[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?