back to article Asteroid miners hunt for platinum, leave all common sense in glovebox

Isn't it exciting that Planetary Resources is going to jet off and mine the asteroids? This is every teenage sci-fi geek's dream, that everything we imbibed from Verne through Heinlein to Pournelle is going to come true! But there's always someone, isn't there, someone like me, ready to spoil the party. The bit that I cannot …

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  1. Doug Bostrom

    So it's kind of like a recession, or depression: by tacit consensus to remain enslaved to notions of economics that have lost their roots in the physical world we all agree to be miserable. It's a sad day when the physics hand we're dealt has nothing to do with our quality of life.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      A Whole New Ball Game ..... to Win Win With or Lose At

      So it's kind of like a recession, or depression: by tacit consensus to remain enslaved to notions of economics that have lost their roots in the physical world we all agree to be miserable. It's a sad day when the physics hand we're dealt has nothing to do with our quality of life. ..... Doug Bostrom Posted Saturday 24th November 2012 22:26 GMT

      Not all are enslaved to notions of economics that have lost their roots in the physical world we all agree to be miserable.

      Some are otherly minded and would be surprisingly active and interested in generating pleasure with addictively attractive content.

      There is certainly no recession or depression in that area of expertise, Doug Bostrom

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      FAIL

      > to remain enslaved to notions of economics that have lost their roots in the physical world

      Like what?

  2. Sam 15

    Leave it UN! He ain't worth it.

    "You may not care what UN says, but that has a shiny forecast of ending up with UN dragoons, TANSTAAFL and rocks being lobbed at the Cheyenne Mountain."

    The UN should stick to local politics and leave the neighbours alone.

    TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free Launch - at least, not from the bottom of Earth's gravity well.

    1. Omgwtfbbqtime
      Coat

      Re: Leave it UN! He ain't worth it.

      Be more worried about the UN Envoy Corps.......

      <--Thats not my sleeve!

  3. Epobirs

    This was all discussed decades ago.

    The writer references several authors but doesn't seem to remember the stories very well. I'm not seeing anything in this piece that wasn't covered back in the 70s. The idiotic UN treaty will turn to dust the moment someone stakes a claim and has the means on site to defend it. The cost of trying to wage piracy rather than just finding your rock to work is such that only a fool would fight over any claim.

  4. Steve Graham
    Unhappy

    OSIRIS-REx, planned for launch in 2016, is currently budgeted at a round billion dollars, and is to sample and return to Earth as much asteroid material as it can collect, up to a maximum of 2 kilos. Target asteroid 1999 RQ36 is a soft, crumbly carbonaceous lump, about half a kilometre long, so collecting a sample of surface material ought to be feasible. Although the rendezvous is in 2019, the return capsule won’t arrive back on Earth until 2023.

    Planetary Resources say that they will be able to create robotic spacecraft at a tenth of NASA’s pork-barrel prices, and maybe I can believe that. But even a mere hundred million dollars for a small, crumbly lump of space gunk seems expensive if it’s not the scientific content you’re interested in, seven years later.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, when will they change their name to Fireball Enterprises?

  6. panzerboy
    Facepalm

    Probably the most telling example of Planetary Resources plans is that WATER is the first listed item on their asteroid composition web page. Water, in earth orbit is worth a lot more right now than platinum is at the bottom of the gravity well. The platinum group metals are really just a deal sweetener. Hopefully they will crash the price of platinum so that fuel cells can be a made at consumer friendly prices. Platinum catalysts are also useful in electrolytic conversion of water to hydrogen. Cheap platinum could be just the boost the hydrogen economy needs.

  7. senna

    Agenda 21

    It adds up if you rig the market by shutting down mining activities in response to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy on sustainability.Look it up it's all there.

  8. Nially

    Ludicrous

    It's codswollop of course. An asteroid will hit us before we get ever to 'mine asteroids'.

  9. Nially

    I suspect they're fully aware it's a pipe dream. The reason they put these stories out there is to acclimatise the masses to the increased presence of asteroids, comets and their offspring in our corner of space.

  10. Mikel
    Pint

    It's their money

    Whenever these objections about Planetary Resources come up I feel it's important to remind the author: it's their money. They don't tell you how to spend your money. Some of the richest guys on the planet are behind this thing, and they're not in it for giggles. As long as they don't ask you for your money, let them do what they will.

