What is currently holding us back from mining in space?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I’m sure there are a few hurdles, but wondering what is the biggest reason that keeps us back at this moment as the most pressing thing. Is it that the technology just isn’t there yet? Or is it because of legal complications, international treaties and all that? Is it just not financially feasible to do at this present time with the technology we do have? That we could do it, in theory, but the ROI is too low?

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CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Throwback to an ancient thread on Reddit by AdmiralPelleon

It takes 6 BFR launches to put a fully fueled BFS in orbit, going for $7 million/launch. I’ll be generous, and pretend that the BFS making the trip to the asteroid doesn’t lose value along the way (hint: it does).

So let’s plug in the Rocket Equation for a fully-fueled BFS in orbit, let’s see how much fuel we must expend to get the BFS to the asteroid to pick up it’s cargo:

Delta-v to Ryugu (a near-earth asteroid) has $95 billion of minerals on it = Raptor Engine ISP * ln( (start fuel mass + empty mass)/ (start fuel mass - fuel used + empty mass) )

OR: 4666 = 3759.81ln((1100+85)/(1100-fuel used + 85))

fuel used = 851.67

So just getting the BFS to the closest near earth object takes up 851,000 kg of fuel! This is before we’ve loaded any minerals on board. To calculate how much payload we can bring back do earth, it’s the same equation except:

Delta-v to Earth = Raptor Engine ISP * ln( (start fuel mass + payload + empty mass)/ (payload + empty mass) )

OR: 4666 = 3759.81ln((1100-852+p+85)/(p + 85))

payload = 28.893 metric tons

So that sucks! We go all that way, launch 6 rockets, spend probably years in outer space, and all we get are 29 metric tons of cobalt!?! At current prices, that’s worth ~$899,000. Compare that to the “best case” cost of 6 BFR launches or $42 million.

BUT WAIT!

It’s commonly agreed that some sort of ISRU (creating fuel out of the asteroid itself) will be required for space mining. The asteroid Ryugu probably has water, and while I don’t think it has carbon, amateur scientists like us need not be constrained by such petty laws of chemistry! Let’s assume that, once the ship arrives, it is fully refueled at zero cost. Now our return-payload looks like:

Delta-v to Earth = Raptor Engine ISP * ln( (start fuel mass + payload + empty mass)/ (payload + empty mass) )

OR: 4666 = 3759.81ln((1100+p+85)/(p+ 85))

payload = 345.5 metric tons

The good news is we’ve increased our revenues by an order of magnitude (~$ 10,710,500)! The bad news is we are now at just over 25% of our fixed, “best case” costs. (I’m actually not sure if the BFS could land with that much payload, but at this point it doesn’t really matter does it?)

These numbers can be made to work for elements like Helium 3 and Platinum, due to their super-high cost-per-kg (345.5 metric tons of Platinum is technically worth over $10 billion). However, the world’s yearly supply of platinum is roughly just 243 metric tons, and increasing this significantly would serve to quickly crater the price.

All this is to say that no, asteroid mining is not, and may never be, feasible>

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- Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  
  All this is to say that no, asteroid mining is not, and may never be, feasible>
  
  Not through rockets no, but if we ever manage to build a space lift or a sky hook then the maths will radically change.
  
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  - CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Or a space elevator perhaps
    
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- abbadon420@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  It’s feasibly if you don’t have to launch 6 rockets to get it up and and going, i.e. if you’ve allready got a regular supply line into space to a permanent space station or a moon station.
  
  If you want to go from London to Liverpool by train, it’ll cost you millions to build the rail and purchase a locomotive. Except it’ll actually only cost you a couple pounds for a ticket, because all that infrastructure is allready in place. Because generations before us invested in all that stuff to supply the mines and the factories.
  
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  - CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Very fair point
    
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  - kate@lemmy.uhhoh.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    [deleted]
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  - TomAwsm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Too bad nobody invests in the future anymore, it’s all about them short term gains.
    
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- NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Thank you for sharing that! Great to see with numbers, but also quite depressing.
  
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vk6flab@lemmy.radio ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
We as a species are not yet capable of doing this.

We can barely land successfully on our moon, we haven’t made it to Mars with humans and many of the robots we did send crashed before becoming operational.

We don’t have the capability to run completely automated mining on Earth, people are so far always needed on site.

If we’re going to mine asteroids, we’ll need to have a lot more capabilities than we currently do.

Note that I’m scratching the surface here, we haven’t yet discussed travel time, keeping humans alive and sane, fuel or Earth resources required to mount the effort.

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- jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Not to mention we have tried to land on asteroids a couple times now, but failed. Best we coukd do was smash against them to analize the dust.
  
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  - vk6flab@lemmy.radio ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    The OSIRIS-REx did manage to bring back some material from Bennu. We retrieved 121.6 grams and it cost around a $100 million. It took 8 years.
    
    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx
    
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  - NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I thought Rosetta was successful, somewhat?
    
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foggy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Cost efficacy.

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Skyrmir@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
builtin.com/articles/top-space-mining-companies

Investment and systems development/integration. We have all the parts needed, but they’re expensive, and you can’t really just stuff them on a rocket and hope they’ll work. There’s a billion details to get straight before launching, and each detail costs a lot.

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- NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Thanks for the link, I had no idea companies already existed for this.
  
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  - vk6flab@lemmy.radio ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    You should take into consideration that AFAIK none of these companies have launched anything, let alone started mining.
    
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jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
You have to understand, as an environment space will kill you and everyone with you.

This isn’t like mining underground or underwater where if you screw up, you die. In space you have to do EVERYTHING right or you die.

Unless we find an asteroid of pure gold/platinum/diamond the risk/reward ratio is too damn high.

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LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Hard to call any of the various reasons the biggest. Space travel is an evolving discipline requiring vast amounts of money, step-by-step engineering progress, learning through practical experience which takes time, political commitment, and constantly changing public opinion. In theory we already know how to do it but in practice we don’t know all the challenges we’ll run into, and therefore have not solved yet. The long-term ROI is unquestionably huge but unknown. For example, platinum is currently worth almost $1000 USD/oz, while aluminum is about 8 cents. If platinum became as available as aluminum this would radically change, and we would discover new uses for platinum that haven’t been imagined yet because it’s so expensive - nobody would think of making pie pans or window frames out of it, but physically it might be far superior. Its properties haven’t been explored nearly as fully as the properties of aluminum, but they would be, and nobody knows the result. Maybe there’s an easy way to do antigravity using platinum. Whatever - the point is we don’t know, but that’s just one specific metal. Opening up whole new sets of possibilities always creates progress.

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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Money to get to and bring material back from the asteroid. Japan just recently had success landing a mock mining asset onto an asteroid, so the tech is there. Now it’s really just logistics.

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NeilBru@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Surface-to-intrasolar-space propulsion technology in its to reach escape velocity is prohibitively expensive.

Currently, we use combustion. My instincts tell me that an “electro-gravitic” paradigm in propulsion is next.

Before that, we must have a revolutionary breakthrough or discovery in our fundamental understanding of physics.

Basically, we’re not smart enough and too low on the Kardashev scale to get a decent ROI on such an endeavour.

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masquenox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Space lacks large groups of impoverished and repressed people whose labour you can exploit to make your mines profitable.

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db2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Stupidity, mostly.

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