Planetary Resources' Plans: Interview in Slate

Planetary Resources officials Eric Anderson and Chris Lewicki were interviewed regarding their company's plans to mine asteroids in space:

PM: You want to put space telescopes in orbit to seek out asteroids rich in precious metals or water, and then send out robotic spacecraft to study and mine them. Are you serious?

Chris Lewicki: Yes. We're launching the first telescopes in 18 months, and we're actually building them ourselves in our own facility in Bellevue, Wa. We have a team of more than 30 engineers with long experience of doing this kind of thing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, myself included. Many of our team worked on designing and building NASA's Curiosity rover, and I was a system engineer on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers—and flight director when we landed them on Mars.

PM: How many asteroid-spotting telescopes will you need, and are they anything like Hubble?

Eric Anderson: We'd like to put up at least 10 or 15 of them in orbit in the next five years, some of them on Virgin Galactic rockets. They're a lot less capable than Hubble, which is a billion-dollar space vehicle the size of a school bus. Our telescopes, which we call the Arkyd 100 spacecraft, are cubes half-a-meter on a side and will cost around $1 million each, though the first one, of course, will cost much more. But when they are developed to a high level of performance, we want to print them en masse on an assembly line. They will have sub-arc-second resolution, which is just a mind-blowing imaging capability.

CL: The smaller we can make them the lower they cost to launch. Making them the size of a minifridge, with 22-centimeter-diameter optics, hits the sweet spot between capability and launch cost.

PM: How can you tell if an asteroid might have platinum, gold, or water deposits?

CL: We'll characterize them by studying their albedo—the amount of light that comes from them—and then with the appropriate instruments we can start to classify them, as to what type of asteroid they are, whether they are stony, metallic, or carbonaceous. We're starting with optical analyses, though we could use swarms of Arkyd 100s with spectroscopic, infrared, or ultraviolet sensors, too, if needed.

PM: Once you spot a likely asteroid, what then?

EA: We'll send other spacecraft out to intercept and study them. They will be rocket-assisted versions of the telescope—the Arkyd 200 for nearer Earth space, and the Arkyd 300, which is the same except that it will have a deep-space communications capability. We'll make sure we understand every cubic inch of that asteroid. We'll find out where it is, what its inertia is, what its spin rate is, whether it has been burned, impacted, or is carbonaceous or metallic. We'll know that asteroid inside and out before we go there and mine it.

PM: Will you be able to tell, remotely, if a space rock has lucrative platinum deposits, say?

CL: Probably not. But we would be able to tell metals from water or silicates. There's an asteroid out in the main belt right now called 24 Themis, and we've been able to sense water ice on its surface from way back here on Earth. Identifying metals will require spectrometry and direct analysis of the materials returned. The Arkyd 300 will get right up to the asteroid, land on it, and take samples—like NASA's NEAR and Japan's Hayabusa missions did—then return pictures, data, and grain samples back to Earth for analysis.

PM: Digging up ore on an asteroid 50 to 500 meters wide in zero gravity will be a tough task, even for robots. What technology will you use?

CL: The data the 300-series gathers will allow us to design the mining spacecraft. There are many, many different options for that. They could vary from very small spacecraft that swarm and cooperate on a bunch of tasks, to very large spacecraft that look seriously industrial. Before we can begin the detailed design of a mining spacecraft, we need to actually go there, explore the asteroid and learn where the specific opportunities are.

PM: You've suggested an asteroid could be brought closer to the Earth to make it easier to mine. Is that really feasible?

EA: It is. One of the ways that we could do that is simply to turn the water on an asteroid into rocket fuel and burn it in a thruster that nudges its trajectory. Split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you get the same fuels that launch space shuttles. Some asteroids are 20 percent water, and that amount would let you move the thing anywhere in the solar system.

Another way is to set up a catapult on the asteroid itself and use the thermal energy of the sun to wind up the catapult. Then you throw stuff off in the opposite direction you want the asteroid to go. Conservation of momentum will eventually move the thing forward—like standing on a skateboard and shooting a gun.