    It's not like they just spent 11 billion retirement fund investor dollars on Autonomy, 8 billion on Skype, or two billion dollars a year maintaining their web presence like some fools have been up to.

  11. Robert Brockway
    Linux

    Laws in space

    Others have make some excellent responses to the article (new uses of the raw materials, materials could be used in space, etc). I didn't want to comment further there but I did want to make a point about the claim of ownership.

    It is quite reasonable to conclude that once property rights in space become relevant, laws will appear to deal with them. A good example right here on Earth is the islands of Svalbard. Svalbard was not claimed by any state when citizens of various countries started exploiting its natural resources. Before long it becme clear that laws were needed on these islands in the interests of good order. The great powers gathered and agreed on a treaty to govern Svalbard. The country who was physically closest to Svalbard (Norway) would gain sovereignty and their laws would apply, but citizens of any signatory state would be allowed to live and work there to exploit the resources available on the islands. This treaty has operated well and been respecred by all signatory nations for nearly a century. The modern world is repleat with examples of laws and treaties being applied once there was a need. It is reasonable to assume that this would be the case with commercial space exploration & mining also.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Fiat Currncies are Doomed.

    And the rich people realize it. Why do you think that these folks, all of them wealthy, have dreamed up what appears to be a harebrained scheme? They are in it for the money, not the romance.

    I do realize that there are all sorts of fancy arguments being made against commodity based currencies, but our fiat currencies simply are not working. Any time an entity can make its own currency out of vacuum, then that entity will be very well off until everyone catches on to its game. Our governments have been caught doing just that. They are making their money from a vacuum. They are not even going to the trouble of printing it. Someone somewhere sits down in front of a keyboard and issues bank so-an-so x-billions of euros-pounds-dollars or place-your-favoriie-valuta here, and, suddenly, said bank so-and-so is x-billions of valuta better off with no more trouble than that.

    It has to end sooner or later. The world cannot continue with fiat currencies. There is one nation that understands this better than most--Germany. Check out what happened in Germany between WWI and WWII. Their experience with inflation has frightened them no end--and they are still very frightened of it today. Why do you think Angela Merkel is being so tough with Greece? She is not doing it just to be mean or German. Merkel has reason for her stance.

    Now, why did I bring this up? Because gold and the so-called PGM's can do a lot to help us straighten out our currency problems. Sure, a sudden influx of them will cause inflation for a little while, but that comes to an end after a while, just as it did with Spain in the sixteenth century. The author has mistakenly assumed that these metals only matter to industry and base his article on that blythe assumption. I maintain that it is a very bad assumption. I was around prior to 1972 and Nixon taking the United States off of the gold standard. I remember all to well what happened next.

    Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon how one looks at this subject, Nixon and Kissinger made a deal with the Saudi's in 1972 so that the only currency that oil could be bought with was the US dollar. That meant that the US dollar was indrectly backed by crude oil. Now that nasty game is rapidly coming to a close. The Saudi's dislike parting with their oil for increasingly worthless US dollars.

    Money as we have known it is about to end, make no mistake about it. The bad news screams loudly in most headlines you read now-a-days. Whither Greece? Whither Ireland? What about Iceland? What is about to happen to Italy and France? The same tthing that is already happening to the US dollar. The euro and the US dollar are both goling the way of the dodo. Gold is about to make a comeback that will be the biggest comeback of all time. Perhaps this time we will have learned our lesson. Warren Buffet is just a man, not really an oracle.

    1. foxyshadis

      Re: Fiat Currncies are Doomed.

      The effect of dumping ten times as much gold on the market as currently exists on all of earth would be exactly the same as any country printing up ten times as much currency. The ability to mine precious metals off-planet while using them as currency would effectively make the metal a fiat itself, controlled by whatever governments or private companies control the mining and distribution. It would be no different from using diamonds as a currency, when DeBeers and the Russians can release as many or as few on the market any year as they want.

      You fail, sir. No points are awarded for your attempt to fit an ideology into a completely game-breaking change.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: Fiat Currncies are Doomed.

        We are not here discussing an ideology, but plain fact. It is you who have allowed ideology to sway your thinking. The amount of fiat currency we are dealing with could easily swallow ten times the current terrestrial production of gold and never look back.

  13. Stephen 10

    Foamed metals for example

    http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/foam.html

    First read about them in the 80s, they're still on the table.

