Deep Space Industries to join the asteroid gold rush

ZeRoY

A new space company will announce plans to mine the minor planets at a press conference in Santa Monica, California, tomorrow, 22 January.

Deep Space Industries intends to build a fleet of commercial asteroid-prospecting spacecraft that can harvest and process these chunks of space rock.

Until the 22 January event, the company's founders are keeping a tight lid on further information about their plans to plunder precious resources for profit.

But their targets are likely to be a class of minor planet called Near-Earth Asteroids which have orbits bringing them close to us on their journeys around the Sun.

They will want to tackle a type of asteroid that is like a crumbly pile of rubble, similar to Itokawa which was visited by the Japanese probe Hayabusa in 2005, rather than the more solid objects. That is simply because it will be easier to get at their assets.

Another company, formed from an assortment of tycoons, has already emerged in 2012 to announce similar space mining plans, convinced that even a small asteroid can be worth billions of dollars.

Planetary Resources is a US company led jointly by Eric Anderson, who also heads Space Adventures that has already sent several wealthy clients to the International Space Station.

Anderson is co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources with Peter H Diamandis, backed by famous investors including Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google. Avatar director James Cameron is an advisor.

Read more HERE

Mr Benevolent

Someone's been feeding billionaires too much LSD.

ThatDrGuy

Got to love the hubris. What are the crises of the 21st century ? Permanent depletion of aquifers. Catastrophic loss of topsoil.
Massive irreversible climate change. Overwhelming over-population. Enormous and growing inequality. Extinction of the last fossil fuel
reserves with nothing to replace them. Scandalous military spending and weapons build up. What do we need ? Space mining ! Dum De Dum! To hell with all that boring stuff, a fleet of asteroid mining robots - thats the future.

Mickeroo

Heh, it will probably never be fully realised but I can't help but get excited when I read about people trying stuff like this.

Capt'n Midnight

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Got to love the hubris. What are the crises of the 21st century ? Permanent depletion of aquifers. Catastrophic loss of topsoil.
Massive irreversible climate change. Overwhelming over-population. Enormous and growing inequality. Extinction of the last fossil fuel
reserves with nothing to replace them. Scandalous military spending and weapons build up. What do we need ? Space mining ! Dum De Dum! To hell with all that boring stuff, a fleet of asteroid mining robots - thats the future.

3 months earnings by 100 people
https://rt.com/news/oxfam-report-global-inequality-357/

The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of $240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over, Oxfam has revealed, adding that the global economic crisis is further enriching the super-rich.

ThatDrGuy

Scary. Getting worse by the day. Handing over control of more and more of the earth's resources to fewer and fewer people. So they
can devote it to their private whims.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/22/deep_space_industries_asteroid_mining/

The venture says that it will have its first class of 55lb (25kg) "FireFly" probes ready for action by 2015, hitching a ride on other commercial launches, and during their six-month missions will explore Near Earth Objects (NEO) for useful materials.

The second generation of larger probes, dubbed DragonFlies, will be sent off by 2016 to land on and mine asteroids, producing around 60lb to 150lbs (27kg to 68kg) of finished cargo on a two to four-year mission.
...

Gump explained that the probes wouldn't just be looking for metals, but also for liquids that can be broken down into oxygen, hydrogen and methane and used to refuel satellites once it has been brought back into the Earth's orbit, adding another revenue stream.

"It cost around $20,000 per kilo to get the fuel for a geosynchronous satellite into position, we're sure we can supply it more cheaply than that," he said. "If you can then extend the lives of these satellites, then operators will be able to save millions of dollars in costs."

Key to the success of the project will be DSI's patent-pending 3D printing technology, dubbed the Microgravity Foundry. He said the tech will make it possible to extract pure nickel blocks from asteroids. The process sees powdered nickel ore fed into the system, which is then formed into units of solid metal, and can also be used to make tools and replacement parts.

ThatDrGuy

Nickel at the moment costs 17 dollars a kilo:
http://www.metalprices.com/p/NickelFreeChart/?weight=KG&size=M&theme=1011

Assuming a dragon fly probe weighed just 50kg it would cost about a million dollars to put into orbit. As for manufacturing costs:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1201/29hayabusa2/

Japans Hayabusa2 probe ( no advanced mining etc) cost 200 million dollars.

If a dragon fly managed to mine a full 68kg of nickel and bring it to earth, it would be worth a whopping 1156 dollars. After 2 years.