CL: This is not only our view. A Keck Institute "return an asteroid study," involving people at JPL, NASA Johnson Space Center and Caltech, showed that the technology exists to place small asteroids a few meters wide in orbit around the moon for further study.

PM: Can you think of any other uses for asteroid repositioning?

EA: There is one incredible concept: We could place the asteroid in an orbit between the Earth and Mars to allow astronauts who want to get there to hop on and off it like a bus. Think about that. You could make a spacecraft out of the asteroid. _Slate

The use of an asteroid as a spacecraft is particularly exciting for anyone who wants to see a more rapid expansion of human activity into space. Not only could an asteroid be converted into an Earth to Mars roundtrip shuttle, but similar asteroid shuttles could be nudged into orbits going beyond Mars, to the asteroid belt and further yet.

And anyone wishing to travel interstellar on a "generation ship" could not wish for a better vehicle than a hollowed asteroid.

Stay tuned. Between SpaceX, Planetary Resources, Stratolaunch, etc., humans may just find a profitable and sustainable way to live in space -- and live well.

Walking On Oceans of Gold

With all the recent talk about the new venture Planetary Resources, Inc., and its goal to mine the asteroids for their millions of $trillions worth of gold, platinum, and other precious resources, it is easy to forget that everyday we are walking over oceans of gold deep beneath our feet.

During the formation of Earth, molten iron sank to its centre to make the core. This took with it the vast majority of the planet's precious metals -- such as gold and platinum. In fact, there are enough precious metals in the core to cover the entire surface of Earth with a four-metre thick layer. _SD

More from Nature journal research, which claims that the heavier metals we use now -- including the "precious metals" -- came from a "terminal bombardment" of Earth by metal carrying asteroids.

Image Source

If there is enough precious metal in the Earth's core to cover the entire planetary surface with a 4 metre thick layer, why are the billionaires of Google talking about mining the asteroids for precious metal? Because the Earth's molten core is inaccessible, for one reason. But even if the core were accessible, it would be almost impossible to separate economic quantities of precious metals from the massive amounts of not-quite-as-precious metals such as iron and nickel.

In other words, at this time it is cheaper and more economically viable to build machines to mine the asteroids for precious metals, than to build machines to tap into the oceans of gold inside the Earth's core.

And so, for now, we are stuck with the paltry amount of gold given to us by the terminal bombardment of metallic asteroids. And so most of us have heard the term "peak gold," used in much the same sense as the term "peak oil" is used -- to suggest a permanent depletion and a terminal decline of production.

Perhaps we should take a look at what has gone wrong with the confident -- but failed -- predictions of "peak oil," in order to understand some of the ways in which "peak gold" might fall on hard times:

The first estimate of proved crude oil reserves worldwide, made in 1944, was 51 billion barrels. Today, that number is 1.4 trillion barrels, and cumulative production in the last 66 years has been twenty times the original estimate.

...Natural gas and coal proved reserves have also increased several-fold despite decades of production.5 Reserves of tin, copper, iron ore, lead, and zinc were also higher in 2000 than in 1950, despite the fact that production in the half century in between substantially exceeded reserves in 1950.6...The story would be similar for other minerals, from bauxite to uranium.

...The expansionist view of mineral resources is often associated with Julian Simon, who won the most famous wager in the history of economics regarding the future scarcity of minerals. Simon and Paul Ehrlich agreed that if resources were to become scarcer in the future, their prices, adjusted for inflation, would rise. At Simon’s invitation, in 1980, Paul Ehrlich et al. chose five minerals: chrome, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. If, in 1990, the prices of the minerals were to rise, Simon would pay; if the prices dropped, the consortium would pay.

Simon won resoundingly. The prices of most of the picked minerals had fallen in dollar terms between 1980 and 1990, and each fell in inflation-adjusted terms—despite 822 million more people consuming “depletable” resources.7

In the annals of the history of economic thought, Erich Zimmermann, of the Institutionalist school of economics, not Simon, got there first with what he called a functional theory of resources.