    Oh and as far as sovereignty goes, you establish an asteroid in orbit with sufficient solar power and a decent range of available elements and you're good to go as a nation state with the added advantage of being up-hill from everyone else - think kinetic weapons, lasers and probably nukes. Being at the top of the gravity well is like being king of the castle of super steroids.

  14. Tom Cooke

    Hannefin Metals

    I for one welcome our new Motie overlords!

  15. Charlie 5

    A lot of this will become reserve & deposit fodder

    Mining anything of any use at all in space will generate income whether it gets sent back to earth, consumed at source or turned into bars and boosted into a lagrange orbit.

    The mere fact of its existence will create a market around it. Reserves of precious metals underpin a lot of economic activity and confidence in other economic activity.

    I can buy a barrel of oil (or an ounce of gold) on the stock market that either currently exists (in a variety of states - crude, refined or secondary products) or has yet to be extracted from the ground. I can then sell it on without every having taken deliver or seen the product. I can even sell it on before it has been drilled.

    Likewise I may decide to top up my pension by buying a few ounces of space gold that is orbiting the Earth as part of a larger refined deposit of space gold. Or decide to buy a share in a surveyed asteroid that is scheduled to be refined.

    Space gold will have a value which is determined by the market. It may even have a special category as space gold on the basis that it may never actually be landed on Earth. Ever.

    Chances are that there will be massive import tariffs on space gold or space platinum or space anything for the exact purpose of preventing Earthside markets from being smashed to pieces by supply surplus.

    It would make sense to keep all that stuff up there to be traded (initially as derivatives) and eventually used in situ.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A lot of this will become reserve & deposit fodder

      I agree with you on most of this stuff, but I seriously doubt that any attempt at isolating terrestrial markets from space markets will have any success over the long haul. Where ever people go, they tend to trade. The more valuable the commodity, the harder it is for govenrments to place limits on the trade in it.

      1. Charlie 5

        Re: A lot of this will become reserve & deposit fodder

        Over the long haul you are absolutely right but short term it makes sense to discourage anyone from landing a market-shifting quantity of a rare metal. For all the reasons in the original article it wont necessarily be in the interest of the miner to land it all in one go even if they were allowed to.

        I think you might struggle to get an insurance policy on your re-entry vehicle if it holds more gold than the Russian national reserve.

        The terrestrial market will be isolated anyway by natural factors or rather the barriers to trade between space and Earth have a naturally isolating effect.

        As the market and technology mature then the import tarrifs will be less useful and harder to enforce.

        Ultimately I think it should all be about assets being refined for use in space while encouraging finance from Earth until the market matures.

  16. Steve Hosgood
    Headmaster

    Yet again - science story in bizarre mishmash of units

    "An increase in supply of as little as 250,000 ounces - seven metric tons - will drive the price down by a quarter."

    Look - if you're writing an article about mining, please lay off with the "ounces" eh? Presumably you mean troy ounces anyway? While you're at it (and this may be pedantic), there is no such thing as a "metric ton". Well - maybe in the USA, but not anywhere else. It's called a "tonne" over here.

    Later in the same article

    "...asked if the markets are large enough to support the mining costs - yes, especially if we are able to bring back so much that the price goes from $1,500/ounce to $15/ounce."

    Any chance we can have that in units that make sense please? Like "...price goes from $48000/kg to $480/kg" (assuming you meant troy ounces)?

    Or, since it's a mining article that started with tonnes, maybe you ought to stick with that and have "...price goes from $48million/tonne to $480thousand/tonne"?

    Is it too much to ask for a poll on extending the policy on metric-only articles to cover everything El. Reg covers (apart from beer)?

    1. Mayhem

      Re: Yet again - science story in bizarre mishmash of units

      You fool, the register never uses consistent units!

      If it helps, we should be talking costs around the $11500/Jub mark dropping to a mere $0.11/kiloJub

    2. foxyshadis
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Yet again - science story in bizarre mishmash of units

      Metals are traded on troy ounces and pounds. That shouldn't be hard to grasp, and if it offends you, then the whole talk about markets is not for you at all.

      1. Steve Hosgood
        Unhappy

        Re: Yet again - science story in bizarre mishmash of units

        Hey - foxyshadis: no need to be rude! Obviously I can "grasp" that precious metals *may* be traded in troy ounces (though some markets operate in grams and kg). The point was supposed to be that in an article talking about mining asteroids, and mentioning tonnes of material, it's hard work dealing with prices given in an almost unrelated set of units like troy ounces. Even if those are the units that some markets use, price per tonne or price per kg are the obvious ones to quote in an article like this.

        (*) Price per jub might be funnier, but until the International Convention of the Jub have standardised that unit of mass relative to the Planck Constant and Avogadro's number, it's all a bit moot!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet again - science story in bizarre mishmash of units

      As I write this, gold is selling for something like 43 euros per gram or, if you prefer to use a larger unit, 43000 euros per kilogram. Platinum is selling for somewhat less at about 40 euros per gram.

  17. BCS

    Use it instead of aluminium

    If you can mine many tonnes of platinum, why not use it in space instead of other metals. It has better Young's, shear and bulk modulus than aluminium, lower thermal conductivity and lower thermal expansion too. And it's very unreactive too, which is useful.

    Why not use it to make tanks for storing the water mined on other asteroids? It might need a bit of work to figure out how to use it, but hey, that's part of the challenge.

    The only reason for not using it for engineering down here is because it's rare. Up there? Maybe not.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Use it instead of aluminium

      Platinum is hard to find any and everywhere you look for it. The atomic weight of aluminium is so close to 27 that it is not worht fussing about. The atomic weight of platinum is 195, which means that platinum is roughly seven times more massive than aluminum. So, if you have a situation wherein you are wont to store something and move it, aluminum is still your best material. Platinum should be reserved for the more corrosoive substances, like flourine gas.

      1. BCS

        Re: Use it instead of aluminium

        Oh, aluminium is preferable for anything you need to move but if you've got an asteroid with lots of platinum and little aluminium then it can be used as a structural metal instead of Al. That was rather my point.

  18. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Rare Earth metals?

    I wonder how this works out for other rare earth metals. I've read about how for indium, neodymium, niobium, etc. are in short supply to the point that researchers are already looking into how to make LCDs work without them. I honestly don't know, but the supply of these is much tighter than platinum, and yet they are not recycled like platinum (the quantity that goes into an LCD for instance is small but it is not recycled anywhere as far as I know.)

    Also, somewhat off topic... re the article quote: "(why, says Mr Apple, “how nice to see you here Mr Samsung!”)", really it's more like "(why, says Mr Apple, "that's a nice phone you already have there on the market Mr. Samsung, I suppose I'll claim I made it first and sue you")." Keep in mind Samsung had a phone on the market BEFORE the iphone that had the features Apple claimed were copied from the iphone; they just managed to persuade the judge to disallow that evidence from being presented.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rare Earth metals?

      Rare earht metals are not especially rare; they are extremely difficult to separate and refine. The only reason that there is a shortage of them at this time is because China got into the business of producing these misnamed "rare" earth metals, and then decided to curb output once they had driven all the other refiners out of the market. The reason China curbed output is because they realized that they were doing great harm to their environmennt with their cheap and sloppy refiining practices. It is not the scarcety of the rare earths that is the problem here, it is the chemical processes necessary to produce them. Western producers were trapped between market forces and environmental regulations. I am guessing that they will do what every other self-respecting capitalist cocern does whenever it is in a bind and turn to the sundry western governments with their hands out for subisidies and special treatment under the law. In fairness, there is little else they can do.

      I suspect , for starters at least, that most of these types of materials will be exported from Earth. Only if suitable deposits of them are found in space will that flow be reversed., and then only because less environmental damage will ensue from their production in the vast reaches of space will make their production cheaper.

      While Apple is clearly in for a bruising and a sail trimming, Samsung is an outright monopoly in South Korea. I canna see any good guys in tha particular donneybrook.

  19. JeffyPooh
    Pint

    Big rail-gun to fling raw alumin(i)um slugs into LEO

    Just fire aluminum/aluminium slugs into a more-or-less common orbit by means of a big rail gun powered by energy stored up during the off-peak hours. Result is vast quantities of a very useful metal in orbit at very low cost. It'll need a wee feisty shuttle craft to gather them up and keep them organized in a big net. Machining the raw metal into comfortable space ships is not included. That's a common next step for any metal-to-LEO approach.

    Metal to orbit - problem solved.

    PS: Don't forget to clear out the air traffic...

