[hi]

I've met this team, been to their office and done a deep dive on what they are doing. They will 100% sell high value space mined materials into earth markets at a profit and be a multi-billion dollar company.

I do wonder why they chose Stoke Space as their launch provider given the founders come from SpaceX and Falcon rockets have a track record.

My first though is that investors are playing some game with investment going to revenues of another portfolio company. How common is this?

Overlapping Investors:

- 776

- Y Combinator

- Initialized Capital

- Caladan Ventures

[imglorp]

Is asteroid mining profitable? I'm assuming you would smelt in space and then use the metal in space, although reentry could be cheap if you form it into a lifting body for re-entry and are willing to lose some from ablation as it glides in.

So you have to get your miner and smelter and power plant into stable orbit at like $1m/ton, and then what? Does the money work out?

[spenczar5]

I have directly worked with one of these companies on asteroid discovery. Even they would say it does not cash out for decades. But the premise is that as costs improve it becomes fabulously lucrative.

These companies are very, very risky. If they weren’t, you would see more competition!

[MadnessASAP]

> These companies are very, very risky. If they weren’t, you would see more competition!

I figure the odds for these companies, and others engaging in medium-future tech, being 99% loss 1% profit that effectively rounds to "all the money".

It's numbers that effectively break conventional risk reward calculations and are going to require more patience then many investors possess.

[heelix]

I assume the point of mining in space is to have raw resources that are already outside the gravity well. Not so much for bringing it to earth, but space based construction.

[Simon_O_Rourke]

Good point, but the assumptions are that this metal would then be used in potentially life critical systems and would require the full rigor of quality assessments for such materials. Not too sure how that might work in LEO.

[MattExSci]

The physics don't work to bring this stuff back to LEO. We’ve got to use the atmosphere to slow us down.

[grey-area]

How are you planning to do that in future missions? Sending up a a capsule or heat shield for sample return, or is the ultimate goal to return a larger mass and lose some?

Pre-built sample return has been proven to work with another asteroid in a small way I guess, the Hayabusa mission.

[thomquaid]

well, nothing is really ever lost

[pengaru]

The vacuum of space seems like an ideal environment for producing high purity metals.

[adrianN]

Once you have all the expensive fragile gear in orbit…

[HPsquared]

That's an interesting research area!

[sebzim4500]

They are going after platinum group metals, which are valuable enough that the cost of reentry is irrelevant assuming they can get a somewhat pure sample in space.

[MattExSci]

We have a refinery that dose exactly this. It's the main IP of the company.

[adrian_b]

While the total amount of platinum-group metals in asteroids is many times greater than what is accessible at the Earth surface, because on Earth these metals have gone down, into the Earth's core, they are much more difficult to extract on asteroids than on Earth.

At the surface of Earth, the platinum-group metals are concentrated into metallic nuggets or metallic sulfide crystals, which are very different in density and chemical properties from the surrounding minerals, so they can be separated relatively simply.

On asteroids, these metals are present mostly as minute impurities in iron-nickel-cobalt alloys (i.e. around one part per million). Separating them mechanically is impossible and chemical separation requires great amounts of chemical reactants, e.g. of a strong acid, that would also be very difficult to produce on asteroids, which are depleted in volatile elements. Perhaps one could do some kind of distillation of liquid metals or a differential sublimation in vacuum, which would require a huge amount of energy and a lot of special equipment able to work at very high temperatures. Bringing back the PGE-containing iron alloy is impossible, as its weight is about one million times greater.

At this time there exists no technology that could be used for the extraction of platinum-group metals on asteroids. Developing such a technology is possible, but it is something much more difficult than making a spaceship going to an asteroid and back.

Any credible company that claims that they want to mine asteroids would have to first demonstrate on Earth how to extract the valuable chemical elements from the minerals that can be found on asteroids, and only then solve the simple task of transportation to the asteroids.

There are some celestial bodies where the platinum-group metals are found in forms that are easier to separate from the surrounding minerals, i.e. in the sources of the so-called chondrite meteorites, which are very small bodies that have never coalesced into big asteroids. There the minerals remain as they have condensed at the formation of the Solar System, without having ever been remelted. There much of the platinum-group metals may be in the form of microscopic refractory inclusions in the big mass of common minerals, e.g. inside the so-called calcium-aluminum rich inclusions, instead of being dissolved in iron.

