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justbadthings t1_irodqbj wrote

The issue isn't necessarily the mining. It is all of the other phases of infrastructure building for a space economy - transportation, Refining, manufacturers, residents.... the list keeps going, but there is a chicken and egg here where you can have the minerals and be able to do nothing with them until people start the other phases

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Soupjoe5 OP t1_iro4kos wrote

Article:

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Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that space mining was inevitable. Analysts, tech visionaries and even renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that space mining was going to be big business.

Space mining companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, backed by the likes of Google ’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, cropped up to take advantage of the predicted payoff.

Fast forward to 2022, and both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have been acquired by companies that have nothing to do with space mining. Humanity has yet to commercially mine even a single asteroid. So what’s taking so long?

Space mining is a long-term undertaking and one that investors do not necessarily have the patience to support.

“If we had to develop a full-scale asteroid mining vehicle today, we would need a few hundred million dollars to do that using commercial processes. It would be difficult to convince the investment community that that’s the right thing to do,” says Joel Sercel, president and CEO of TransAstra Corporation.

“In today’s economics and in the economics of the near future, the next few years, it makes no sense to go after precious metals in asteroids. And the reason is the cost of getting to and from the asteroids is so high that it vastly outstrips the value of anything that you’d harness from the asteroids,” Sercel says.

This has not dissuaded Sercel from trying to mine the cosmos. TransAstra will initially focus on mining asteroids for water to make rocket propellant, but would like to eventually mine “everything on the periodic table.” But Sercel says such a mission is still a ways off.

“In terms of the timeline for mining asteroids, for us, the biggest issue is funding. So it depends on how fast we can scale the business into these other ventures and then get practical engineering experience operating systems that have all the components of an asteroid mining system. But we could be launching an asteroid mission in the 5 to 7-year time frame.”

Sercel hopes these other ventures keep it afloat until it develops its asteroid mining business. The idea is to use the tech that will eventually be incorporated into TransAstra’s astroid mining missions to satisfy already existing market needs, such as using space tugs to deliver satellites to their exact orbits and using satellites to aid in traffic management as space gets increasingly more crowded.

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Soupjoe5 OP t1_iro4lo9 wrote

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AstroForge is another company that believes space mining will become a reality. Founded in 2022 by a former SpaceX engineer and a former Virgin Galactic engineer, AstroForge still believes there is money to be made in mining asteroids for precious metals.

“On Earth we have a limited amount of rare earth elements, specifically the platinum group metals. These are industrial metals that are used in everyday things your cell phone, cancer, drugs, catalytic converters, and we’re running out of them. And the only way to access more of these is to go off world,” says AstroForge Co-Founder and CEO Matt Gialich.

AstroForge plans to mine and refine these metals in space and then bring them back to earth to sell. To keep costs down, AstroForge will attach its refining payload to off-the shelf satellites and launch those satellites on SpaceX rockets.

“There’s quite a few companies that make what is referred to as a satellite bus. This is what you would typically think of as a satellite, the kind of box with solar panels on it, a propulsion system being connected to it. So for us, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel there,” Gialich says. “The previous people before us, Planetary Resources and DSI [Deep Space Industries], they had to buy entire vehicles. They had to build much, much larger and much more expensive satellites, which required a huge injection of capital. And I think that was the ultimate downfall of both of those companies.”

The biggest challenge, AstroForge says, is deciding which asteroids to target for mining. Prior to conducting their own missions, all early-stage mining companies have to go on is existing observation data from researchers and a hope that the asteroids they have selected contain the minerals they seek.

“The technology piece you can control, the operations pieces you can control, but you can’t control what the asteroid is until you get there,” says Jose Acain, AstroForge Co-Founder and CTO.

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CondeBK t1_ironpqf wrote

As long as these resources can mined from the Earth, nobody will mine for them in space. They are virtually useless to the Earth economy.

But do you know who would benefit enormously from asteroid mining? People who are already living in space, the moon, space habitats or Mars. The problem of course, is that no such population exists at the moment. The only way to break this chicken/egg conundrum is to massively invest in getting people to live in space. It seems like a lot of money in the short term, but over the long term it would pay for itself many times over as more and more industries move off the earth. Then we can figure out how to bring those resources back down to earth.

So someone has got to go first.

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Equivalent-Ice-7274 t1_irp4i4m wrote

Why would anyone want to live in space when they could achieve a similarly miserable life by living in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean, or a frozen wasteland on earth? Space mining is a long way off.

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DasGutYa t1_irs8ypz wrote

We could send the homeless up there. Free home but it's in space?

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teratogenic17 t1_irscdff wrote

I just hacked your bank account and planted false stories about your reputation. Now you're homeless. Would you like to freeze in a stuffy can and work alone for a few years, to pay for your sins?

Of course, I have done no such thing. But the homeless have similar stories. The biggest story is that we have been tricked into letting a super-rich class suck our lifeblood forever. Capitalism is a curse.

