overall launch costs as well.

Ed