$195 BEEELLION asteroid approaching Earth The pint-sized – in astronomical terms – asteroid that's scheduled to buzz the Earth this Friday may have a street space value of about $195bn. "Unfortunately, the path of asteroid 2012 DA14 is tilted relative to Earth, requiring too much energy to chase it down for mining," say the wannabe space prospectors at Deep Space …
If the asteroid is 20% nickel and iron and a bit less water, then the remaining mystery parts must contain a huge percentage of Unobtainium. That is where they will make their money! Imagine selling tons of it to the space elevator operators or maybe to those businesses building mega solar collectors in earth orbit. Money to be made. Has anyone investigated how many of those involved (and I use that term loosely) in the asteroid mining with past expertise in space elevators and orbiting mega solar power plants???
All of those ideas are great except for the fact that we live at the VERY BOTTOM of this incredible gravity well called earth. The cost of lifting a kilo of anything into low earth orbit has changed little since 1957. Why do we think that by 2020 this will change radically?
Do you realize that millions of governmental dollars/Euros/Pounds have been spent on Space Elevators and Orbiting Solar Power Plants (Research - nothing actually done) I'm sure we will see those involved (and again using the word loosely) approaching world governments for grants to "work out the bugs".
I would like to buy the first kilo of Unobtanium - put me on the list.
Patricia - Montgomery, AL
"Getting the remains off the moon makes it significantly less valuble."
Specifically, once it is on the Moon it is actually worthless. The Moon is not short of rock. Similarly, there is no value in bringing it down to Earth, which lacks neither rock nor water.
The problem faced by DSI is that for almost any amount of rock, the Moon is actually a better place to start. Firstly, for the foreseeable future it is closer to the places where folk want the end-products. Secondly, like an asteroid, it doesn't have an atmosphere, so a whacking great electromagnetic catapult can be used to get those end-products out of its gravity well.
But what are the odds that all the eleventy billion dollar asteroids somehow manage to fly past Earth in the next seven years, whilst DSI are still waxing rhetorical to their investors about how gold will fall from the sky, and then in 2020 we'll suddenly find out that the only asteroids left are "smaller than expected/not as rich as expected/not in ideal orbits/too expensive to access/etc etc".
Issuing statements about how ridiculously massive their profits *could*, potentially, maybe, possibly, theoretically be seems irresponsible at best.
From the article:
"Its mass could be as little as 16,000 tons or as, uh, massive as one million tons, the company said in an email."
Most companies would wait until there's at least a *little* bit more certainty than that - the asteroid is getting closer, not further away, and it's not going to suddenly change it's mind about coming towards earth, so at this point in time the company could easily have waited, and estimates would have inevitably gotten better. Of course, it's entirely likely that this would result in the asteroid being a fraction of what they're claiming it *could* be. Unless they're being irresponsible, in which case see previous post.
@MikeR - I don't know about this new Deep Space Industries one but Planetary Resources has some pretty deep pocket backers who are well known to be very smart and successful. Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, James Cameron, Charles Simonyi, K. Ram Shriram, Ross Perot Jr. and John Whitehead among them.
Their engineering and flight roster reads like a who's who of NASA engineers and flight experts as well.
I don't think I would want to compete against this group. In anything.
Hmm .. 65 beellion dollars worth of water ? Using their estimates for mass that works out at $10 per litre. Now considering that there's apparently no end of numpties willing to stump up $4-$5 a bottle (<< 1 litre) for fashion/health/eco water here on Earth, where it literally falls from the sky, I think $10 a litre in space is a bargain. In fact, I suspect if you could get it down to Earth you could make over 100 beellion dollars by marketing it as some sort of ET water with magical health benefits .. aligned to the cosmos or something.
There are people who pay to get a certificate saying that a star is named after them. If you could prove that bottled water was safe and sourced from an asteroid people would pay what ever you ask and they would probably be happier if you make extra expensive so it seems exclusive. If it happens at all the entire future industry of asteroid mining is likely to be kickstarted by the novelty bottled water drinkers.
Let me help.
Where do the big boomer beasts live and work and earn their keep? Up in space.
Now it's quite expensive enough giving birth to the beasts and filling their maws with enough woosh to get them flying the first time. How do you keep them flying?
You really don't want to keep bringing them down to the neighborhood forecourt to fill up any time you want to send them somewhere new, do you? They are very noisy beasts and it'd be right swell to keep them out of the same atmosphere as your ear.
So where do you set up a filling station very convenient for top ups? Up in space.
Only, where does the woosh goop come from? Wouldn't it be absolutely fine to mine the go stuff from something already up in space? Something that doesn't have much of a gravity well?
Hmmm, can you think of something...? While you're thinking, here's some rocket fuel to wet your whistle...
What, like Space2O Water?
Sadly, no longer made. eNOT_ENOUGH_SUCKERS.
There will be many smaller starter asteroids to cut our teeth on between now and 2046 when it returns for its next flyby. By then we should be ready with craft that can go out to this beast, stop its spin, and start to put it on a course to where it will do the most good on its subsequent approach in 2080. We'll know a bit more about whether it's worth the bother after close approach as we'll be scanning it like it's trying to get on a plane.
Even if this thing is one solid ingot of iron/some other metal (as opposed to an oxide or some other ore) how is it to be forged into something useful? Where are you getting the equipment (ie some kind of forge/mould/press) to shape the metal(s) into useful items, and where is the energy to power said equipment?