According to Zimmermann, resources are not known, fixed things; they are what humans employ to service wants at a given time. Human “appraisal” turns the “neutral stuff” of the earth into resources. What are resources today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa.8

Zimmermann wrote:

Resources are highly dynamic functional concepts; they are not, they become, they evolve out of the triune interaction of nature, man, and culture, in which nature sets outer limits, but man and culture are largely responsible for the portion of physical totality that is made available for human use.9

Zimmermann concluded: “Knowledge is truly the mother of all resources.”10 _master resource blog

Humans not only discover new sources of vital, depletable resources, but they also devise substitutions for these scarce materials, from cheaper and more plentiful materials. Or they find other ingenious workarounds and alternatives. If the proper incentives are there, humans will find ways around problems that would have been "unimaginable" or "inconceivable" before the fact. (Do those words mean what we think they mean?)

Human societies are incentivised by institutional policies -- particularly government policies. In democratic societies, voters determine what sorts of incentives their institutions will set for them when they step into the voting booth. If voters are unaware of the crucial importance of incentives, and are instead manipulated by clever campaign rhetoric and promises, the institutional incentives that are ultimately set are likely to be sub-optimal.

We are walking on oceans of gold. But we are impoverished by foolish institutional (government) incentives and an absent-minded neglect of our civic responsibilities. It is our choice, our minds, our ingenuity...

Ultimate Resource II ... Free, online book by Julian Simon explores the concepts introduced above

The Sky Is Falling: Gregg Easterbrook / Atlantic

Here is the video linked to at the preceding post. 10 minutes to contemplate the end of the world. Remember: the US Congress is in charge of the NASA budget and the NASA mission. Blaming NASA is infantile. Blame the source: the US Congress.

Billions for Global Warming--But Not One Cent for the Defense of Earth From Space

The US Congress, such as it is, directs the space agency NASA as to its goals and missions. The Congress in its perverse incompetence has decided that "global warming" represents a larger threat to the nation and the world than threats from outer space--falling rocks.

In 1980, only 86 near-Earth asteroids and comets were known to exist. By 1990, the figure had risen to 170; by 2000, it was 921; as of this writing, it is 5,388. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, part of NASA, keeps a running tally at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats. Ten years ago, 244 near-Earth space rocks one kilometer across or more—the size that would cause global calamity—were known to exist; now 741 are. Of the recently discovered nearby space objects, NASA has classified 186 as “impact risks” (details about these rocks are at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk ).
And because most space - rock searches to date have been low-budget affairs, conducted with equipment designed to look deep into the heavens, not at nearby space, the actual number of impact risks is undoubtedly much higher. Extrapolating from recent discoveries, NASA estimates that there are perhaps 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets in the general vicinity of Earth.

...A team of researchers led by Richard Firestone, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, recently announced the discovery of evidence that one or two huge space rocks, each perhaps several kilometers across, exploded high above Canada 12,900 years ago. The detonation, they believe, caused widespread fires and dust clouds, and disrupted climate patterns so severely that it triggered a prolonged period of global cooling. Mammoths and other species might have been killed either by the impact itself or by starvation after their food supply was disrupted.

...just a century ago, in 1908, a huge explosion occurred above Tunguska, Siberia. The cause was not a malfunctioning alien star-cruiser but a small asteroid or comet that detonated as it approached the ground. The blast had hundreds of times the force of the Hiroshima bomb and devastated an area of several hundred square miles. Had the explosion occurred above London or Paris, the city would no longer exist. Mark Boslough, a researcher at the Sandia National Laboratory, in New Mexico, recently concluded that the Tunguska object was surprisingly small, perhaps only 30 meters across. Right now, astronomers are nervously tracking 99942 Apophis, an asteroid with a slight chance of striking Earth in April 2036. Apophis is also small by asteroid standards, perhaps 300 meters across, but it could hit with about 60,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb—enough to destroy an area the size of France. In other words, small asteroids may be more dangerous than we used to think—and may do considerable damage even if they don’t reach Earth’s surface.

