Why Mining an Asteroid for Water and Precious Metals Isn't as Crazy as it Sounds

Popular Science ^ | 04/24/12 | Clay Dillow

[KevinDavis]

[a fool in paradise]

Because bottled water from Fiji, Iceland, and Houston isn’t exotic enough anymore.

[RoosterRedux]

More water? We have oceans full of it.

We just need energy to desalinate and transport it.

[struggle]

Live a new life on the off-world colonies.

[plain talk]

yeah, it’s a piece of cake. just ask Bruce Willis

[KevinDavis]

Amen..

[cripplecreek]

It makes perfect sense to anyone with the slightest understanding of costs involved in space flight.

If you’ve got water in space, you have hydrogen and oxygen that don’t need to be hefted to orbit at a cost of thousands of dollars per pound.

[jonrick46]

Newt was dissed for men mining on the moon. Now everyone is fascinated by the prospect of robots mining asteroids.

[DarthFuzball]

We just need energy to desalinate and transport it.

But if your living and working in space you need to have water that was hauled hauled up and out of a very deep gravity well. That is very expensive.

[cripplecreek]

That is very expensive.

5 figures per lb as near as I can tell.

[HerrBlucher]

This is all going to collapse when they find a spotted owl on an asteroid.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Actually, it’s even crazier than it sounds.

[JRandomFreeper]

But it is private citizens using their own money to advance science and humanity (and their pocketbooks). You would think a conservative would appreciate those that are on the edge of technology development.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio, 1920s

Nay-sayers have been around for a long time.

/johnny

[running_dog_lackey]

“Actually, it’s even crazier than it sounds.”
Didn’t you read this part?
~~~Planetary Resources merely has some interesting Powerpoint slides, some big-money backers, and a press conference under its belt.~~~
There’s no room for doubt. These guys are series.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

But it is private citizens using their own money to advance science and humanity (and their pocketbooks). You would think a conservative would appreciate those that are on the edge of technology development.

Oh, contraire, I guarantee you these operators know how to get federal funding, and they plan on getting it.

[cripplecreek]

Nay-sayers have been around for a long time.



We the elders of the bronze age bitter clinger's society demand that you cease this foolishness right this minute.

[JRandomFreeper]

Prove it.

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

"Man will not fly for 50 years."

-- Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, to brother Orville, after a disappointing flying experiment, 1901

It's not just the bronze age fuddy duddies. ;)

/johnny

[Ron C.]

Sounds far more expensive and time consuming than most of us will live to see... but, when I was a child no one would have thought it possible for man to visit the moon and return either.

Technologically it looks somehow doable today, at enormous expense that is unlikely to be repaid until many years into the future - possibly too many to for investors to hope for a return in their lifetime.

There's one glaring problem I'm sure they are still trying to calculate the full ramifications of. Asteroids (the most valuable quite large) are moving through space at a horrific rate, presenting a rather difficult obstacle - that of the fuel-power needed to overcome mass plus speed.

The solution can only lie in long-term minimal corrections in direction, and use of gravitational power to assist - with perhaps some deep-space refueling made possible. I'd love to hear or read how they expect to be able to pull it all off in a reasonable time period - i.e., within how many years.