from the supplies-of-Illudium-Phosdex-are-becoming-dangerously-low-on-Earth dept.
AstroForge has announced an ambitious commercial mission to observe a distant asteroid—an important step for the California startup as it strives to become the world's first deep space mining company.
AstroForge seeks to capitalize on the rapidly evolving state of the spaceflight industry and become the first firm to mine for metals in deep space. The California startup raised $13 million in seed funding last year—its first year of existence—and has now formally announced two mining-related missions that are scheduled to launch within the calendar year. The company is partnering with several others to make it happen, including OrbAstro, Dawn Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines.
Space is the place, as Sun Ra famously said, and it most certainly has plenty to offer, including rare-earth metals like platinum, gold, iridium, palladium, and osmium, among other minerals. Materials on a single asteroid could fetch trillions of dollars, making asteroid mining a tantalizing prospect. This idea has been around for decades, but the excessive costs associated with the endeavor have largely made it impossible. That's changing, however, as it's never been more affordable to launch rockets and manufacture satellites and spacecraft.
[...] "With a finite supply of precious metals on Earth, we have no other choice than to look to deep space to source cost-effective and sustainable materials," Matt Gialich, CEO and co-founder of AstroForge, said in a statement.
[...] The first of AstroForge's two missions is slated to launch in April. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a 6U cubesat pre-packed with asteroid-like materials. Working in Earth orbit, the OrbAstro-built cubesat will attempt to vaporize and sort the materials into their elemental components.
The second mission, scheduled to launch in October, raises the stakes. [...] When the time comes, AstroForge intends to target asteroids measuring 66 to 4,920 feet (20 to 1,500 meters) in diameter and, instead of landing on the objects, will break apart the asteroids from a distance and collect the valuable aggregate materials.
[...] Whether or not deep space asteroid mining will prove to be a sustainable and profitable enterprise remains an unanswered question, but genuine attempts to make it happen are now officially underway.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 31, @09:25AM (5 children)
They want to get the most valuable materials from an asteroid, e.g. platinum-group metals, and send them to Earth, rather than use them in space. Forget about ISRU.
They want to "break apart the asteroids from a distance and collect the valuable aggregate materials".
How do they sort out the good stuff? Unless they intend to land chunks in the Mojave Desert and then do all the refinement on Earth.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 31, @11:12AM (4 children)
Falcon 9 quotes about 3M$ per tonne to launch to LEO. Cost of platinum is about 23 M$ per tonne. Assuming that the cost to land is comparable to cost to launch (should be cheaper, but it puts a cost scale on things), then they need to be able to run their mining operation with recovery overhead of about 10 % from LEO. That isn't too bad as these things go. IF we go for more conservative 15 M$ cost to launch to Mars orbit then they have an overhead of 10 M$ or so to pay for the mining operation per tonne of recovered platinum. That sounds remarkably affordable (I am surprised).
Cost to launch comes from here:
https://dev.spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/spacex-price.gif [spacenews.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday January 31, @02:22PM (3 children)
I don't think that's reasonable. Landing stuff should be so much cheaper that it's a whole different topic. But getting it from the orbit of the asteroid to LEO is likely to be expensive. And dangerous.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 31, @03:49PM (1 child)
> Landing stuff should be so much cheaper that it's a whole different topic.
What technology are you proposing that is so much cheaper? Maybe a passive deorbit system like a space plane/shuttle?
> But getting it from the orbit of the asteroid to LEO is likely to be expensive.
I guess the delta v required to boost to the asteroid's orbit around the sun is the same as the delta v required to boost back down to earth orbit. I haven't checked, but it seems reasonable based on conservation of energy type arguments.
> And dangerous.
How so?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday February 01, @01:50AM
For landing it I was thinking of sculpting the payload into a lifting body and adding a few controls. Not cheap, but cheap compared to lifting off.
For orbital delta-v, the idea is to move a lot more mass from the asteroid than to the asteroid.
For landing stuff being dangerous, that's a very heavy payload (if you're going to make any profit) and if it hits someplace significant after going out of control...I know we want the velocity to be relatively low, but this isn't a light satellite, that's mainly empty space.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by leromarinvit on Tuesday January 31, @06:33PM
Then mine only those asteroids that come to LEO by themselves, duh. Sure we're gonna die, but we're gonna die RICH!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by sensei_moreh on Tuesday January 31, @02:08PM (2 children)
Since when are platinum, gold, iridium, palladium, and osmium rare earths? I must have missedthat change to the periodic table.
Geology - It's not rocket science; it's rock science
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 31, @02:25PM (1 child)
I think that they meant "rare on Earth". I read that as a typo.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday January 31, @08:18PM
My favorite typos, corrected, are "fat's food" and "Make America Grate Again".
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience