The maximum distance for asteroid mining 3 million miles (0.03 AU) with current technology. The corresponding delta-V is 437 meters per second. The near earth asteroids that are in range should contain more than one million liters of water.
Swarms of smaller spacecraft to perform mining is more likely to result in an economically feasible operation. 250 spacecraft fleet collecting 100 kilograms of water per trip would require an investment of about $4 billion and would become profitable after about 9 years.
Arxiv – Asteroid mining with small spacecraft and its economic feasibility
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Bringing the whole asteroid back is inefficient, because you end up hauling a whole bunch of mass that you don’t need. With a larger asteroid, you also can’t safely use aerobraking at Earth, so you’d need a larger delta-v. So you end-up spending a lot more fuel and/or taking a lot longer to bring the material back. It’s worse than hauling the mining equipment back and forth on each trip – this way you’re hauling the whole mine, along with all the stuff around it. The Moon has its own water and metals, as well as basalt that can be turned into basalt fibers. The metals are in the form of oxides in the regolith. If you make methalox like I described in my other posts, you get metals as a byproduct. The main thing that the Moon lacks is carbon (and nitrogen if you want an Earth-like atmosphere). I don’t see much point in a *manned* base on the Moon in the near term. You could do mining without it. Earth is close enough for almost real-time teleoperation if automation isn’t good enough. You might want a skeleton crew for emergencies, but generally you can send a team and equipment pretty quickly if you need to repair something. Having people there just complicates things, since they need a bunch of extra support equipment. In the longer term, there are other reasons to have a colony on the Moon, but that can come later, when the infrastructure is better developed. Btw, re your other comment: the BFR capacity is 150 tons from Earth to LEO, because of Earth’s gravity well. Going between the Lunar surface and Lunar orbit or LEO, it could possibly carry a lot more, limited by volume and density.
Your list of detailed objections and calculations are convincing.
Bringing the whole asteroid back is inefficient because you end up hauling a whole bunch of mass that you don’t need. With a larger asteroid you also can’t safely use aerobraking at Earth so you’d need a larger delta-v. So you end-up spending a lot more fuel and/or taking a lot longer to bring the material back. It’s worse than hauling the mining equipment back and forth on each trip – this way you’re hauling the whole mine along with all the stuff around it.The Moon has its own water and metals as well as basalt that can be turned into basalt fibers. The metals are in the form of oxides in the regolith. If you make methalox like I described in my other posts you get metals as a byproduct. The main thing that the Moon lacks is carbon (and nitrogen if you want an Earth-like atmosphere).I don’t see much point in a *manned* base on the Moon in the near term. You could do mining without it. Earth is close enough for almost real-time teleoperation if automation isn’t good enough. You might want a skeleton crew for emergencies but generally you can send a team and equipment pretty quickly if you need to repair something. Having people there just complicates things since they need a bunch of extra support equipment.In the longer term there are other reasons to have a colony on the Moon but that can come later when the infrastructure is better developed.Btw re your other comment: the BFR capacity is 150 tons from Earth to LEO because of Earth’s gravity well. Going between the Lunar surface and Lunar orbit or LEO it could possibly carry a lot more limited by volume and density.
Your list of detailed objections and calculations are convincing.
What is this obscene nonsense? How would be mining for water profitable? To whom? It’s the dumbest thing I ever read on this website.
What is this obscene nonsense? How would be mining for water profitable? To whom? It’s the dumbest thing I ever read on this website.
Thanks for the comment, we should adjust the wording here. What is meant as that due to the asteroids own rotation you have something like day/night cycles, the latter of which interrupt the mining cycle.
One of the disadvantages listed for solar drying is that it doesn’t work at night. The author IS aware that this is supposed to happen in space, right? Not on the surface of the Earth?
Thanks for the comment we should adjust the wording here. What is meant as that due to the asteroids own rotation you have something like day/night cycles the latter of which interrupt the mining cycle.
One of the disadvantages listed for solar drying is that it doesn’t work at night.The author IS aware that this is supposed to happen in space right? Not on the surface of the Earth?
>> due to the asteroid’s own rotation … which interrupt[s] the mining cycle. Only if you put the solar collectors ON the asteroid … and why would you do that?
This will surely cost at least 10x and take 10x longer?
>> due to the asteroid’s own rotation … which interrupt[s] the mining cycle.Only if you put the solar collectors ON the asteroid … and why would you do that?
This will surely cost at least 10x and take 10x longer?
Thanks for your comments! Your conclusion is the same as in the article. The proposed asteroid mining approach only really becomes feasible/interesting for a cis-lunar economy/use case (Figure 8). We might have to clarify that better in the text. We have not made a direct comparison with the economic feasibility of extracting water from the moon but that is an interesting idea for the future.
Speaking in liters and kilograms makes the numbers seem larger, which hides the industrial (ir)relevance of the proposed project. 1 million liters of water is 1000 m^3, or 1000 tons. At 100 kg per trip, that’s 10000 trips. With 250 spacecraft, 40 trips per craft. If spread over the full ~10 years, that’s 4 trips/year for each craft, which seems about as fast as is technically feasible with today’s propulsion. So we’re talking a $4 billion investment, with a 10 year ROI, all to bring back just a measly 1000 tons of water. That doesn’t seem worthwhile. The same Falcon Heavy that’s supposed to launch these craft could launch a 1000 tons of water in just 16 flights, for a total $1.4 billion, over as little as just a few months (if not weeks). For $3.5 billion it could launch it to GTO, with 38 flights. This and Table 1 suggest that this project is premature, still in need of better technologies and space infrastructure. In the mean time, Lunar water seems like a much better and easier target. I’ve outlined the approach before: collect and crush the ice and regolith mixture, then feed it to a furnace of some sort (solar, electric, etc) to extract the water. You have the Lunar gravity and vacuum to help. The water is at the poles, so solar panels can be placed nearby for almost constant sunlight. And the Earth is near for teleoperation and maintenance. For economical sense, you’d probably want to make methalox. Bring in carbon from Earth, react it with the water to get methalox. You’ll get an excess of hydrogen, so react that with the regolith to recover half the water and get metal byproducts. If you want to use the methalox in LEO, then bring the water, carbon, and oxides there to minimize delta-v costs. The methalox can feed a fleet of space tugs and service craft, as well as fuel other missions.
I do not disagree with that and we attempt to account for this problem by using margins on every item that we have to estimate, especially the cost (standard space systems engineering approach). The margins are usually derived from experience in related projects to account for cost overrun and uncertainties in mass/power consumption etc. The timeline is a bit more tricky but the systems are sized to perform an action in the targeted time. Of course, only actual implementation on some comparable scale will show how truthful that is. Nonetheless, the estimate is very rough overall and intended to give an idea what kind of investment and time scales we would have to work with to make asteroid mining feasible using this approach.
If you’re mining from a “pile of rubble” asteroid, you can land, (At this size, “dock” might be a better term.) load a suitable amount of rubble for processing, and then retreat to full sunlight to process it. Then repeat as many times as needed.
History has proven that precise estimates of unproven applications of technology should be treated with caution.
Would you mind elaborating on what your estimates are based?
Maybe we are talking about different approaches. From my perspective, if the collectors are put into an orbit around the spinning asteroid, you would try to make them remain in the same position relative to sun and asteroid. In that case the asteroid surface still moves under the collecting optic and the mining process in one spot is interrupted from time to time. Making the collecting optic move with the asteroid will interrupt light collection as well. Using a large spacecraft that can basically wrap the entire asteroid, the solar collectors become more feasible as it does not matter where volatiles are released. However, in the article the approach is small spacecraft that actually land on the asteroid and mine specific sites.
Thanks for your comments! Your conclusion is the same as in the article. The proposed asteroid mining approach only really becomes feasible/interesting for a cis-lunar economy/use case (Figure 8). We might have to clarify that better in the text.We have not made a direct comparison with the economic feasibility of extracting water from the moon but that is an interesting idea for the future.
Speaking in liters and kilograms makes the numbers seem larger which hides the industrial (ir)relevance of the proposed project. 1 million liters of water is 1000 m^3 or 1000 tons. At 100 kg per trip that’s 10000 trips. With 250 spacecraft 40 trips per craft. If spread over the full ~10 years that’s 4 trips/year for each craft which seems about as fast as is technically feasible with today’s propulsion.So we’re talking a $4 billion investment with a 10 year ROI all to bring back just a measly 1000 tons of water. That doesn’t seem worthwhile. The same Falcon Heavy that’s supposed to launch these craft could launch a 1000 tons of water in just 16 flights for a total $1.4 billion over as little as just a few months (if not weeks). For $3.5 billion it could launch it to GTO with 38 flights.This and Table 1 suggest that this project is premature still in need of better technologies and space infrastructure.In the mean time Lunar water seems like a much better and easier target. I’ve outlined the approach before: collect and crush the ice and regolith mixture then feed it to a furnace of some sort (solar electric etc) to extract the water. You have the Lunar gravity and vacuum to help. The water is at the poles so solar panels can be placed nearby for almost constant sunlight. And the Earth is near for teleoperation and maintenance.For economical sense you’d probably want to make methalox. Bring in carbon from Earth react it with the water to get methalox. You’ll get an excess of hydrogen so react that with the regolith to recover half the water and get metal byproducts. If you want to use the methalox in LEO then bring the water carbon and oxides there to minimize delta-v costs. The methalox can feed a fleet of space tugs and service craft as well as fuel other missions.
I do not disagree with that and we attempt to account for this problem by using margins on every item that we have to estimate especially the cost (standard space systems engineering approach). The margins are usually derived from experience in related projects to account for cost overrun and uncertainties in mass/power consumption etc. The timeline is a bit more tricky but the systems are sized to perform an action in the targeted time. Of course only actual implementation on some comparable scale will show how truthful that is.Nonetheless the estimate is very rough overall and intended to give an idea what kind of investment and time scales we would have to work with to make asteroid mining feasible using this approach.
If you’re mining from a pile of rubble”” asteroid”” you can land (At this size”” “”””dock”””” might be a better term.) load a suitable amount of rubble for processing”””” and then retreat to full sunlight to process it.Then repeat as many times as needed.”””
History has proven that precise estimates of unproven applications of technology should be treated with caution.
Would you mind elaborating on what your estimates are based?
Maybe we are talking about different approaches. From my perspective if the collectors are put into an orbit around the spinning asteroid you would try to make them remain in the same position relative to sun and asteroid. In that case the asteroid surface still moves under the collecting optic and the mining process in one spot is interrupted from time to time. Making the collecting optic move with the asteroid will interrupt light collection as well.Using a large spacecraft that can basically wrap the entire asteroid the solar collectors become more feasible as it does not matter where volatiles are released. However in the article the approach is small spacecraft that actually land on the asteroid and mine specific sites.
The advantage of asteroids, at least the carbonaceous type, is that they have the carbon, water, and possibly oxides all in the same place. Asteroid carbon is more hydrogen rich than the pure carbon you’d bring from Earth, so you need less water to make the same amount of methalox. But this complicates the extraction and processing even further than just basic water mining. You’d probably want to go with a larger craft for asteroid mining. Bring back at least a few tons per trip, preferably a few hundred tons. The craft itself can weigh a fraction of that. That may give a better economy of scale, and would return more significant amounts of water. You can use either a fraction of the water as propellant, or the excess hydrogen you’d get from methalox production, or some other waste product, with some sort of plasma SEP. With aerobreaking at Earth and high Isp propulsion, you can maximize the mass fraction that you can return, and mine more distant asteroids. Higher return mass fraction means better economics. On the Moon it would be an industrial base, rather than a spacecraft, though you could probably start from a smaller installation and expand over time. There’s an estimated 600 million tons of water on just one of the poles, so this can be a large scale operation. But you’d probably want a heavier lift launch vehicle to get the hardware to the Moon. Something like the BFR. If you bring in carbon on a rocket, you can refuel it on the Moon and use the same rocket to launch stuff back. But in the longer term there are other launch options from the Moon, like solar powered catapults etc.
The advantage of asteroids at least the carbonaceous type is that they have the carbon water and possibly oxides all in the same place. Asteroid carbon is more hydrogen rich than the pure carbon you’d bring from Earth so you need less water to make the same amount of methalox. But this complicates the extraction and processing even further than just basic water mining.You’d probably want to go with a larger craft for asteroid mining. Bring back at least a few tons per trip preferably a few hundred tons. The craft itself can weigh a fraction of that. That may give a better economy of scale and would return more significant amounts of water. You can use either a fraction of the water as propellant or the excess hydrogen you’d get from methalox production or some other waste product with some sort of plasma SEP. With aerobreaking at Earth and high Isp propulsion you can maximize the mass fraction that you can return and mine more distant asteroids. Higher return mass fraction means better economics.On the Moon it would be an industrial base rather than a spacecraft though you could probably start from a smaller installation and expand over time. There’s an estimated 600 million tons of water on just one of the poles so this can be a large scale operation. But you’d probably want a heavier lift launch vehicle to get the hardware to the Moon. Something like the BFR.If you bring in carbon on a rocket you can refuel it on the Moon and use the same rocket to launch stuff back. But in the longer term there are other launch options from the Moon like solar powered catapults etc.
One more thought: with asteroid mining, you don’t usually want to haul the mining equipment back and forth. So you’d want the equivalent of a truck hauling the cargo back, while the mining equipment stays at the asteroid and keeps working. So those would be two separate spacecraft designs.
One more thought: with asteroid mining you don’t usually want to haul the mining equipment back and forth. So you’d want the equivalent of a truck hauling the cargo back while the mining equipment stays at the asteroid and keeps working. So those would be two separate spacecraft designs.
Blatant lies. Person who wrote this article is charlatan.
Blatant lies. Person who wrote this article is charlatan.
If you were able to place an asteroid into orbit around the Moon, AND you had a BFR launch/landing site ready on the Moon(along with an operational base, with refinement equipment), you could just launch a BFR to the asteroid and bring back 150 tonnes of material every time… Do all of the water collection and even metal refining on the Moon, where you have a fully operational base and large solar arrays(augmented with Nuclear). And of course, eventually, you get to a point after years of developing the base, where metal production reaches a sweet-spot, where you are producing enough refined metal for the base to generate actual profit, but not producing enough to collapse our commodity-based economy here on Earth.
Exactly.Even on Earth mining operations would quickly become unprofitable if we had to replace the mining equipment every time you want to bring cargo back from the mine…I would say the best idea would probably be to capture an asteroid put it into orbit around the Moon send the mining equipment and the water that gets mined would be sent to the surface of the Moon. And IMO it would be more useful on the lunar surface because if we want a permanently manned base we need a stable supply of materials…
Exactly. Even on Earth, mining operations would quickly become unprofitable if we had to replace the mining equipment every time you want to bring cargo back from the mine… I would say, the best idea would probably be to capture an asteroid, put it into orbit around the Moon, send the mining equipment, and the water that gets mined would be sent to the surface of the Moon. And IMO it would be more useful on the lunar surface because, if we want a permanently manned base, we need a stable supply of materials…
If you were able to place an asteroid into orbit around the Moon AND you had a BFR launch/landing site ready on the Moon(along with an operational base with refinement equipment) you could just launch a BFR to the asteroid and bring back 150 tonnes of material every time…Do all of the water collection and even metal refining on the Moon where you have a fully operational base and large solar arrays(augmented with Nuclear). And of course eventually you get to a point after years of developing the base where metal production reaches a sweet-spot where you are producing enough refined metal for the base to generate actual profit but not producing enough to collapse our commodity-based economy here on Earth.
What is this obscene nonsense? How would be mining for water profitable? To whom? It’s the dumbest thing I ever read on this website.
Bringing the whole asteroid back is inefficient, because you end up hauling a whole bunch of mass that you don’t need. With a larger asteroid, you also can’t safely use aerobraking at Earth, so you’d need a larger delta-v. So you end-up spending a lot more fuel and/or taking a lot longer to bring the material back. It’s worse than hauling the mining equipment back and forth on each trip – this way you’re hauling the whole mine, along with all the stuff around it.
The Moon has its own water and metals, as well as basalt that can be turned into basalt fibers. The metals are in the form of oxides in the regolith. If you make methalox like I described in my other posts, you get metals as a byproduct. The main thing that the Moon lacks is carbon (and nitrogen if you want an Earth-like atmosphere).
I don’t see much point in a *manned* base on the Moon in the near term. You could do mining without it. Earth is close enough for almost real-time teleoperation if automation isn’t good enough. You might want a skeleton crew for emergencies, but generally you can send a team and equipment pretty quickly if you need to repair something. Having people there just complicates things, since they need a bunch of extra support equipment.
In the longer term, there are other reasons to have a colony on the Moon, but that can come later, when the infrastructure is better developed.
Btw, re your other comment: the BFR capacity is 150 tons from Earth to LEO, because of Earth’s gravity well. Going between the Lunar surface and Lunar orbit or LEO, it could possibly carry a lot more, limited by volume and density.
Your list of detailed objections and calculations are convincing.
If you were able to place an asteroid into orbit around the Moon, AND you had a BFR launch/landing site ready on the Moon(along with an operational base, with refinement equipment), you could just launch a BFR to the asteroid and bring back 150 tonnes of material every time…
Do all of the water collection and even metal refining on the Moon, where you have a fully operational base and large solar arrays(augmented with Nuclear). And of course, eventually, you get to a point after years of developing the base, where metal production reaches a sweet-spot, where you are producing enough refined metal for the base to generate actual profit, but not producing enough to collapse our commodity-based economy here on Earth.
Exactly.
Even on Earth, mining operations would quickly become unprofitable if we had to replace the mining equipment every time you want to bring cargo back from the mine…
I would say, the best idea would probably be to capture an asteroid, put it into orbit around the Moon, send the mining equipment, and the water that gets mined would be sent to the surface of the Moon. And IMO it would be more useful on the lunar surface because, if we want a permanently manned base, we need a stable supply of materials…
Blatant lies. Person who wrote this article is charlatan.
One more thought: with asteroid mining, you don’t usually want to haul the mining equipment back and forth. So you’d want the equivalent of a truck hauling the cargo back, while the mining equipment stays at the asteroid and keeps working. So those would be two separate spacecraft designs.
The advantage of asteroids, at least the carbonaceous type, is that they have the carbon, water, and possibly oxides all in the same place. Asteroid carbon is more hydrogen rich than the pure carbon you’d bring from Earth, so you need less water to make the same amount of methalox. But this complicates the extraction and processing even further than just basic water mining.
You’d probably want to go with a larger craft for asteroid mining. Bring back at least a few tons per trip, preferably a few hundred tons. The craft itself can weigh a fraction of that. That may give a better economy of scale, and would return more significant amounts of water. You can use either a fraction of the water as propellant, or the excess hydrogen you’d get from methalox production, or some other waste product, with some sort of plasma SEP. With aerobreaking at Earth and high Isp propulsion, you can maximize the mass fraction that you can return, and mine more distant asteroids. Higher return mass fraction means better economics.
On the Moon it would be an industrial base, rather than a spacecraft, though you could probably start from a smaller installation and expand over time. There’s an estimated 600 million tons of water on just one of the poles, so this can be a large scale operation. But you’d probably want a heavier lift launch vehicle to get the hardware to the Moon. Something like the BFR.
If you bring in carbon on a rocket, you can refuel it on the Moon and use the same rocket to launch stuff back. But in the longer term there are other launch options from the Moon, like solar powered catapults etc.
Thanks for your comments! Your conclusion is the same as in the article. The proposed asteroid mining approach only really becomes feasible/interesting for a cis-lunar economy/use case (Figure 8). We might have to clarify that better in the text.
We have not made a direct comparison with the economic feasibility of extracting water from the moon but that is an interesting idea for the future.
Speaking in liters and kilograms makes the numbers seem larger, which hides the industrial (ir)relevance of the proposed project. 1 million liters of water is 1000 m^3, or 1000 tons. At 100 kg per trip, that’s 10000 trips. With 250 spacecraft, 40 trips per craft. If spread over the full ~10 years, that’s 4 trips/year for each craft, which seems about as fast as is technically feasible with today’s propulsion.
So we’re talking a $4 billion investment, with a 10 year ROI, all to bring back just a measly 1000 tons of water. That doesn’t seem worthwhile. The same Falcon Heavy that’s supposed to launch these craft could launch a 1000 tons of water in just 16 flights, for a total $1.4 billion, over as little as just a few months (if not weeks). For $3.5 billion it could launch it to GTO, with 38 flights.
This and Table 1 suggest that this project is premature, still in need of better technologies and space infrastructure.
In the mean time, Lunar water seems like a much better and easier target. I’ve outlined the approach before: collect and crush the ice and regolith mixture, then feed it to a furnace of some sort (solar, electric, etc) to extract the water. You have the Lunar gravity and vacuum to help. The water is at the poles, so solar panels can be placed nearby for almost constant sunlight. And the Earth is near for teleoperation and maintenance.
For economical sense, you’d probably want to make methalox. Bring in carbon from Earth, react it with the water to get methalox. You’ll get an excess of hydrogen, so react that with the regolith to recover half the water and get metal byproducts. If you want to use the methalox in LEO, then bring the water, carbon, and oxides there to minimize delta-v costs. The methalox can feed a fleet of space tugs and service craft, as well as fuel other missions.
I do not disagree with that and we attempt to account for this problem by using margins on every item that we have to estimate, especially the cost (standard space systems engineering approach).
The margins are usually derived from experience in related projects to account for cost overrun and uncertainties in mass/power consumption etc.
The timeline is a bit more tricky but the systems are sized to perform an action in the targeted time. Of course, only actual implementation on some comparable scale will show how truthful that is.
Nonetheless, the estimate is very rough overall and intended to give an idea what kind of investment and time scales we would have to work with to make asteroid mining feasible using this approach.
If you’re mining from a “pile of rubble” asteroid, you can land, (At this size, “dock” might be a better term.) load a suitable amount of rubble for processing, and then retreat to full sunlight to process it.
Then repeat as many times as needed.
History has proven that precise estimates of unproven applications of technology should be treated with caution.
Would you mind elaborating on what your estimates are based?
Maybe we are talking about different approaches.
From my perspective, if the collectors are put into an orbit around the spinning asteroid, you would try to make them remain in the same position relative to sun and asteroid. In that case the asteroid surface still moves under the collecting optic and the mining process in one spot is interrupted from time to time.
Making the collecting optic move with the asteroid will interrupt light collection as well.
Using a large spacecraft that can basically wrap the entire asteroid, the solar collectors become more feasible as it does not matter where volatiles are released. However, in the article the approach is small spacecraft that actually land on the asteroid and mine specific sites.
>> due to the asteroid’s own rotation … which interrupt[s] the mining cycle.
Only if you put the solar collectors ON the asteroid … and why would you do that?
This will surely cost at least 10x and take 10x longer?
Thanks for the comment, we should adjust the wording here. What is meant as that due to the asteroids own rotation you have something like day/night cycles, the latter of which interrupt the mining cycle.
One of the disadvantages listed for solar drying is that it doesn’t work at night.
The author IS aware that this is supposed to happen in space, right? Not on the surface of the Earth?