While a survey mission could find such small bodies with a chondrite-like composition, the amount of valuable metals in each such body is very small (a few grams per ton) and the energy consumed with moving from a small body to another would be very large in comparison with the amount of extracted metals.

Moreover, no operations would be possible on such small bodies, the spaceship would have to contain inside the complete metal extraction facility.

What should be easy to make on asteroids is only high-quality iron or nickel or cobalt alloys, for building structures in space, not on Earth.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

> ...which would require a huge amount of energy...

Think of an umbrella, and imagine something like it, only much bigger.

Like the girder-mast of a crane, optionally unfolding like a telescoping boom by means of scissors mechanism.

Maybe with some 'tensegrity' sprinkled on.

Spokes along its length folding out.

Some very thin, highly reflective foil stretched tight over these.

Shaped into a parabolic mirror.

Producing one fucking hot focal point, like a looking glass in the sun.

Embiggen or multiply as needed, necessitated by distance from the sun.

>...would have to first demonstrate on Earth...

Why would that be? There is gravity and atmosphere here, which can't be applied in the same ways 'up there', and probably wouldn't make sense to, anyways.

Think different!

[LargoLasskhyfv]

There is no ablation at 400°C to 800°C, which can be achieved by forming the 'lifting body' more into the direction of larger wingspans, instead of making it falling fast like a brick. Which hasn't been done so far, because larger wingspans are impractical for rocket lift from earth, but that doesn't apply here.

[MattExSci]

We refine it (or better yet, enrich it) in space and bring it back to Earth. I wish someone would buy it in space, but currently, that market is worth... 0.

So, we ship that shit back to Earth and sell it into the commodities market.

[fsckboy]

>Is asteroid mining profitable? I'm assuming you would smelt in space and then use the metal in space

are there middlemen in this market, or is it a vertically integrated "smelt it/dealt it" situation?

[tsimionescu]

> They will 100% sell high value space mined materials into earth markets at a profit and be a multi-billion dollar company.

To whom? Who is interested in buying the minuscule amounts of material you could realistically bring back to earth from an asteroid? What raw material would be expensive enough to warrant the gigantic amounts of fuel needed to transport even a few tens of kilos of back?

[spenczar5]

The usually cited mineral is iridium. It is exceptionally rare on earth (ninth rarest stable element!) but abundant in asteroids and very useful in alloys and many applications.

[adrian_b]

Abundant in asteroids means that it is dissolved in solid iron at slightly more than 1 gram per ton of iron.

It is obvious that you cannot bring back to Earth a thousand tons of iron with the purpose of extracting from it a kilogram of iridium worth only a few thousand $.

Good luck for the extraction in the conditions at the surface of an asteroid of the kilogram of iridium that can be obtained by processing a thousand tons of hard iron alloy.

That would need a really huge amount of energy and processing methods that do not exist yet.

The average concentration of platinum-group metals in the Earth's crust may be lower by more than a thousand times in comparison with asteroids, but here these metals are not dispersed uniformly but they are concentrated in places where their concentration is similar or better than in asteroids.

Moreover in these mining places the platinum-group metals are present as metallic nuggets or as sulfide minerals, which are much heavier and with different chemical properties than the surrounding minerals. Therefore they can be separated cheaply.

Even so, the platinum-group metals are still only seldom separated directly, but usually they are obtained as by-product of extracting other metals, like nickel or copper, because they are more concentrated in the waste products than in the original ore.

At this stage, while the cost of transportation to and from an asteroid can be estimated with a reasonable uncertainty, absolutely nobody is able to estimate the cost in energy and chemical substances for the extraction of plantinum-group metals or of any other valuable elements while on the surface of an asteroid.

Until someone demonstrates on Earth a feasible extraction method, determining thus the amount of energy and of various chemical substances that do not exist on the target asteroid, which are necessary per mass of recovered valuable chemical elements, any commercial company that claims to have the purpose of mining asteroids can only be a scam for investors, because nobody knows if such an activity can become profitable before a remote future, e.g. one hundred years from now, when none of the present investors would remain alive.

I am pretty certain that some time in a not distant future the mining of asteroids will happen, but it will be mostly for substances easy to extract and easy to use in space, like steel for building structures outside Earth, not for bringing anything back to Earth.

[notfish]

The target market is the same as normal mining, you probably mine platinum. The cost probably only closes with either starship or mining fuel in space.

