Planetary Resources

The biggest hurdle isn't technical, it's legal. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 specifically prevents any signatory nation from claiming *anything* for exclusive use beyond the Earth. Without the ability to lay claim to real property in space, you can't have mining rights. And without mining rights, all of the technology in the world won't get this business venture off the ground.

I suspect lawyers are already working on this problem. Assuming there is a legal remedy, it'll probably take a decade to sort things out and amend the treaty appropriately.

I put never...not because that we won't be able to do it in 5, 10, 15, 25 years, but because the world is going to end in December...hence, we won't be able to do it.

...never used that smiley before. :-)

There will ALWAYS be cheaper ways to obtain mineral recources from Earth bound sources than asteroids.

The cost of putting anything into orbit per pound has come down by a huge amount, but is still hugely expensive.
Getting to, extracting mineral resources from asteroids, AND returning them to Earth will be WAY more expensive.

CW,

I always understood the 1967 treaty as applying only to countries, not corporations, so I doubt there is a legal problem with space-based mining ops, just a technical one. If they ever build the space bridge using nano-tubes, the cost of getting into orbit will go way down. Another company is attempting to shoot cargo into orbit (see link below), which they claim will also make space commerce more affordable. An off-world colony would also do the trick, since all the building materials, along with water for fuel, I believe, are readily available at the lunar poles. We'll get there someday. But it has to be cost effective for a private company, of course.

http://phys.org/news183023838.html

The topic has been discussed on the forum before, here and here.

I ticked "over 25 years". Even this company's prospectus puts the precious metal mining timetable at "eventually".

Using current and forseeable advances in technology, mining asteroids is only economically viable if the price of the metal being extracted is higher than $25,000 to $50,000 per ounce. It's cheaper than nuclear transmutation by an order of magnitude, but seawater extraction is cheaper.

As several have pointed out, the biggest expense is incurred when you leave Earth and attempt to return. Asteroid mining will be much more viable once there are space-based industries capable of launching their own mining missions and enough people permanently living in space to sell the metal to.

Of course, if 99% of the minerals mined in space stay up in space, then that won't affect supply and demand (and therefore price) down here on Earth.


The Treaty itself answers this. Article VII of the Treaty stipulates:


So any corporation operating in space needs a signatory government to look over its shoulder approving (and taking responsibility for) everything it does. A problem comes about only if a transnational corporation nominally based in a non-Treaty-signatory country were to try to enter the fray. And I think the rest of the international community would lean heavily on any non-signatory nation trying to open up a spaceport on its territory to sign the Treaty.

Of course, most observers think the Treaty is pie-in-the-sky idealism that will go out the window and be replaced with something much more pragmatic as soon as enough countries and corporations think they can make enough money from space.

Financial and political costs for terrestrial PM extraction and refining are going up all the time.

As for the Planetary Resources project, assuming no break through technology appears, the high cost of lifting tons of equipment into Earth orbit can be mitigated through one simple overriding philosophy: re-usability. Yes, lifting anything out of Earth's gravity well is costly. However, once it's up there, you're good to go. Simple prefab frameworks can be boosted and assembled in orbit. In fact, even upper stage rocket hulls could be reused. Remember, they're not building the ISS or even the much more primitive "Skylab" of the 1970s. Also, not having to worry about a human crew saves loads of weight and avoids lots of technical hurdles. Think of these vehicles as ore hauling UAVs. This seems very doable using existing technology.

The energy costs of getting things out of Earth's gravity well are never going to make it viable to mine asteroids for use on Earth. It's more than just technical problems, it's basic physics. If some scientific advancement makes energy incredibly cheap, the economic boon of cheap energy would make mining asteroids moot.

It might make sense to mine asteroids for metals which would be used in space, as it may be cheaper than sending them up from Earth, but that only starts making sense when you have a permanent or semi-permanent population in space, which is in the 50+ year time frame.

You can pretty much bet money that if anything really vital to humanity is discovered in either of those locations, so sort of an agreement will come to pass at some point that will allow those resources to be developed.

What gets me about some of these treaties is that they give those who have zero chance of ever obtaining those resources a voice in how they will or will not be developed. Like some little land-locked Podunk country being involved in the Law of the Seas Treaty. Only those who can get these resources should be able to make the critical decisions concerning them, IMHO. If they want to create a fund where others can share in some of the profits, fine. But the important decisions should be executed by those who can deliver the goods.