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DasGutYa t1_irsyi5s wrote

'I don't like jokes or any form of entertainment so I'm just going to insert my political opinion here instead'

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teratogenic17 t1_irsz703 wrote

Jokes at the expense of the homeless are cheap, punching down. I don't find them funny.

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DasGutYa t1_irt11i8 wrote

Thinking morality is necessary to a joke just reinforces the fact you don't understand what one is.

Enjoy being ignored!

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teratogenic17 t1_irt3ls6 wrote

On the contrary, justice is essential to a good joke, as it releases the tension we feel with our oppressors. It reduces their power over us, and strengthens social ties; that's why (e.g.) making fun of Ivanka Trump's incompetency is funny. Just think of the blank look in her eyes when someone uses a word like "precarity" or "hegemony." Suddenly she looks like a cornered rabbit.

Punching down functions to release the tension of compassion instead--we feel uncomfortable with a group that needs relief from the oppression that we participate in and/or profit from. Such jokes fuel rage and violence.

That's why Dave Chappelle will soon be forgotten--he makes jokes that encourage hatred against Black transgender women. It's embarrassing, and should be. People who are laughing with him now will "forget" they ever did, within a decade.

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DasGutYa t1_irv1hxq wrote

'Justice'

'oppression'

Relative terms, a decade won't be kind to you as you slowly find out how easily you are labelled the oppressor in need of justice.

Respect yourself and have an original, critical thought for once in your life.

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makoivis t1_irowbbh wrote

Here’s a big question: why live in space? Space is amazingly inhospitable so unless you’re doing something that cannot be done on earth, it’s just not worth it.

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CondeBK t1_irp2vbq wrote

The argument goes that unless humans become an interplanetary species they are at risk of extinction through an asteroid impact, a bad plague, nuclear war, climate change, etc..

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dern_the_hermit t1_irpwj0b wrote

Almost anywhere can be made hospitable with the proper infrastructure and equipment, tho. Why leave the savanna and gradually migrate to the inhospitable Arctic? Heck, why even climb down from the trees and step out onto the savanna to begin with?

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makoivis t1_irq7irl wrote

I want you to ponder that question for a good long while and really meditate on it.

Why indeed? What advantage did it bring?

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dern_the_hermit t1_irq81l1 wrote

Flip side: Why not? What else are we going to do with the wild environment-shaping technological powers we possess?

Them's a couple more questions to add to your meditations.

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makoivis t1_irq89fa wrote

We could start with addressing climate change on earth, that seems like a good use of said wild powers.

But again, ponder why people migrate. Hint: food availability plays a huge part. How’s food availability in space?

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dern_the_hermit t1_irq8fow wrote

> We could start with addressing climate change on earth

The two aren't anywhere close to mutually exclusive. What a weird retort.

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makoivis t1_irq8k88 wrote

This discussion would make more sense if you’d engage with any of the points I’m making. This is pretty tiresome.

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dern_the_hermit t1_irq8rhd wrote

I literally just directly engaged with a point you made, but okay.

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Codydw12 t1_iru6nvs wrote

At the moment it's nonexistent. Key part there is at the moment. Should technologies such as verticle farming and hydroponics take off in the coming years/decades we could very see cities dedicate skyscrapers to growing crops as well as said technology being used to attempt space grown crops.

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SnowConePeople t1_irounmo wrote

Only belta' can mine the rock. Xiya na pelésh to, paxoníseki.

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kaminaowner2 t1_irp3ltk wrote

Idk why they are saying the first generation failed, it hasn’t really died yet. Space travel has never been a quick process if it’s done by NASA or private companies. The question isn’t if they’ll mine an asteroid but when will they, the money is their and practicality doesn’t matter to the market. We want to mine in space so we will make it cost effective, hopefully will outlaw mining on earth someday.

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farticustheelder t1_irowoes wrote

I've been a fan of science fiction since I was a kid. And science and tech generally. Not to mention a healthy respect for reality.

That reality thing should be paid attention to. The first crop of space mining companies had zero chance of working. There it was a scam to fleece investors.

New flash!!! The new generation of space mining companies is also a scam.

For space mining to ever take off we need space transportation costs to fall by a factor of 100, at minimum. We also need a single stage to LEO (and back!) space plane like the one in 2001.

Then we need a ton of infrastructure in space, starting with permanent L5 habitats and R&D labs. We need to figure out how to refine asteroids and comets into useful stuff in space. We need cheap in system transportation infrastructure, I like Dyson style nano swarms of space based solar panels that power masers that beam power to spaceships which are big clouds of rectennae to harvest that power and use it to run ion drives, no fuel!

We have about 50 years before space tourism gives way to industrialization.

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hucktard t1_irrudyq wrote

I agree with most of this. But I don’t think we need single stage to orbit space planes. If you have a reusable two stage system (like starship), what’s the problem with that?

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tanrgith t1_irohmk3 wrote

There's not really any viable business model for space mining currently.

You need two things for it to become viable.