  20. bugalugs
    Go

    Spaaaace dream

    As a sci-fi lover and IT retiree it pains that a study (PDF here) of South African platinum mines out of Monash University reveals a best energy/coolant performance of 175.1 GJ/kgpgm at one location and 269.3 m^3H20/kgpgm at another location ( PDF page 11 ). So, ~27 barrels of oil or ~48 Mwh and perhaps 80 overweight indian elephants of water to produce a 1 kg piglet of platinum, terrestially.

    Whatever these chaps plan to do with whatever they believe they can find, serious innovation in remote / autonomous waterless micro-gravity mining, concentrating, smelting, refining, milling, machining, by-product processing, waste disposal and transportation appears needful. Other challenges might include the inverse square law as applied to solar panels at the orbital distance of the asteroid belt, the limits of political tolerance vis-a-vis the project milestone of hoicking major atomic reactors into departure orbit and the impact on the rocket -fume / breathable-atmosphere ratio that despatching the necessary foundation plant might have.

    Nice dream, tho...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Re: Spaaaace dream

      Yep! That's the dream all right. Water is needed for cooling more than it is for propellent and human consumption. CNC machining uses lots of water for cooling and the carrying away of chips and filings. Smelting uses a great deal of water for three things; as a reagent ; as a coolent and as separation medium. Even if we do it all with computer and tele-operated machines, water will be very much in demand. I am betting, by the way, that when it _is_ done, it will be done with machines. Human occupation of space is easier than the human occupation of the deep oceans, but it is only slightly less expensive thanks to what it costs to put a human in space.

  21. Hanni Ali

    Economics

    The single overriding factor to consider (for use on earth - let's ignore space for now) is the cost of acquisition. On Earth we have experienced a high inflationary rate in the mining industry over the past 5 years, Gold at best is on the order of $550 an ounce. If the cost and stability of supply (very important given many mines are in unstable countries) for mining operations in space can hit that price point or at least hit market equivalence (some publicly traded companies currently have costs in excess of $1000) then there is an argument for investment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Re: Economics

      Check out what just happened to Nautilus Minerals. They were in the middle of a project to mine the bottom of the Bismark Sea. Gold and copper deposits there are so rich that it is hard to believe, but their partner, Papua New Guinea, refused to pay for their half of the undersea equipment. The green-meanies have accused them of messing up the water, even though they have yet to put a damned thing into the ocean. There is a nearby underwater volcano responisble for the cloudy water, but try telling an ill-educated Papuin that after he or she has already been frightened ot his/her wits by a slavering environmentalist.

      Nautilus Minerals is going through a hard earned disintengration phase that might well drag on for a decade. There was a lot of money and engineering effort tied up in that concept, but it will come to naught. There are only so many places left on Earth to mine. The only other options are to go above the Earth's atmosphere, or die. LIfe without any further mining will become absolutely impossible. Growth? Fugiddaboutit!

      1. Hanni Ali

        Re: Economics

        Excellent example of the sort of issue one simply wouldn't have to deal with in Space. I would also highlight that through the use of robotics or even teleoperated mining equipment in space a company could avoid the sort of labour issues (strikes) South African mining operations have experienced throughout 2012. Mining still provides opportunity for application of high tech solutions in what remains an often low tech 'shovelling dirt' approach.

  22. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
    Alert

    Actually, this article only gives half of teh economic story..

    What the article says is true, I have no doubt. But the bit that is missing is the expected rise in population.

    Given the figures, you probably couldn't market the platinum today. But, according to Julian Simon, the human race is getting larger and richer ALL the time. This is what funds technological advance.

    Today, few people would buy expensive platinum jewelery. In 50 years time, a substantial proportion of the middle class would be using it to hang on Christmas trees. At some point during this process, asteroid mining will become viable...

  23. the Jim bloke

    drawback to platinum as a cash cow

    few years back, before the GFC, the mining company I worked for was taken over by Norilsk Nickel .. big russian mining company. According to their welcome-to-the-family presentation, as well as being one of the largest nickel producers in the world, they were also the top producer of platinum.. purely as a byproduct from their nickel mines. At the time they were using the profits from the platinum to cover the production costs of the nickel, but you can see how easy it would be for them to crash the price of platinum if they felt threatened.

    From an investment point of view, there is no point spending money on something if it costs more to produce than people will pay for it.

    Personally, the sooner we get our arses off this mudball the better, and I do wish them luck

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