[MattExSci]

100% this is a margin play on the Platinum Group Metals - were just going to better ore sources.

[MattExSci]

I have over 8.5B in binding contracts.

[tsimionescu]

Good luck to you, then. I truly hope you succeed!

[primax]

Bringing it back is a lot more energy efficient than getting up there in the first place.

[Alex-Programs]

As far as I know, launching on new, unproven rockets tends to be a lot cheaper. E.g. the Escapade mission launching on New Glenn.

[foobarbecue]

Do they have a plan for reentry?

Or is the idea to sell the ore or processed material in space?

(Because when it comes to asteroid mining, I think that's the hard part. If they have believable plans here I might consider applying to work for them, but I haven't seen anything that passes the smell test on this.)

[grey-area]

Couldn’t you make an ablative heat shield possibly from waste materials on the same asteroid? Then lob your metal toward a shallow sea on earth?

Or take it back to some stable earth orbit then pick it up there?

Do we know what their reentry plan is?

[Loughla]

I am not super comfortable with a company whose purpose is figuring out pinpoint meteor strikes.

That seems like a recipe for acquisition by the military? Who needs nukes when you can lob a hunk of iron at a city?

[tsimionescu]

Iron rods from heaven is a fun idea, but it's very unlikely to be a practical weapon. It's not hard to change the orbit (and thus the landing spot) of an object in space that is small enough for us to control. And no country will allow any other country to store weapons in orbit, as soon as someone put one there, it would get blown out of the sky.

The reason we have ICBMs is that we can store them safely on the ground, and launch them on an unpredictable trajectory, with minutes of travel time to their destination, preferably launched in a swarm that makes them even harder to track and individually stop.

[MattExSci]

I get asked this all the time. And in short — no way in hell we can change the orbit of an asteroid that is large enough to make a massive impact. Cool (I guess) to think about, but physics make this impossible for our size craft.

[Scubabear68]

Hmm…see also The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

If you have the energy to mine in space, you have a massive kinetic energy well to “throw rocks” into.

[tsimionescu]

The positions and velocities of every human ship in space are well known and easy to track. And any journey from space to Earth takes a long time. And anything that a single rocket that went out for mining (or even a dozen or a hundred rockets) could move back towards earth as a weapon can easily be moved slightly to hit a different destination using other weapons.

So if anyone tried to send rockets to fling back pieces of asteroid or of the Moon as weapons to Earth will be easily observed, tracked, and countered. And anyway, we're very far off being able to send a chunk of rock towards Earth that wouldnt entirely burn up in the atmosphere, nevermind one that could level a city.

[MattExSci]

Destroying civilization by redirecting an asteroid is not on the current roadmap.

[sonofhans]

You should frame this and put it on a wall somewhere.

[Smithalicious]

Why would you? Space weapons are also very definitively illegal. I don't see what you could accomplish this way that a nuke couldn't, and it's not like there's a shortage of nuclear firepower. Plus, this seems really slow to deploy.

[pengaru]

> I don't see what you could accomplish this way that a nuke couldn't

The nuke poisons the land, a metallic asteroid just makes a conventional mess you cleanup and rebuild under your own flag...

[tsimionescu]

You realize that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are huge, inhabited cities, and have been without interruption, right?

[grey-area]

That’s already possible but not that interesting as a weapon except for pinpoint strikes.

Clearly they would need permission as for any landing.

[thatcat]

That would just be a shittier, illegal version of the oreshnik system

[grey-area]

Clearly you would need permission from the government who owned the sea, in which case it would not be illegal.

Capsules land with shaped ablative heat shields all the time so it seems proven but the hard part would be making one off earth.

Maybe they’ll just send a small capsule up though and return the metals with that.

[thatcat]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty I was referring to military application

Existing system https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pYKDNSYw1NQ

[aaronblohowiak]

I don’t know if that is what is happening here, but it is a common occurrence — both to juice numbers but also for special pricing (as mentioned in article) or mutual flexibility (dedicated launch), because the founders know each other, etc.

[MattExSci]

Honestly, this had nothing to do with mutual investors. While that's great, the space community is small, and we all talk to each other. Andy and Stoke Space are an amazing team, and in this case, we shared a lot of benefits with each other. It's a rare win/win.

[financetechbro]

Portfolio company synergies is totally normal and a practice that Elon himself leans on

[numbsafari]

verY Common…