Asteroid mining firm set to deploy its first satellite
51 replies, posted
[URL]http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/205061-asteroid-mining-firm-set-to-deploy-its-first-satellite[/URL]
[QUOTE]The satellite is called the Arkyd-3R — the R stands for Reflight, because this is the second attempt to launch the mission. The first Arkyd satellite was lost in October when Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket exploded shortly after liftoff on an ISS resupply mission. The satellite successfully made its way to the station on last month’s SpaceX Dragon mission. Now that it’s in place, the company expects to have Arkyd-3R released into orbit this summer.
Asteroid mining has the potential to be extremely profitable, but also a boon to humanity’s future in space. The mineral wealth in a single small asteroid could be in the billions, but simply having access to ice deposits on an asteroid could be important, too. Water ice can be broken down on site into oxygen and hydrogen for use as rocket fuel. This would allow Planetary Resources to create refueling stations that would drastically expand our reach in space. The economics of space travel are much more friendly when you don’t have to bring all your fuel up from Earth.
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Badass.
[quote] The mineral wealth in a single small asteroid could be in the billions[/quote]
Is this the average asteroid or just the best prospects? I'd imagine some asteroids would be really small and hardly worth harvesting.
Awesome as fuck.
If I was an eccentric billionaire, I'd open an asteroid mining venture.
[QUOTE=Bobv2;47672664]Is this the average asteroid or just the best prospects? I'd imagine some asteroids would be really small and hardly worth harvesting.[/QUOTE]
Ha, average pal, most space rocks are valuable as fuck and that's exactly why we want to mine them.
There's still a while to go until things actually take off:
[quote]Planetary Resources won’t be using the Arkyd-3R to scan any asteroids just yet. This is to be a dry run for the hardware that will assess the health of all its subsystems and components. The satellite will orbit Earth for 90 days until its plunges into the atmosphere and breaks apart.[/quote]
I have been waiting [b]years[/b] for someone to seriously start considering asteroid mining. As the article states, the potential for complementing ship fuel through it has exceptional repercussions.
I sincerely hope for the very best in this venture and the company's future emdeavors.
[QUOTE=Rapscallion92;47672681]Ha, average pal, most space rocks are valuable as fuck and that's exactly why we want to mine them.[/QUOTE]
Yeah man, all those rare earths we need for advanced computers and whatnot. If we want to build a ton of oracles like our good friend Watson, we need those minerals.
[QUOTE=Bobv2;47672664]Is this the average asteroid or just the best prospects? I'd imagine some asteroids would be really small and hardly worth harvesting.[/QUOTE]
I know quite a lot about this area (wrote an dissertation on it). It is quite a deceiving fact, you can find mass's of platinum group metals (more than has ever been mined in the history of earth) on on 500m diameter asteroid. However this would obviously crash the prices.
Also the one that this is talking about is the amount of water (that is what this company is planning to extract first) on it that makes it so valuable. This is because although water is relatively common in space it is worth the same amount as it costs to send it up there so since it cost many million per ton to send something into space you quickly rack up to a billion on a small asteroid
[QUOTE=ironman17;47673111]If we want to build a ton of oracles like our good friend Watson, we need those minerals.[/QUOTE]
[img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Oracle_logo.svg/500px-Oracle_logo.svg.png[/img]s?
:v:
I backed them with $50 when they had a Kickstarter which allows me to get a "space selfie". Basically you upload a pic of something, it gets displayed on a screen mounted on their satellite and they take a pic of it, with[B] fucking Earth in the background.[/B] !!!
[QUOTE=Swebonny;47673637]I backed them with $50 when they had a Kickstarter which allows me to get a "space selfie". Basically you upload a pic of something, it gets displayed on a screen mounted on their satellite and they take a pic of it, with[B] fucking Earth in the background.[/B] !!![/QUOTE]
That is pretty badass. Money well spent, assuming the image turns out.
[QUOTE=Complifused;47672865]They will have to be some seriously mineral rich asteroids to make any sort of profit[/QUOTE]
They are mineral rich, most asteroids are full of heavy metals. The immediate problem is that they're encased in millions of tons of useless rock that requires a full mining operation to parse through. The bigger problem is that this is much more expensive than procuring it on Earth- they [I]won't[/I] make a profit, they're hoping they can start the operation, take a loss, and extract ice and sell it as reaction mass to people following in their footsteps. In the American gold rushes, it wasn't the miners who got rich, it was the people selling the shovels.