Price:
Manufacture - optimistic 50 million
Launch - optimistic 1 million
operational cost ( ground team over 2 years) optimistic 5 million
total 56 million dollars. Result : 1156 dollars worth of nickel. This is a scam pure and simple.

Capt'n Midnight

Nickel in LEO costs a bit more

ThatDrGuy

Nickel in LEO is worse than worthless. There is absolutely no demand for it and the last thing we need is more junk in LEO that satellites have to avoid.

ZeRoY

Forgot to post the video in OP

ZeRoY

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Nickel at the moment costs 17 dollars a kilo:
http://www.metalprices.com/p/NickelFreeChart/?weight=KG&size=M&theme=1011

That would be the first mistake. There are hundreds of prices for Nickel as even Pure Nickel on Earth is alloy. I cant find a price for Asteroid Nickel un-surprisingly but something tells me its composition will be different as well as its price!

I think a lot of people are looking at this guys thinking they are lunatics with lots of cash to spare but I say they are just pioneer, Space exploration and mining is coming, this guys are just the first to really try it out.

hal9000

ZeRoY wrote: »

Forgot to post the video in OP

Thought I was watching a mass effect trailer by the end of that video!

2 stroke

25 kg fireflys hitching a ride into space on larger missions, why does that sound familiar? What weight were those balast weights we sent to mars?

ciaranmac

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Nickel at the moment costs 17 dollars a kilo:
http://www.metalprices.com/p/NickelFreeChart/?weight=KG&size=M&theme=1011

Assuming a dragon fly probe weighed just 50kg it would cost about a million dollars to put into orbit. As for manufacturing costs:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1201/29hayabusa2/

Japans Hayabusa2 probe ( no advanced mining etc) cost 200 million dollars.

If a dragon fly managed to mine a full 68kg of nickel and bring it to earth, it would be worth a whopping 1156 dollars. After 2 years.

Price:
Manufacture - optimistic 50 million
Launch - optimistic 1 million
operational cost ( ground team over 2 years) optimistic 5 million
total 56 million dollars. Result : 1156 dollars worth of nickel. This is a scam pure and simple.

I had the thought that asteroids would be richer in heavier elements that are rare in the earth's crust, because the heavier materials sink to the core. But even 68kg of platinum would only be worth about 4 million dollars.

Capt'n Midnight

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Nickel in LEO is worse than worthless. There is absolutely no demand for it and the last thing we need is more junk in LEO that satellites have to avoid.

actually it's worth a lot more at GEO

you can make structures out of it , 3D printer and all that

you can use it as reaction mass

you could make flywheels out of it for gyroscopic attitude control

it could be used to make shields , mirrors

The Mars Curiosity rover used 300Kg of inert ballast during it's descent



on the ground it's pretty worthless allright

ThatDrGuy

Unless asteroid nickel is actually unobtainium I somehow doubt it would be worth hundreds of thousands of times the stated nickel prices that mining it would require. Ballast ? Really ? The end product of the most advanced mining project in the history of humanity. Can you imagine the poor guy flogging this sales pitch. Market? Why yes. Where is your market ? I have one word. Just one word... ballast. Space seems to be the new frontier for economic stupid ( it used to be the internet) Put online in or after a word gave it a veneer of economic gospel, no matter how daft. The price of nickel reflects its current utility relative to its scarcity. Not very high to put it mildly. Quoting it's utility as a input in a vast chain of space manufacture and supply that doesn't exist is hardly convincing. Its putting the space cart ahead of the space horse. I found the video hilarious and scary at the same time. Brought out the vision of space billionaires living in low density housing in an orbiting forested park while a conflicted polluted overpopulated earth rots beneath them.

2 stroke

Has my comment regarding ballast been misunderstood? I was suggesting that those ballasts were far from inert. Wrong forum I know, which way to conspiricy theories?

OCorcrainn

Pfffff what a scam, everyone knows the real money is in space piracy.

nokia69

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Nickel at the moment costs 17 dollars a kilo:
http://www.metalprices.com/p/NickelFreeChart/?weight=KG&size=M&theme=1011

Assuming a dragon fly probe weighed just 50kg it would cost about a million dollars to put into orbit. As for manufacturing costs:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1201/29hayabusa2/

Japans Hayabusa2 probe ( no advanced mining etc) cost 200 million dollars.