  1. The technology to mine asteroids in an efficient and safe manner

  2. A demand for the materials you mine

Right now neither exists

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the-Replenisher1984 t1_irp8een wrote

I'd say the demand exists in a way since those precious metals are definitely a limited resource. Its just completely unfeasible to have it be done now. Infrastructure is zero, technology isn't there yet, and even then the astroid belt is how far away? We haven't even landed anyone on the moon (our absolute closest celestial body) since 1972. Unless the space race heats way up again I'd say we're decades off from seeing asteroids being mined any time soon. I just realized we both said the same thing basically, but I'm a windbag so yeah your right.

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Necessary-Celery t1_irp1wp2 wrote

I wish I knew enough rocket science to understand if space mining is likely to happen or pure hype.

I wish we at least had a rocket scientist with enough economic knowledge who could explain it well enough in a blog or something.

To my rocket science ignorant brain, it seems like fully automated space mining, with as affordable as Space X (10 times cheaper than NASA) has made launches. Space mining may well work given how much gold, platinum, iridium and other expensive metals are supposed to be in asteroids.

The key being it seems like, I have no actually idea if it can be done profitably.

From the article:

>“In today’s economics and in the economics of the near future, the next few years, it makes no sense to go after precious metals in asteroids. And the reason is the cost of getting to and from the asteroids is so high that it vastly outstrips the value of anything that you’d harness from the asteroids,” Sercel says.

That seems like a hard No.

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positive_X t1_irpjnh6 wrote

We have learned almost nothing .
The cautionary tale of the industrial revolution
should be heeded .
.
In other words , we better not wreck other worlds .

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PeacefullyFighting t1_iro95kz wrote

Need "a few hundred million", just throw crypto at it somehow and your good.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_irqxvig wrote

Asteroid mining starts to make sense when someone like SpaceX succeeds with full-rapid-reuse rockets and gets launch costs to $50/kg. For a trip to an asteroid, probably a few hundred per kg.

At that point, mining asteroids for rocket fuel is less of an advantage, but mining them for precious metals makes more sense. Gold is $54K/kg, platinum is $30K/kg.

And sure, they'd get cheaper if someone started importing them from space in sufficient quantities. But we're already mining about 2500 to 3000 tons of gold every year, so an asteroid miner could make a lot of money before crashing the price.

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FuturologyBot t1_iro9uor wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Soupjoe5:

Article:

1

Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that space mining was inevitable. Analysts, tech visionaries and even renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that space mining was going to be big business.

Space mining companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, backed by the likes of Google ’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, cropped up to take advantage of the predicted payoff.

Fast forward to 2022, and both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have been acquired by companies that have nothing to do with space mining. Humanity has yet to commercially mine even a single asteroid. So what’s taking so long?

Space mining is a long-term undertaking and one that investors do not necessarily have the patience to support.

“If we had to develop a full-scale asteroid mining vehicle today, we would need a few hundred million dollars to do that using commercial processes. It would be difficult to convince the investment community that that’s the right thing to do,” says Joel Sercel, president and CEO of TransAstra Corporation.

“In today’s economics and in the economics of the near future, the next few years, it makes no sense to go after precious metals in asteroids. And the reason is the cost of getting to and from the asteroids is so high that it vastly outstrips the value of anything that you’d harness from the asteroids,” Sercel says.

This has not dissuaded Sercel from trying to mine the cosmos. TransAstra will initially focus on mining asteroids for water to make rocket propellant, but would like to eventually mine “everything on the periodic table.” But Sercel says such a mission is still a ways off.

“In terms of the timeline for mining asteroids, for us, the biggest issue is funding. So it depends on how fast we can scale the business into these other ventures and then get practical engineering experience operating systems that have all the components of an asteroid mining system. But we could be launching an asteroid mission in the 5 to 7-year time frame.”

Sercel hopes these other ventures keep it afloat until it develops its asteroid mining business. The idea is to use the tech that will eventually be incorporated into TransAstra’s astroid mining missions to satisfy already existing market needs, such as using space tugs to deliver satellites to their exact orbits and using satellites to aid in traffic management as space gets increasingly more crowded.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xztlx1/the_first_crop_of_space_mining_companies_didnt/iro4kos/

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LiquidVibes t1_irpm7fk wrote

Space mining will boom on Mars not Earth. Mars is way closer to the asteroid belt, needs resources like water to make oceans and can house a space elevator.

Bombarding Mars with ice asteroids creates lakes and also warms up the planet

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thehourglasses t1_irq5r6j wrote

And yet something as mundane and uninspired as Amazon Go costs a few hundred million to develop, and is easily funded.

Our species has a serious prioritization issue.

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skubaloob t1_irt4p1o wrote

Maybe invest in asteroid composition exploration tech first. Then wait for moon colonization. Then crash the valuable asteroids into the moon. Then mine them all easy peasy the traditional way.

Launch refined materials to Earth via gravity-assisted giant rail gun (a la the moon is a harsh mistress) or use them on the moon. Whatever.

Extra Credit: Find a good use for the huge energy release from crashing giant rocks into the moon’s surface.

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