Asteroid Mining

[Noncommunist]

Apparently, a US company lead by James Cameron and Google's top executives is now planning to mine some asteroids. Huge amounts of minerals can be found within the asteroids, some can even contain amounts of certain elements equivalent to all that we've ever mined on Earth. So this could dramatically change life if it works and some materials become extremely abundant. However, this will still be extremely difficult.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...3f66f6244b.411

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...967904210.html

Any thoughts about it?

[Whacker]

No joke, my first thought was about those newspaper bits in Deus Ex that talk about the millions of casualties from the lunar miner orbiter crash.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It's more or less a pipe dream. This venture will cost in the tens of billions before they even start mining and the return from the investment might not be worth the cost depending on what they are mining. The biggest benefit will be the milestone for humanity in general to accomplish this and the ability to streamline the process to make it more affordable for future investors. I still say it should be done, but I don't think anyone should fool themselves into thinking that scarcity for certain resources is going to decrease anytime over the next few decades.


Oh, also they will need to develop a reusable ship like the space shuttle that can go back and forth from the asteroid to actually deliver the material to earth, unless they plan on putting it in a box and just shoving it towards earth.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Much more interesting than a moon base or sending someone to mars.

[HopAlongBunny]

Just listened to a CBC bit about it. Apparently no one doubts it is possible to do; the economics will certainly suck for the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, the investors seem more interested in demonstrating what is possible rather than making money. As the interview pointed out, rare earths are rare here, and often associated with areas thought to be "impact sites". If you can go to the source instead of waiting for it to land, rare earths become much less rare.

One thing they didn't mention is that the whole process could probably be best handled by robots.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Besides, didn't China buy up all the rare earth metals or something?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Besides, didn't China buy up all the rare earth metals or something?

See my previous post.

[rvg]

Asteroid mining should really pick up if we construct some processing facilities on the ISS. That way the entire process will be confined to outer space negating the huge costs of leaving and re-entering Earth.

[CBR]

Besides, didn't China buy up all the rare earth metals or something?

Dump the asteroids on China and make the metals less rare?

[a completely inoffensive name]

As the interview pointed out, rare earths are rare here, and often associated with areas thought to be "impact sites". If you can go to the source instead of waiting for it to land, rare earths become much less rare.

Actually rare earth's are not that rare. That's a misconception people have. The reason rare earth's seem rare is because the only country currently mining rare earth elements is china who is exercising their monopoly on the stuff to their benefit. According to the sources on the wikipedia page I am looking at, cerium has roughly the same abundance as copper.