If a dragon fly managed to mine a full 68kg of nickel and bring it to earth, it would be worth a whopping 1156 dollars. After 2 years.

Price:
Manufacture - optimistic 50 million
Launch - optimistic 1 million
operational cost ( ground team over 2 years) optimistic 5 million
total 56 million dollars. Result : 1156 dollars worth of nickel. This is a scam pure and simple.

but what if launch costs keep falling, and all the hardware is used over and over again, and what if they mine more than just nickel

a boeing 747 will cost over 300 million to buy, and who knows how much to run and service, but I can fly accross the atlantic and back for less than 1000 euro

the same thing will happen with all types of space technology, its only a matter of time

Capt'n Midnight

nokia69 wrote: »

but what if launch costs keep falling, and all the hardware is used over and over again, and what if they mine more than just nickel

a boeing 747 will cost over 300 million to buy, and who knows how much to run and service, but I can fly accross the atlantic and back for less than 1000 euro

the same thing will happen with all types of space technology, its only a matter of time

no one flies nickel across the atlantic

running costs of a 747 ?
for long haul plan on using the planes weight of fuel

the rocket equation can be used to show that for escape from earths gravity well you are going to have to use a lot more fuel


lowest price I've seen for soyuz was 30 million , but they've gone up since they have a monopoly on manned launchers (apart from the Chinese)

Problem is that we haven't done reusable yet
given the time and costs to get a shuttle re-launched again salvageable would be a better world
The SRB's were essentially re-manufactured
SRB casings were recovered and reused many times. In one recent example, an SRB stiffener (lower) segment from STS-1 — which over a 30 year period flew six times plus one ground test

A device called a "hydrolaser," spraying water at 17,000 pounds per squares inch, strips insulation from the boosters as part of the refurbishment process.

NASA have two ships to recover the SRB's - so you have to wonder if there are any cost savings , compared to the savings you'd get with economies of scale with a proper production line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Freedom_Star

Yes there are cheaper ways to orbit, but no one has invested significant resources into them. Rocketry will have a minimum cost. Which creates a viscious cycle - satellites could be a lot cheaper if it cost 1/10 the amount to launch them

Just Like Heaven

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Scary. Getting worse by the day. Handing over control of more and more of the earth's resources to fewer and fewer people. So they
can devote it to their private whims.

Don't mean to drag the thread off topic but have to agree here

Another video uploaded by DSI after the conference shows a Q&A. About 11 minutes in one of the lads on the panel 'addresses' sharing and distributing the resources that'll be mined/obtained (apparently if they get the investment they're looking for they hope to beaming solar generated electricity down to earth by 2025). Just worrying that the people who'll be in control of all these resources reckoned that the best method of sharing resources throughout the earth is demonstrated everyday through the 'free enterprise system'.

In other words he meant "No, we're not going to distribute resources with everybody". Which is upsetting cause they really made themselves out to be doing the planet a favour in their conference.

nokia69

fewtinsoffroth wrote: »

Don't mean to drag the thread off topic but have to agree here

Another video uploaded by DSI after the conference shows a Q&A. About 11 minutes in one of the lads on the panel 'addresses' sharing and distributing the resources that'll be mined/obtained (apparently if they get the investment they're looking for they hope to beaming solar generated electricity down to earth by 2025). Just worrying that the people who'll be in control of all these resources reckoned that the best method of sharing resources throughout the earth is demonstrated everyday through the 'free enterprise system'.

In other words he meant "No, we're not going to distribute resources with everybody". Which is upsetting cause they really made themselves out to be doing the planet a favour in their conference.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.

ThatDrGuy

nokia69 wrote: »

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.

They have all been put out of business by Tesco. We are in a new world and its run for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

ThatDrGuy

Speaking of economic stupid:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2013/01/mars-infographic/

ZeRoY

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Speaking of economic stupid:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2013/01/mars-infographic/

Nothing stupid in there, just high costs which are reducing all the time. Aren't the UK building a super fast train for 32 billions over 10 years?

When i see this I have no problem seeing Billions put in to Mars/Space travel...

seamus

I'm guessing the medium-term game here is some form of semi-automated orbital processing plant which checks/refines the samples returned and carries out repairs on any craft. The advent of 3D printing really does a lot here as it means that practically any component can be manufactured on board. So basically once you have the station built, it can build its own fireflies and send them on, massively reducing the cost of sending thousands (if not millions) of drones into space.