...Comets, asteroids, and the little meteors that form pleasant shooting stars approach Earth at great speeds—at least 25,000 miles per hour. As they enter the atmosphere they heat up, from friction, and compress, because they decelerate rapidly. Many space rocks explode under this stress, especially small ones; large objects are more likely to reach Earth’s surface. The angle at which objects enter the atmosphere also matters: an asteroid or comet approaching straight down has a better chance of hitting the surface than one entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle, as the latter would have to plow through more air, heating up and compressing as it descended. The object or objects that may have detonated above Canada 12,900 years ago would probably have approached at a shallow angle....This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist at The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air Force, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike.

...when it comes to killer comets, you’ll just have to lose sleep over the possibility of their approach; there are no proposals for what to do about them. Comets are easy to see when they are near the sun and glowing but are difficult to detect at other times. Many have “eccentric” orbits, spending centuries at tremendous distances from the sun, then falling toward the inner solar system, then slingshotting away again. If you were to add comets to one of those classroom models of the solar system, many would need to come from other floors of the building, or from another school district, in order to be to scale. Advanced telescopes will probably do a good job of detecting most asteroids that pass near Earth, but an unknown comet suddenly headed our way would be a nasty surprise. And because many comets change course when the sun heats their sides and causes their frozen gases to expand, deflecting or destroying them poses technical problems to which there are no ready solutions. The logical first step, then, seems to be to determine how to prevent an asteroid from striking Earth and hope that some future advance, perhaps one building on the asteroid work, proves useful against comets....Congress...ought to look more sensibly at space priorities.

Because it controls federal funding, Congress holds the trump cards. In 2005, [Congress] approved the moon-base idea, seemingly just as as budgetary log-rolling to maintain spending in the congressional districts favored under NASA’s current budget hierarchy. The House and Senate ought to demand that the space program have as its first priority returning benefits to taxpayers. __Atlantic__via_Kurzweilai.net

Bonus: Check out this graphic video portraying the dangerous world of space rock.
The Congress is preparing to throw the US economy (and by extension the global economy) into a tailspin over global warming, based upon less evidence than would be necessary to convince most intelligent people to drive to the corner market. Yet when it comes to potentially apocalyptic hazards such as extinction-event asteroid and comet falls, Congress has an inadequate scope and vision to protect the US. What about the UN? Puhlease! The UN is all about stashing away untraceable cash in numbered Swiss bank accounts. Not being helpful or useful.

Is the risk of a serious space rock incident as high as 1 in 10, as stated above? There are too many assumptions to give a clear estimate. What should be obvious to anyone with a brain who is paying attention, however, is that the threat from space rocks is several orders of magnitude higher than the threat from anthropogenic greenhouse warming.

Americans, when you go to the voting booth in November, remember that it is you who is partially to blame for the unaccountability of your government. Because you never held your Senators and Congressional members to account. You never asked the hard questions, nor insisted that the weasels really answer the questions. You passively believe that you pay taxes so that the government can take care of the country. That is your first mistake. The rest of the list is too long to publish here.

Congress is ready to sell the US economy down the river for a little "international acceptance". Congress is an ass. But then you knew that already.

Meanwhile, Oynklent Green is preparing to test its pilot plant, at a secret, undisclosed location that has been hardened against asteroid impact.

Heaven is a Long-Shot Gamble

Image Source (PDF)

Asteroid Apophis, a 390 m Aten asteroid (see graphic above), has a rendezvous with near-Earth space on 13 April 2036. We will not really know how close a rendezvous Apophis will have with Earth in 2036, until its 2029 near-Earth fly-by. Earth-crossing asteroids such as Apophis represent both hazard and opportunity. The hazard of being struck by a mountain-sized rock-from-space should be evident. The opportunity perhaps less so.

