Thread 16835716

How would you realistically mine an asteroid?

Logistically speaking, would it be possible with our civilization's current technology?

lasers

>>16835716 (OP)
>send robots
>robots mine
>get robots

>>16835722
Ok so like Rimworld

>>16835716 (OP)
How would you realistically mine an asteroid?
>see giant large asteroid
>lauch rocket to rondeyvu and release small bot swith thrusters
>steer asteroid to Earth.
>mine crater of sweet sweet metals after impact.

>>16835716 (OP)
Realistically, you wouldn't.
The problem with rockets is weight. You need fuel to carry weight, and the fuel has weight, so you need more fuel to carry fuel. The part of the rocket that reaches space is like a tenth of the starting mass of the rocket.
What is an asteroid? Mass. You need fuel to get to the asteroid, then you need WAY more fuel to bring it back. And you need fuel to carry that fuel. And fuel to carry that fuel.
>but you're not bringing back the entire asteroid
Doesn't matter. You have to bring back quite a lot of material to make the trip worth it. Rocket launches are expensive. Sure you could bring back 20 kg of metal without significantly increasing fuel requirements, but those are the most expensive 20kg of metal ever produced. And that's ignoring the hardware and energy required to mine asteroids, which is pure sci-fi at the moment

>>16836133
>less than 5% of the asteroid survives atmosphere entry and impact
>deal with liability issues when it hits something valuable or living
>get outcompeted by more efficient mining techniques and eventually go bankrupt

>>16836176
It's actually worse than you stated. A lot of existing methods to filter and process ore on Earth rely on gravity. The technology to do that in space doesn't exist.

>>16836186
i imagine you could build the processing plant in the shape of a ring and then rotate it

>>16836176
>fuel
Most C chondrites have organic carbon like kerogen which (if we had a decent understanding of asteroid chemistry and sci fi technology) could potentially be refined into fuel

>>16836194
Which only increases the cost and complexity even more.

>>16836200
They do, you could (and inevitably would) start with an ice meteor anyhow for explicitly fuel and water production too. The cost of fuel for the return is magnitudes lower than getting there in the first place, if you have the tech to go up to an asteroid and mine it then you by definition can also return what you haul. But that itself is largely pointless, asteroid mining won't be cost competitive with ground based mining for ground based demand in a long long time, what it is really used for is construction in space and probably on the moon. If you want to send stuff to earth it's as simple as packaging the refined material in some sacrificial buffer material and dropping it down with minimal guidance to a desert. The start up costs of even thinking of mining anything in space are so high that you already need a robust infrastructure on the moon to even think of starting it in the first place, something like a steel refinery is just too bulky to blast into orbit with rockets and anything small enough to shit up is far too small to provide a meaningful amount of materials.

>>16836206
i guess, but you only need to be cheaper than rocketing shit up to LEO or refine something like iridium so 'roid mining is operating at a very high price range

>>16836209
Metals like iridium are expensive because they are so rare, not because the demand is high. It's the same problem if you went 'roid mining for gold. Bring back tonnes of the stuff to Earth and it quickly becomes worthless.

>>16836210
if a new supply opens up that's cheaper than the old supply, it won't push it any cheaper than the new supply since you would just sell that gold/iridium for however much is needed to pay for the project

>>16836210
This is just one of the many economic reasons asteroid mining makes no sense, don't believe the hype. However it does make a lot more sense for a space-based economy. If you want a manufacturing ecosystem and factories in space you don't want to be shipping resources up from the surface.

>>16836218
So you want to spend billions to earn millions? Genius.

>>16836176
The most compeeling reason to mine asteroids is to have materials to build something in space.

>>16836176
This is why you need to steer the asteroid and park it close to Earth.
Ideally in orbit, but for political and environmental reasons, highly unlikely.
It would take time, decades probably, but humans already execute tech projects within that time frame.

>>16836206
A simple centrifuge isn't really complicated or expensive, the real obstacle is gravity is used to keep things in place, without it everything floats around.
If the asteroid is small one possible solution is building a big web around it and maybe add a slight rotation.

>>16836220
An asteroid mine would only open if a sufficient amount of material could be produced at a price high enough to justify its existence, if you had to sell the gold for cheaper than it is produced then thats just because there isn't enough gold demand in the world to justify the mine

>>16836210
Demand is low because they're so expensive, if a new supply of rare metals opened up for cheap manufacturers would be rushing to use it to build higher quality, cheaper stuff

>>16836230
for example, a gigantic magical oil field wouldn't bankrupt itself if it could produce oil for cheaper than everyone else, the owner would simply sell the oil at a price higher than the field costs to run but undercutting everyone else. They would only have to sell for under production cost if it somehow managed to outstrip the entire world oil demand so they literally *couldn't* sell the oil at the required price point, in which case they overinvested and made their oil field too big.

>>16835716 (OP)
To do any kind of work you need energy.
Try finding an energy source in space first. Burning some sort of fuel isn't possible because there is neither fuel nor oxygen. And solar isn't really up for the task of energy intensive applications.
My guess: First we master fusion. Then tap a hydrogen source, probably Jupiter, and build a supply line. Then you can focus on resource mining.
Building this will be slow and expensive. I don't expect this to happen within the next 100 years.

>>16836236
Demand is low because there is no demand for them, and when prices go up high enough people just mine more and prices fall again.

>>16836250
>Demand is low because there is no demand for them
Have you ever heard of induced demand?
>people just mine more and prices fall again.
Yes, that is the point of the thread, (you) mine them and make money while consumers get higher quality iridium-plated electronics

>>16836182
Can't we put it into an orbit?
Maybe a stupid question and what I'm going to say even answer I remember that infact even a space body like asteroids and space debry can get caught into the orbit of stars and planets.
Can't we steer an asteroid into an orbit or would it too dangerous? What I mean for sure we can put it but maybe it's really too hard and precise that it's too risky.

>>16836326
They're caught in those orbits for the most part because they're low speed anon.
Slowly down potentially millions of tons of materials is not a task we are capable of.
Sure we could likely change it's course, but orbiting is out of the question since we cant change it's actual speed easily.

We'd be better off redirecting them to hit the moon and mining them there.

>>16836182
What if we steer it towards the moon instead?

>go to asteroid with special machinery
>cut a few chunks of mineral of the asteroid
>fixes a sort of backpack to each one of the chunks
>the pack includes a small propeller that should use AI to course correct the chunk's trajectory so it falls on earth
>the pack also includes special parachutes like the ones they use to land on earth from space
>wait a couple of months
>big balls of gold and diamond falling from the skies into the ocean and you just have to pick them up

>>16836247
>And solar isn't really up for the task of energy intensive applications.
The more energy you need the bigger the array.
No gravity makes scaling up quite simple, and contrary to earth it's constant and reliable.
The only thing that matters is cost x kw.

>>16836133
>rondeyvu
Dont embarrass yourself. Talk regular.
It's rendez vous, stemming from french.

doesn't seem feasible before spess elevators

>>16835716 (OP)
There's a TV series on Apple TV about this. Just nudge it so it collides with the earth. You could also go up and mine it and only send the stuff you want down to earth. If you have a way to produce fuel on a celestial body with lower gravity, like the moon or mars, you could have your mining operation there.

>>16836176
Retard. You don't need a lot of fuel to go back. There's no gravity well to fight against. Going back is almost free.

Theres a mining company that has figured out how to do it with small asteroids.

>surround asteroid with gastight shell
>use solar power to heat up asteroid
>collect gasses and minerals

>>16836338
>We'd be better off redirecting them to hit the moon and mining them there.
>>16836352
>What if we steer it towards the moon instead?

Seems interesting but I suppose again, as OP asked "can we do it with what we have?" I suppose a permanent moon mining base would be too hard to maintain and I suppose the Miners have to be really highly specialized.
This make me think, maybe we have the things to mine but do we have the personel? What kind of people we need to mine these asteroids? Or we could do it with drones?

>>16836176
starship would have more than enough fuel to go out and back to park an asteroid close to earth

from that point you wouldnt merely mine the asteroid but segment it into many large chunks which could then easily be deorbited and given a controlled decent as to not completely burn up in the atmosphere, itd be a lot more than 20kg lol