[QUOTE=GunFox;47673682]That is pretty badass. Money well spent, assuming the image turns out.[/QUOTE]
Hah yeah, they were talking about the Earth being too damn bright. But I think they'll fix it before the launch.
[QUOTE]Asteroid mining has the potential to be extremely profitable, but also a boon to humanity’s future in space. The mineral wealth in a single small asteroid could be in the billions[/QUOTE]
As a mining engineer, let it be clear that in-situ value != net worth of a mineral deposit
[QUOTE=nintenman1;47673859]As a mining engineer, let it be clear that in-situ value != net worth of a mineral deposit[/QUOTE]
Care to explain? Not trying to be rude, I just want to know more.
I thought things in space were radioactive since they didn't have a magnetic field or some such to protect them like what the earth has. Someone who knows more shit than I do explain why I'm wrong.
[QUOTE=Headhumpy;47673924]Care to explain? Not trying to be rude, I just want to know more.[/QUOTE]
I'm no mining engineer, but the reasons seem pretty obvious even to a layman:
To realize the dollar value of asteroid material you would have to in many cases extract (mine) it, process it and return it to Earth. That is no small feat, even if you forego bringing it home and make use of it on-site.
[QUOTE=Dirty_Ape;47674001]I thought things in space were radioactive since they didn't have a magnetic field or some such to protect them like what the earth has. Someone who knows more shit than I do explain why I'm wrong.[/QUOTE]
things are not radioactive just because they receive a high dose of radiation from the sun. yes, the sun radiates energy, but that radiation would not affect things in the way radioactive isotopes do (like plutonium, uranium, etc etc elements so high on the periodic table that they can only be stable in certain conditions) what we get from the sun is electromagnetic radiation- a scale that ranges from radio waves to gamma rays- but radioactive material that we use in nuclear plants is harmful to humans in that these isotopes decay rather quickly, and what electrons that come flying off in the process and interact with our own electrons. I think part of this difference is that inside the sun, hydrogen is fused to helium, and then helium to lithium, and so on, going up the periodic table (stopping at iron), thereby using up energy in order to fuse, whereas in our nuclear plants, we use heavy elements that are already giving off so much energy on their own as they decay to help with the fission process we use in plants (collecting energy from the radioactive isotopes)
TLDR; it is not electromagnetic radiation that makes things radioactive
[QUOTE=OvB;47672678]If I was an eccentric billionaire, I'd open an asteroid mining venture.[/QUOTE]
How about a joint venture..?
Sorta putting this in perspective: Small meteorites can sell upwards of $150 if they are made of iron.
I still have this little fella' I found in Arizona next to me:
[t]http://i.imgur.com/2vjWpcG.jpg[/t]
I have yet to get it appraised, but I'm hoping for the best.
[editline]6th May 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Bobv2;47672664]Is this the average asteroid or just the best prospects? I'd imagine some asteroids would be really small and hardly worth harvesting.[/QUOTE]
IIRC, one asteroid was calculated to have enough iron to suit every industry on Earth for the next three hundred or so years. Not only that, one mineral is up there that we really fucking need down here... Gold.
[QUOTE=Headhumpy;47673924]Care to explain? Not trying to be rude, I just want to know more.[/QUOTE]
Net worth means you are competing with local (terrain) prices, meaning anything from space will be stupidly expensive because you have to go there and back with expensive equipment
I think what he means is that the reporter doesn't understand that a minerals value isn't always worth the effort of mining it and transporting it
[editline]6th May 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Dirty_Ape;47674001]I thought things in space were radioactive since they didn't have a magnetic field or some such to protect them like what the earth has. Someone who knows more shit than I do explain why I'm wrong.[/QUOTE]
Generally this stuff has a layer of slightly radioactive stuff and products such as helium 3 from the constant cosmic ray bombardment but nothing like the uranium and plutonium
This is so cool. Just reading the article reminds me of when I first heard of this company, and how ambitious a project it is; and now we're here, and they're getting it underway. Crazy. So exciting, the prospect that this could kickstart another space race, especially with it saying in the article of the potential economic benefits, and the potential for in-space refuelling. Incredibly exciting.
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;47674226]One mineral is up there that we really fucking need down here... Gold.[/QUOTE]
There's a gold shortage? Blimey, hopefully we won't need to use sodium cyanide to extract the asteroid gold.
[QUOTE=Banshee FrieNd;47672847][img]http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/deadspace/images/2/26/DS2_CEC.png/revision/latest?cb=20120414173449[/img]?[/QUOTE]
they need to hire an engineer named isaac just in case.
[IMG]http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa308/Jnoa10/deadspace-2.jpg[/IMG]
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