The article talks of using the minerals (including water) whilst in space, as opposed to recovery and bringing to earth, I am wondering how.
I think having a relatively vast supply of metal and water in orbit is a very good thing indeed. Send up a ThingWotMakesOtherThings(TM) (or a von Neumann machine, if you want to be really high-brow about it), leave it to work there for a while, refining metal and turning water into delicious hydrogen and even more delicious oxygen, and in a few years' time, you have all we need for a space-based industrial complex and maybe even the beginnings of humanity becoming a true space-faring race.
In my opinion, while 999 of 1000 such companies will go bust, it'll be the one that doesn't that will advance humanity by a significant bit. And I very much look forward to it.
Meanwhile, we have HAPPY HAPPY FISSION reactors (a PWR in my orbit? It's more likely than you think!)
Or you can deploy SOLAR REFLECTORS to direct heat onto the poor astro-roid which will transform itself into a nicely outgassing marble once you deploy several hundred km² worth of mylar.
Space Super Capitalism!!
It might just about fit a small alien spaceship inside the hollowed out interior.
The second it gets close to Earth, it "sheds" its outer shell and gives it a little nudge (having first filled it with synthesized Li7D and a suitably large "continent buster" from its onboard Zero Point Module bank and water in said asteroid) and voila! Meteorblitzkrieg!
Apologies to the makers of SG1 for "borrowing" their idea.
Anyone done a neutrino scan yet, 10 N/hr originating from said asteroid would be a dead giveaway that something nasty lurks within (tm)
AC/DC 6EQUJ5
Who would have thought that all those hard-working Silicon Valley "tech" billionaires had so much time to watch the science fiction movies being churned out by their alter egos in the south of the State, and so little to study hard subjects like engineering and economics? Assuming they aspire to do more than punt exceedingly overpriced stock to gullible investors, they're going to rapidly find out how hard real tech is when they try to build the world's first fully autonomous, self-repairing, self-powered rust-processing factory capable of dealing with more than milligrams of material, and get it into space. Very inspirational, but fantasy.
I wouldn't have said the same thing to the Wright brothers, because by 1900 there had been plenty of gliders and even less successful powered aircraft, a decade and more before they started work on their aircraft. This "scheme" is more akin to their great-great-grandad pitching the Wright Flyer Company to investors in 1800 when the state of the art was the hot air balloon.
<"Unfortunately, the path of asteroid 2012 DA14 is tilted relative to Earth, requiring too much energy to chase it down for mining," say the wannabe space prospectors at Deep Space Industries>
Right...... otherwise you're ready to go mining then if a slower one appears? Really?
So it's back in the earth's neighbourhood in thirty odd years - 2046. The last footprint was left on the moon forty years ago and nothing has been lifted to space on the same scale since...... Unless it hits us in 2046, I'd imagine it'll fly by uninhibited by any fantastical mining plans then as well.
Exactly the same as if it is made of pure unobtanium valued at a bazillion dollars a tonne - absolutely nothing.
Re-read the article with two thoughts in mind:
- DSI want more funding for what is currently an unproven company (how many asteroids have they successfully mined or even surveyed?)
- PR people are expensive to have sitting around doing nothing. Maybe if they manage to get a few new investors interested in the company, they won't get fired this week.
Your metals wide boy reporting in here.
It really does bug me when such valuations are offered. The value of a lump of rock (or ore, whatever you want to call it) is the value of the materials extracted MINUS the costs of extraction.
Given that no one at all can mine this heap of dirt the value is therefore zero.
Just send Bruce Willis (He's in town) with a few of Hollywood and RIAA/MPAA /BPA executives, with a few nukes. Make then an offer they cant refuse.
Job done. either they bring back the booty, or come down and seek alternative employemnt.
At least this will stop them suing Grandmas andlittle children and can earn some real money by streaming this civiilzation saving heroics via the interwebs.
Makes commercial sense.
The values given are for the refined material available in orbit.
But that assumes (1) There are enough customers for that much material at that price, and (2) That the price they are willing to pay will stay the same.
But how do they calculate those prices? Are they the current prices, when it's incredibly expensive to get stuff into orbit and there's hardly any stuff available in orbit?
If so then they're just chucking huge numbers around for publicity. They wouldn't get anything near that in practice.
People used to make jewellery out of aluminium because it was so valuable, being so hard to extract.
There is a bizillaonozas of valuable metals on Mars. Scrap that, there is a diamond sized planet! http://rt.com/news/astronomy-diamond-earth-planet-210/
I'm currently taking investment in my company called "Diamonds Rz Us" who are planning to mine the diamond planet in 2999. Any takers? It's totally legit. I got economy scientists to check out my back of the napkin scribbles and everything.
Send out some intrepid space frontiersmen to shift it into Earth (or lunar) orbit. A few carefully-vectored nuclear bombs should do the trick.
It's only fiction, and it was written strictly for kids - but have a look at "Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet" (published in 1954). It does contain a few scientific solecisms, but as well as being a fine adventure story it does quite a good job of conveying the basic ideas of celestial mechanics.
"Sarris chases the Protector into a space minefield, which damages the beryllium sphere that powers the ship's reactor. The crew of the Protector acquire a new sphere from a nearby planet after battling various alien creatures..."
Godzillium mined from an asteroid or from a planet. What's the dif? It's the greatest film ever made.
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