Suppose that the chance of Apophis striking planet Earth were 30% or greater. That would be a significant level of threat from above. Would such a risk justify an expensive intercept space mission, to attempt to deflect Apophis to a safer orbital distance? I would think so. Yet, there are potentially devastating, but earth-bound, dangers lurking even closer in time than 2036, which have much higher odds of occurring than the current odds for Apophis to contact Earth.

The earth-bound catastrophe being created by human governments is not dramatic enough, not dazzling enough to warrant the attention of the gatekeepers of the human mind--news media and popular media outlets. And certainly government officials want no part of exposing the nightmare they are inexorably bringing down on the heads of the citizens they are supposed to be serving and protecting. But there are ways to avoid catastrophe, both from the threat from above and the earthly threat from below.

We can avoid danger from Earth-crossing asteroids by establishing an active and expanding infrastructure in space. If we are already in space, we can build intercept missions to Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) at our leisure--for purposes of exploring, mining, or deflecting. The value of a single NEA, Eros, is estimated to be at least $ 20-30 Trillion! That is for one asteroid, albeit one somewhat larger than Apophis. Just a few such asteroids would suffice to make up the budgetary deficits of even the most profligate of Earth governments.

In fact, there is enough value in the solar systems asteroid belt to provide each citizen of Earth with approximately $100 Billion--more wealth than any single super-rich billionaire currently possesses. Not that the wealth of the asteroids will ever be distributed equally to everyone, no. No more than was the wealth from any of a large number of gold-rushes, silver-rushes, diamond-rushes, or large scale rushes to other mineral resources including oil and gas equally distributed. The wealth of the asteroids will go to those who can get there, establish a claim (for now just being there will do that), mine the valuables, get the goods to market, and sell to the highest bidder.

And that is precisely what we are involved in--a NEA "gold rush"--although not many people are aware of it at this time. We do occasionally hear that we are in "The Next Space Race", being driven by hungry young billionaires and entrepreneurs.

Alaska serves as an excellent analogy. Once thought of as worthless territory (in 1867 William Seward, America’s secretary of state, was criticised for paying $7.2m to the Russians for Alaska, known then as “Seward’s folly”), Alaska has since become a trillion-dollar economy. The transport infrastructure has made Alaska’s gold, oil, timber and fishing industries super-profitable. The same will hold true for space. A 0.5km (0.3-mile) diameter asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion in nickel, iron and platinum-group metals.

Aside from the economic incentives, technology is reaching a critical point, making space exploration an inevitable component of human progress. Moore’s Law has given us exponential growth in computing technology, which in turn has led to exponential growth in nearly every other technological industry. Breakthroughs in rocket propulsion will allow us to go farther, faster and more safely into space.

...Recently, the X Prize Foundation joined with Google to announce a $30m Google Lunar X Prize, to be paid out to the first teams able to land on the lunar surface, rove for 500 metres and send back two video/photographic moon-casts. Amazingly, within the first two weeks following the announcement, we received over 190 requests from 25 countries from prospective teams looking for registration materials. This is the new generation of entrepreneurs who will reinvent space exploration the same way that Apple and Dell reinvented the computer industry. ___Economist

Most people think the goal of these hungry young entrepreneurs is space tourism, space hotels, and other local space fun and games. But with the stakes as high as $20 Trillion (!) for one asteroid, something tells me that a lot of these young guns may be secretly gunning for a bigger long-shot gamble than shooting a few overweight tourists into suborbital space.

Getting into space is expensive. Moving mining equipment into a matching orbit with an NEA, landing, setting up, and staying for years to mine and perhaps process the materials on site, will cost many billions of dollars--assuming you can acquire the necessary technical expertise to accomplish the task. That means dealing with financing organisations, insurance companies, and space lawyers. Getting mined materials back to market may be a greater challenge than getting to the NEA in the first place. Then you can expect to face a wide array of lawsuits based upon international space law, which is still being hammered out.

In the end, the greatest obstacle to achieving super-wealth from the asteroids may be in being allowed to keep the wealth after returning to Earth. Certain to face lawsuits from NGOs, Earth governments, UN agencies, and private parties, where are the entrepreneurs who are willing to risk everything for an uncertain chance to keep the hard-won loot?

