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The US Geological Survey Is Getting Serious About Space Resources and Mining
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is starting to earnestly evaluate space resources for future mining. Since its establishment in the 1870s, the USGS has focused pretty much solely on Earth. But now it's also investigating what benefits may or may not exist in tapping extraterrestrial water, minerals and metals.
[...] This past June, several USGS experts took part in a Space Resources Roundtable held at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. "The space-resources community will benefit greatly from working together with the USGS to assess the location and value of minerals, energy and water on the moon, Mars and asteroids," said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines. [...] It's also worth noting that the new director of the USGS, Jim Reilly, is a geoscientist and former NASA astronaut. During his 13-year NASA career, Reilly flew on three space shuttle missions, conducted five spacewalks and racked up a total of more than 856 hours in orbit.
[...] [Laszlo Kestay, a research geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona,] pointed to the USGS' participation in space-resource workshops. In addition, there's the 2017 "Feasibility Study for the Quantitative Assessment of Mineral Resources in Asteroids" led by Kestay, which found that the water and metal resources of near-Earth asteroids are sufficient to support humanity should it become a fully spacefaring species. "At this point, we have done enough work to feel confident that the methods the USGS uses to assess mineral, energy and water resources on Earth can be used to assess space resources with minimal modification," Kestay said. "We have also done enough preliminary work to identify some areas where humanity's lack of knowledge will result in exceedingly large uncertainties in assessments undertaken today."
Also at Forbes.
Related: Luxembourg Announces Investment in Asteroid Mining
Asteroid Mining Could Begin in 10-20 Years
Chinese Researchers Propose Asteroid Mining Plan, Including a Heat Shield
(Score: 4, Funny) by nnet on Thursday September 06 2018, @03:54PM
Finally. A use case for The Space Force.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:24PM (1 child)
Is maintaining monopolies on the "rare" elements long enough to make back initial investments. You bring back 2,000,000 tons of gold(which is speculated to be possible on some asteroids), and suddenly it's about as valuable as iron. You ship 10 tons a week for 100,000 weeks and your fucking rich, richer than most countries, launch costs be damned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 07 2018, @03:15AM
If you can live for almost 2000 years (which is what 100,000 weeks is), then you can find plenty of ways to be fucking rich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @05:15PM
"Not getting enough attention (some say financially), the u.s. geological survey, renamed itself today to "u.s. EARTH based geological survey" this morning; later in the afternoon "the five largest mining conglomerates have reportedly pledged a combined 5 trillon us dollars to incumbent president-elect Dr. Young election campaign. Dr. Young is know for his firm believes that space exploration is a waste of tax dollars and that space exploration cannot solve basic problems of hunger, over population and poverty ..."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by http on Thursday September 06 2018, @05:58PM (7 children)
Jerry Pournell might be a mediocre science fiction writer, but he's passable as a science writer. Back in the 1980s, he wrote a book showing that asteroid mining was 100% do-able with off-the-shelf tech; the only problem being big C capitalism's hesitance to look beyond next year's earning reports (nowadays next quarter, potato potato). A project having a thirty year ROI would therefore probably only be undertaken by soverign states. Collaboration between NASA and USGS seems an obvious path.
While we're at it, where's my jetpack.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday September 06 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
Jerry Pournelle [jerrypournelle.com] wrote on BYTE magazine for a long time and was usually enjoyable. Another favorite in the 1980's was Stewart Alsop [wikipedia.org] who, AFAIK, was the first to put into writing in the 80's that software development projects are inherently unpredictable. Even big corporations, with lots of resources, can't get it right. And this became even more true in the 1990s. With gobs of money players like Microsoft or Adobe had trouble getting things released on time. There was a joke about when Windows 95 would be released.
I would snicker as I say corporate sovereignty. But that doesn't mean they have any long term vision beyond the next executive bonus.
Yet, SpaceX seemed to come along and invest, take a huge risk, almost fail, and then achieve what appears to be great success. Now if they can only keep it up. And hopefully NASA can adapt the Orion capsule to rid on a Falcon Heavy. :-)
Could SpaceX plan their own mission to the asteroid belt without making it public until they are just about ready to do it, or after they succeed at it? Don't bring back gold. Other rare earth metals can be worth more, and certainly have much greater industrial and practical usefulness.