ThatDrGuy

ZeRoY wrote: »

Nothing stupid in there, just high costs which are reducing all the time. Aren't the UK building a super fast train for 32 billions over 10 years?

When i see this I have no problem seeing Billions put in to Mars/Space travel...

Hi Zeroy, infastructure is an investment. There will be millions of people using the infastructure and they can recoup a lot of the cost. As fossil fuels become prohibitively expensive high speed links are vital to try and maintain industry and transport. Every billion spent on mars is a billion not spent on addressing very real problems on earth. Thats fine if that billion comes from defence spending but that seems to be sacrosanct.


Growing crops on mars as this info graphic suggests is 10 kinds of crazy.

Growing crops requires:
Soil:

Martian soil :
Has no known organic components ( no earthworms, nitrogen fixing bacteria etc)
Is mega toxic: full of oxalate and heavy metals such as cadmium and arsnic
Is highly reductive iron oxide.


Light & Water:
All the water is at the poles that recieve next to no light. Most of the light
is at the equator which has no water

C02:
Humans make, but balance quite delicate

To farm mars you would have to import everything. All the nutrients. All
the water. All the organic gaia. You would need constant shipments of these. The only input mars offers is light and some gravity. Massive athmospheric condensers could extract some water but you would have to cover enormous areas of mars for only a few acres of farming. Farming is much easier in death valley. Death valley is a lot less hostile to human life too. Yet there are no plans that I know of to farm death valley. Why ? Because it is economic lunacy. But put Mars or Space in a plan and even though its a million times dafter the economic lunacy seems to vanish.

Seamus 3d printers are not replicators. They cannot perform magic or violate the laws of thermodynamics. If the tech existed to replicate a space probe whole without any inputs from earth, we wouldn't need space mining.

ZeRoY

All in its own time ... the madness starts when they mention doing this in the next two decades, then I agree. But otherwise, it will happen, totally convinced (maybe not on Mars).

nokia69

Growing crops requires:
Soil:

wrong, try again

All the water is at the poles that recieve next to no light. Most of the light
is at the equator which has no water

maybe, we won't know for sure untill we look. my guess is the first people will land somewhere between the poles and the equator

Seamus 3d printers are not replicators. They cannot perform magic or violate the laws of thermodynamics. If the tech existed to replicate a space probe whole without any inputs from earth, we wouldn't need space mining.

a 3d printer on mars or the moon would be of great help and I have no doubt that they will be used for making spare parts

nokia69

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

no one flies nickel across the atlantic

running costs of a 747 ?
for long haul plan on using the planes weight of fuel

the rocket equation can be used to show that for escape from earths gravity well you are going to have to use a lot more fuel


lowest price I've seen for soyuz was 30 million , but they've gone up since they have a monopoly on manned launchers (apart from the Chinese)

Problem is that we haven't done reusable yet
given the time and costs to get a shuttle re-launched again salvageable would be a better world
The SRB's were essentially re-manufactured
SRB casings were recovered and reused many times. In one recent example, an SRB stiffener (lower) segment from STS-1 — which over a 30 year period flew six times plus one ground test

A device called a "hydrolaser," spraying water at 17,000 pounds per squares inch, strips insulation from the boosters as part of the refurbishment process.

NASA have two ships to recover the SRB's - so you have to wonder if there are any cost savings , compared to the savings you'd get with economies of scale with a proper production line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Freedom_Star

Yes there are cheaper ways to orbit, but no one has invested significant resources into them. Rocketry will have a minimum cost. Which creates a viscious cycle - satellites could be a lot cheaper if it cost 1/10 the amount to launch them

the reason I used the example of a 747 is because it is a good example of a reuseable transport that cost millions to build and service, but it is used every day by average people like me, this is what needs to happen with rockets

the space shuttle is the exact opposite of a 747, it failed at being reuseable

right now spaceX, blue orgin, and skylon are working on making space flight a cheap every day low cost business, I think they all have a good chance of success, but I think spaceX are ahead of the pack for now but that could change

once all the hardware is reuseable then the costs will drop and Mars and the Moon will be easy to reach

maninasia

seamus wrote: »

I'm guessing the medium-term game here is some form of semi-automated orbital processing plant which checks/refines the samples returned and carries out repairs on any craft. The advent of 3D printing really does a lot here as it means that practically any component can be manufactured on board. So basically once you have the station built, it can build its own fireflies and send them on, massively reducing the cost of sending thousands (if not millions) of drones into space.