Mainstream corporations would want strong assurances of protection from lawsuits by their governments. But in a realm where world courts, inter-governmental, and international non-governmental agencies lead the legal charge, single governments can be quite limited. Which means that many early-generation space miners might choose to establish and work with a space-based economy that does not fall under the authority of Earth's United Nations or any of its government members.

How could such an economy start? Incrementally, and with a lot of luck to those who succeed. The idea would be to first start mining the more likely and accessible NEAs. Then using the wealth and the mass from the NEAs, the more successful "space 49ers" work toward the main asteroid belt--and the massive riches waiting there. Any long term permanent space enterprises have to eventually be able to pay their own way--or at least be lucrative enough to attract ready financing on good terms. The alternative is the "long-shot gamble."

Such a space-based infrastructure--independent of the UN and Earth governments--would have to be very resourceful, ingenious, and even disreputable. They will have to be skilled with improvising rocket propellant and reaction mass, space robotics, orbital maneuvers, life support systems, and quick thinking in emergencies, among other things necessary for survival and acquiring mineral wealth. Almost every step of the way from Earth to the main belt would be a long shot gamble. But once in possession of that type of wealth and resources, the Earth would be in no position to dictate terms.

Think of it as a "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" scenario, except in the main asteroid belt instead of on the moon. What type of person is capable of throwing the dice that far? Not George Bush. Not Barack Obama. Not Kevin Rudd or Al Gore. None of the people who occupy the news pages of most media outlets have even a fraction of the substance necessary for such a play as is described here.

There's still a place in the world for a gambler. But to get to heaven, only long-shot gamblers need apply.

Update 6 April 2008: To better understand some of the issues in this post, browse through the links here, and try to read as much of this as you can. The issue is a critical one that you will likely never be acquainted with unless you go looking yourself.

Check out The Future of Space Mining

Trillion Dollar Enterprises

Image Source

They are talking about trillion dollar companies over at exciting, brand-new community blog Future Blogger.

The 10 Most Likely $1,000,000,000,000 Industries

1. Artificial Intelligence: Any system that can outsmart the smartest businessman stands a great chance to accumulate enormous value for its owner. Ray Kurzweil has already devised an evolutionary program that does very well at picking stocks. Dick Pelletier points out that this is already a $21 billion industry . With Google, Microsoft and myriad promising start-ups converging on a viable AI, would you bet against this industry?

2. Space Mining: For the for time in history, space is about to open wide to private enterprises. The first company to figure out how to cheaply bring back large quantities of rare metals like uranium, platinum and gold will cash in. But there will be plenty of competition angling to carve up market share and the corresponding asteroids.

3. Human Genetics: Recent stem cell breakthroughs are turning the unimaginable into reality. We’re already selecting embryos for favorable characteristics. Organ cloning looks like a not-too-far-off reality. Barring complications, regulation, and an ethical backlash, the twin prospects of life extension and genetic enhancement will surely get the credits flowing.

4. Non-Human Genetics: We’ve already made glow-in-the-dark goldfish, grown ears from the backs of mice, and possibly created the first ever artificial life form. What custom creatures, designer pets and efficient new beasts of burden are just around the corner?

5. Super-Massive Solar Farms: As efficient solar cells continue to drop in price, somebody’s bound to put them to good use in a big way. The question is, will large industrial solar farms located in desolate, sunny areas pay off big, or will a decentralized model involving millions of private residents win the day. In both cases a central company that combines manufacturing and maintenance would stand to make a great deal of cashola. Of course, the Japanese national effort to install solar cells in space and then beam back the energy could trump both approaches.

6. Robotics: IRobot’s Roombas are storming the living rooms of the world. Farms and factories increasingly rely on industrial robotics. Honda’s robot can identify and navigate stairs with ease. Toyota envisions itself as a robotics rather than a car company in the future. The right robots at the right price could make their owners and manufacturers a great deal of money.