But it belongs to the belters!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @09:25PM
I read all of JP's Byte columns (and just about everything else in the magazine), and I thought he was as often as not acting the idiot. He was a Microsoft fluffer, and a poor one. As an SF writer, he was pretty good, if not great (Niven, OTOH, was great.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @06:19PM (3 children)
some poster already said, that a lot of "new" gold makes gold worthless.
thus "the big mining" hesitance to look to space; keeping things "limited" keeps the value of things (see: "printing money" = inflation?).
my guess is, that a (so far) rare element but with crazy-cool application possibilities will HAVE TO lead to asteroid mining.
thus, the question how far will the rabbit hole go? will the "crazy-cool" applications be hidden even?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday September 06 2018, @06:21PM (2 children)
That argument is like saying: we won't drill for oil in order to keep the supply limited and the value high.
Problem: if it is there, someone else will go get it, or drill for it, etc.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 07 2018, @01:29PM (1 child)
I suggest you look up OPEC.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 07 2018, @04:17PM
The O-peckers take advantage of the geography of oil.
The asteroid belt is big and not ruled by a small handful.
Yet.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday September 07 2018, @03:59AM
Rich Pournell is a steelie eyed missile man.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday September 06 2018, @06:20PM (9 children)
Suppose someone
(*cough* SpaceX *cough*)solves the problem, goes to an asteroid and can bring back something valuable. I would say other rare earth metals in addition to gold.Would use of such metals be restricted to only constructing things in an orbiting shipyard somewhere?
Or is there some way to bring some of that down to the planet surface safely without having to tweet about impacting it on some country?
Impact small chunks of it in a desert area somewhere. Then "mine" it from the ground in that area.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @06:43PM (2 children)
If a BFR could land 150, or even just 50 metric tons of gold on Earth, the mission would be worth it, even if it took several launches to do in-orbit refueling for 1 vehicle. The real question is whether we can find the metals we want in nice solid chunks. Which means we need prospecting of many asteroids.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 07 2018, @04:09PM (1 child)
So robot prospectors?
And robot miners?
Or minor miners?
Or belters.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 07 2018, @04:19PM
http://www.mining.com/luxembourgs-space-agency-ready-lift-off/ [mining.com]
Possibly. We might see public-private partnerships in this area. And it would be nice to have a small, mass-produced prospector spacecraft so that dozens of them could be sent to asteroids (big ones [wikipedia.org], or more likely, near-Earth asteroids).
The mining part is much less clear. Should the asteroids be diverted into Earth orbit? Lunar? Should we try to land some? Process them in space? Will we need to waste tons of rock in order to produce grams of precious metals?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Thursday September 06 2018, @09:31PM (5 children)
You refine the metal in space, form it into large blocky gliders and coat them with a couple of feet of foamed slag from the refining. Fly them back on a shallow trajectory finishing
overinto a large desert. You should be able to land 100's to 1000's of tonnes each, with minimal waste.The space shuttle proved you can put wings on a brick and have it land mostly intact.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @10:00PM (1 child)
I haven't heard of this one. Not sure if it's a compelling strategy or a joke.
Then again, Chinese researchers think they can do it with a big heat shield.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Friday September 07 2018, @07:14AM
Serious.
You make long wings, with most of the mass evenly spread along them to minimize stress. Give it a long skinny tail. It looks like a skinny dragonfly with really thick wings.
Total of a tonne or so of high tech control surfaces and actuators on the end of the tail, to keep the angle of attack of the wing at optimum and give you some control over the landing site.
Foamed slag, if you can do it with sufficient structural strength, makes an excellent ablative heatshield.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Friday September 07 2018, @04:03AM
Or land it on your enemy. "But we gave you fifty tons of platinum, what are you complaining about?"
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 07 2018, @11:47AM (1 child)
How much energy is required to de-orbit? Need to slow down somehow in a predictable manner. How much can be done with atmospheric breaking (assuming e.g. infinite amount of heat shield to burn off).
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 07 2018, @07:03PM
You could just about do it all with aerobraking. Rocket scientists have got really really good at predicting trajectories. Most meteors that don't make it to ground are either very small, or they break up. A foot or so thick heatshield is probably plenty.
It assumes signficant space infrastructure. Building a glider like that isn't something you are going to do with what you can launch in a cubesat. It only makes sense as an ongoing mining operation where you basically replace a lot of earth mining.
I think you would have solar-powered ion drive tugs to put them into an intercepting orbit. Maybe place them in LEO with a small throwaway de-orbit rocket on them. That way you could land them when you want.
Should make an amazing show if you land a bunch of them at once one night. :)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.