This 3D printing lark is a complete joke.

Look at a hammer.
Is a hammer made from plastic that same as one made from hardened steel?
Can electronics be made in a 3D printer?

Can a 3D printer make anything more useful than a plastic shoe or wrench or cup or screw. I doubt it.

It can't even make a bloody sock.

maninasia

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

actually it's worth a lot more at GEO

you can make structures out of it , 3D printer and all that

you can use it as reaction mass

you could make flywheels out of it for gyroscopic attitude control

it could be used to make shields , mirrors

The Mars Curiosity rover used 300Kg of inert ballast during it's descent



on the ground it's pretty worthless allright

So you can make mirrors out of nickel, it polishes itself does it?
Nickel melts at what temperature?
How do you make nickel objects in a 3D printer?
What's the purity of nickel on asteroids?

Just a few GIANT holes in this theory.

maninasia

ZeRoY wrote: »

That would be the first mistake. There are hundreds of prices for Nickel as even Pure Nickel on Earth is alloy. I cant find a price for Asteroid Nickel un-surprisingly but something tells me its composition will be different as well as its price!

I think a lot of people are looking at this guys thinking they are lunatics with lots of cash to spare but I say they are just pioneer, Space exploration and mining is coming, this guys are just the first to really try it out.

It's all about publicity, get new investors for their core projects, get the government to chip in some money. James Cameron is involved with one of the projects so you know it's all about the documentary for that one.

im invisible

seamus wrote: »

I'm guessing the medium-term game here is some form of semi-automated orbital processing plant which checks/refines the samples returned and carries out repairs on any craft. The advent of 3D printing really does a lot here as it means that practically any component can be manufactured on board. So basically once you have the station built, it can build its own fireflies and send them on, massively reducing the cost of sending thousands (if not millions) of drones into space.

two words: Skynet.

Just Like Heaven

maninasia wrote: »

How do you make nickel objects in a 3D printer?

I could be wrong but haven't NASA sort of done something like this with a nickel alloy using selective laser melting?

And again, I don't know a lot about this, but are they not looking into printing electronics;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfapBnzLzF4

My understanding of the vision for 3D printing was always more the idea that a part of your hoover at home breaks, instead of throwing it out you can just google the part and print it off. Less so making things like socks and hammers. Wouldn't it work if they just designed the fireflies/satelites/robots printable in the first place?

seamus

3D printing isn't limited to producing one-piece plastics. That's the current limit of home applications, but primarily because the process and the raw materials are cheap and easy to work with.

On the scale of billion-dollar budgets, complex machinery can be "printed" component-by-component and assembled automatically. It's unbelievably short-sighted to think that 3D printing will only ever be able to print simple one-piece plastics. There have already been prototypes of printers with multiple "cartridges" containing different compounds which allows for a complex item to be printed in one move.

No, they're not replicators, but they're planning to mine minerals. There's your raw material from which you build more equipment. Anything which isn't easily mined or produced in orbit can be periodically shipped up from earth. Building equipment on earth and shipping it up is more troublesome because stuff can break. Even just shipping the components up unassembled is better than having it pre-assembled.

Actually I like your sock example, because that's a good example of the kind of process I mean. You can produce nylon fibres - that's your 3D printing - then have the socks woven by machine. Et voila; Socks, produced automatically by the facility. I'm not sure what use nylon socks would be in orbit, but it could be done.

maninasia

Well yes but then you would have to ship the nylon to make the sock in the first place..and the chips etc etc. Materials matter, and the combination of materials made under different processes at different pressures will vary enormously in their usefulness and application.

I think some sort of microfabricating facility will be useful in the far future, but not for decades and decades. You would want a bunch of generic switches, ICs etc which a robot could stick together for you and which would have updatable firmware. Again though you are not actually going to be making the ICs and many of the components on a spacecraft.

The energy to needed to produce these tools and also to refine the materials to make the tools (such as nickel), especially if they require high temperatures and pressures, is also a big problem. The raw material is not just sitting there ready to be used on an asteroid. It needs to be refined and purified or else just drop shipped back to Earth.

maninasia

I guess I get browned off at these kinds of ridiculous claims 'as big as the internet' that get accepted almost without question?!?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9788066.stm

How is a 3D printer going to make my leather shoes with rubber soles eh?
If I want to wear a pair of crocs I would have gone and bought them already