7. New-Fangled, Profitable Social Networks: MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn have attained multi-billion dollar valuations despite the fact that they are difficult to monetize. At some point, somebody’s going to figure out how to rally together a group of people into a super-company or mini-nation, as Philip Rosedale of Second Life labels it, that can more deliberately generate enormous value. Widening bandwidth, advances in processing power, the proliferation of video capture, new content processing models, advanced advertising models, and breakthrough semantic applications are just some of the near-term advances that could significantly increase the value of social networks and their parent companies.

8. Mirror Worlds: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and numerous others are all busily working on Earth platforms that represent major efficiencies for diverse fields like transportation, real estate, and city planning. As these digital environments get richer, more real-time and merge with social networks, related content and business applications could cause their value to skyrocket.

9. Reliable Traffic Control Networks: As robots, self-driving cars, and short-range aerial vehicles proliferate, they’re going to need a kick-ass and ultra-reliable traffic regulation system to help them , and us, co-exist. Such systems will be critical to unlocking the the economic promise of these technologies and will therefore fetch large sums from the companies, cities and nations that require it.

10. Nano-Fabrication: It’s already possible to print human tissue and carbon nanotubes. The company that produces a reasonably priced molecular assembler will enable the alchemist’s dream of: a machine that can spit out a variety of matter in different shapes and sizes.___FutureBlogger

That is a fascinating list of potential trillion dollar fields. Space mining and space-based energy are bound to hit the $Trillion mark fairly quickly, once seriously engaged. We should make the distinction between $Trillion companies, and $Trillion industries. The sheer scale of global enterprise means that banking, finance, insurance, energy,and investment industries are already over the $Trillion mark, among others.

$Trillion companies are another story. The first $Trillion company may very well be a hum-drum retailer, banking/insurance/financial conglomerate, or industrial supplier based in China or India--where growing markets are already huge and due to grow much more.

But the first "mega-$Trillion" company is likely to be the first one to break into the "open-ended revolutionary" areas of human endeavour. Out of the top ten list above, provided by Vis, "Artificial Intelligence", "Nanofabrication" and "Space Mining" (or space enterprise, including space-based energy) have the explosive potential to take off in a blinding fashion. Those are areas where "all bets are off" once they hit the payload.

Once such an industry is truly launched, it may not take long for $Trillion level companies are the norm, and $Billion level companies are seen as mere $Million level companies are seen today--small business.

Some readers may be puzzled at the contrast between the optimism of this posting, and the pessimism of the previous posts. The answer is simple. Anyone who wants to truly see the future, has to be able to contemplate multiple visions, and play them against each other.

The top ten list above contains entries that may be seen as a bit flippant at best, and naive at worst. It should not be judged too harshly, since projecting the future necessarily involves a type of "brainstorming" or "braindumping." You put the ideas out there and see what happens. Hopefully, the feedback you get will be mainly constructive.

Space Mining and Carnival #11

Space Carnival #11 is up at Space for Commerce blog.

It is another fine collection of space postings, but my favourite is this posting on asteroid mining from the fine space blog, Colony Worlds.

With most of these invaluable asteroids tens of millions of miles away from the nearest colony world, asteroid miners will find themselves heavily dependent upon supplies for food and water. Their isolation will also make them prime candidates for space pirates, not to mention feuding powers from Earth, Mars and the Jovian systems.

Unless these outposts are protected by a space fleet, they may soon find their boring schedule filled with being invaded by unwelcome guests.

Another danger of asteroid miners will be radiation. Since most (if not all) asteroids lack a magnetic field, asteroid outposts will be at the mercy of the Sun's wrath, not to mention cosmic rays from abroad. Although outposts will probably have magnetic shields surrounding their bases, this does not guarantee that the rocks that they mine upon are free from being radioactive.

....asteroid miners also face the dangers of micrometeorites piercing holes through their suits and stations, or (even worse) encountering a meteor shower from an incoming comet.

Future outposts will probably have to rely upon the eyes (and scientific "ears") of astronomers to warn them of the dangers of nearby comets, although they may have to "take a gamble" when dealing with incoming space pebbles as armor may prove useless against these solar bullets.

But despite the fact that these dangers surround future asteroid miners, there presence in our star system will be desperately needed. Asteroids have the potential of supplying invaluable resources, and the purity of metals could be worth up to $500,000 a ton.

In fact, it is possible for an asteroid mining venture to net US $21 trillion or more from a single asteroid. The terrestrial value of mineral resources contained in the asteroids is incalculable. Compared to the payback, the expense of mounting a commercial venture fades to insignificance--after the payback, that is.

When will we see asteroid mining start? Well, it will only become viable once the human-presence commercial in-orbit economy takes off. Only then will there be a market. And that can only happen after NASA ceases acting as a near-monopolist launch provider and thwarter of competition, and reverts to being a customer instead.

A developing in-space economy will build the technical capability to access NEAs, almost automatically. And regardless of the legal arguments about mineral claims in outer space, once the first resource recovery mission is successful, what's the bets on a surge in interest similar to the dotcom-boom and biotech-boom?

The first successful venturers will develop immense proprietary knowledge, and make a mint. And some as-yet unidentified (but almost certainly already discovered) NEAs will be the company-making mines of the 21st century.

Source

In fact, most of the expensive ventures that Luddites are always whining about--orbiting solar platforms, moon bases, Mars missions, space stations, etc., become instantly affordable with "pocket change" once asteroids start sending their wealth earthward.

People such as Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and other high rolling tycoons may have just caught a whiff of the possibilities.

Most politicians are relatively clueless, however--which may be a good thing. While the nations of Earth might warrant a healthy tax chunk of some of the profits from space mining and enterprise, there is not a nation on Earth that should control all of space and all space assets.

So far, the only Earth nation that has demonstrated space weapons intent and capability is China--with its irresponsible kinetic kill of one of its obsolete satellites having created dangerous space debris in orbit. The US has many projects and plans for using space as part of coordinated defense. Military spy satellites themselves are vital to US defense plans. Russia, like China, would like to control space, and no doubt would, if it could.

The next few decades will be critical, in determining whether the future of space will be free to enterprising individuals and groups, or closed by nation-states with the military clout to lock everyone else on Earth.

Mining Space--A Gold Rush that Never Ends

Cheaper space launch opens the door to the mining of space objects for useful materials.

In 2004, the world production of iron ore exceeded 1,000 million metric tons[1]. In comparison, a comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than 2,000 million metric tons of iron-nickel ore[2], or two to three times the annual production for 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of iron-nickel, which could supply the 2004 world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also contain precious metals....

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Most people think in a small and limited scope. This leaves them completely unprepared for the changes that are coming.

Who will benefit from the exploitation of space? Information on this area has made plain that the costs of initial start-up and initial maintenance are beyond the capability of the non industrialized nations and can only be undertaken by nations with large developed economic infrastructures, specifically the European Union, The U.S., possibly Russia and Japan. Each of these has positive and negative factors which will determine how large a share of space industry and mining they will control. The U.S. has several advantages. First of all the previously mentioned public and private commitment to space research. Secondly a great deal of governmental research has gone into space "Space ventures require investments beyond the capacity of the private sector. Already the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has spent more then $200 billion (in current dollars), much of it to create the infrastructure needed to exploit space." (Osborne 45) Like any momentous undertaking a planning stage is required, thanks to some far-sighted policy makers a fair amount of planning has already been accomplished.

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Because of the huge potential payoff from any invention that makes the riches of space more accessible to human developers, there is no shortage of people who make extraordinary claims for their inventions. But even if such inventions do not pan out, a more sober analysis suggests that no more than a few decades will pass before the space revolution will be fully in play.

Modern news media is far too short-sighted and unintelligent/uninspired to alert their clients to these immensely important possibilities. Media controllers are far too interested in trying to swing the next political elections to take the time to understand the huge and powerful forces that are likely to throw them and their antiquated industry on the junkheap of history.

There is no need for the rest of us to be so myopic.