space economy

[trob]

We hear about space economy all the time, but this mainly relates to fancy satelites or space tourism in low orbit. How about the prospects for a more longterm utilization of raw materials in space? Could this become viable in the long term and could it create a space infrastructure that could bring down the price of foundational research in space.
In other words...should we go to space primarily for science (which is very expensive) or go to space for economic reasons and wait till the science becomes cheaper since it can piggyback?

ops: Ohh bugger it...Should we go to space in a Stephen Baxteresque/Manifold way or not????

All the best
Trob

[russ_watters]

For raw materials themselves, there is not any chance, ever. If solid gold bars were sitting in low earth orbit, waiting to be plucked, we'd still need to reduce our mission costs by an order of magnitude to make it worthwhile.

[trob]

Thats great... so what are we talking here? A space elevator if space is to become economically viable?
What do I know...I'm just a philosopher who reads too many sci-fis.

Regards Trob

[kenneth rodman]

For raw materials themselves, there is not any chance, ever. If solid gold bars were sitting in low earth orbit, waiting to be plucked, we'd still need to reduce our mission costs by an order of magnitude to make it worthwhile.

And once we are able to reduce our mission costs by such an amount?

[HerrProfessorDoktor]

I think we will need some sort of cheaper lifting technology than chemical rockets to truly get a foothold in space. I do think this is bound to happen one day, but I know not when. Reaching an asteroid with all the equipment needed to mine it is currently barely feasible with existing tech, and certainly not feasible economically. And then, you'll need to get all the material back to Earth or wherever you need it for manufacturing. We're talking about mass-driving millions of tons across at the very least tens or hundreds of millions of kilometers of space. Even if you do your manufacturing on-site, the requirements remain the same to transport the mass of your product.

It would be somewhat more convenient to push a rock into Earth orbit, but what nation would actually allow such a thing? Would anybody actually trust your corporation to fling even a moderately-sized rock toward the Earth and politely insert it in the approved parking space? This would never be allowed officially, and if you did it unofficially I'm afraid you'll have to contend with James Bond showing up at your lair at some point.

And even if you did get the mass back to Earth (or the Moon, or Mars...), you'd have to get it to the ground somehow. Dropping small packages of it down the gravity well of a planet is probably the cheapest transport imaginable, but again, who is going to trust you to rain that mass down onto the surface, even in small doses to remote areas?

Also, let's say the average stony asteroid a kilometer or two across contains 10+ trillion dollars of metals at current market value. That should certainly cover the cost of any mission, but remember, it is an expensive mission, probably a few hundred billion to begin with. And - and this is the part most all exo-mining enthusiasts forget - that metal won't be worth $10 trillion once you stake your claim and transport it back. Congratulations, you just flooded and destroyed the world's commodities markets! You've assured the world's population can now use platinum foil as toilet paper. Problem is, it's now worth about as much as toilet paper.

So, I think it makes absolutely no sense in our current Earth-bound economy. We need to build a bridge of expansion and be well established in space until such ideas even begin to become thinkable. At that point, we'll mine asteroids and scoop H3 from Jupiter because we need it economically on the spot, not for transport back to Earth space. In a nearer future scenario, we'd probably use moon dust concrete to build structures on the Moon, but it would be stupid to try to ship Moon dust back to Earth to make concrete when we have plenty of dirt here. Sure, elements like platinum and gold are essential to our technology and in short supply here, but it will probably be mined first by spacers who need it in-situ and then sold to us by them. A very far future scenario. Even then, transport of dense slabs of metal probably won't be cheap.

The economic potential I see in space in the short term (meaning most of this century at least) is not in resource mining, but in manufacturing. Building orbiting plants to create pharmaceuticals, biologicals and nanotech that can only be manufactured in microgravity is very feasible and the need will become real over the coming decades. In these areas you're inherently talking about small amounts of raw materials, small mass of product to drop to the surface, and probably an accepted high cost. You may be able to draw in asteroidal materials to run these sorts of operations. I wouldn't be surprised if regulations were passed restricting the size and density of objects that can legally be towed into orbit, i.e. nothing that won't burn up on atmospheric entry.

[mopc]

I'd strongly recommend the book Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis, he does quite a good job in explaining not only how Solar System resources could be profitably extracted but also in how it is humanity's only hope of a non-miserable future.

Of course it's not about bringing metals that already exist here, but the point of the book mainly is:

1: building space-mining bases using space resources so we wouldn't have to lauch all that heavy stuff, only some parts

2: Mine mainly stuff that's rare on earth like hydrogen and helium, which may power the hydrogen cell economy and the fusion economy both of which don't yet exist because investiment is pathetically low and because those gases are rare on Earth, thus expensive.

Some 50 tons of helium could power Earth (if fusion is achieved, something not so far on the horizon) for a century even if electricity consumption rises 500%. The outer shells of Neptune, the easiest-to-mine planet, contain enough to power earth for several million years.

[Doe, John]

. The outer shells of Neptune, the easiest-to-mine planet, contain enough to power earth for several million years.

Somebody help me with this. How many millions of miles away is Neptune? Assuming we could maintain a constant acceleration/decceration of say .25g, how long would it take to get there ?

[trob]

Thanks for your comments

So we're actually talking about a radical restructuring of human existance if space economy should ever become a reality or necessity (which one could imagine in the really long run)...We would actually have to live in space and be tourists on the planetsurface...LOL. I can see that we would have to be pretty hard pressed to consider such a permanent move. Either way it would probably be prudent to have the capability to do so....?
Is the space-evelator a contestor in such a radical newthinking of how we get up and down , and how fra progessed are the plans? Has anything happend since that conference a while back?

Regards
Trob

[mopc]

. The outer shells of Neptune, the easiest-to-mine planet, contain enough to power earth for several million years.

Somebody help me with this. How many millions of miles away is Neptune? Assuming we could maintain a constant acceleration/decceration of say .25g, how long would it take to get there ?

I'd have to re-read Mining the Sky to get the author's estimate with present technology on the economics of the endeavour. Given that Cassini-Huygens took off some seven years ago and arrived in Titan yesterday, I'd imagine some ten/eleven years to reach Neptune and then the same to get back! Of course if nuclear rockets are used (a technology available in the sixties by Nasa but abandoned) things might get more rapid. There's also ion propulsion, solar wind...

[mopc]

Thanks for your comments

So we're actually talking about a radical restructuring of human existance if space economy should ever become a reality or necessity (which one could imagine in the really long run)...We would actually have to live in space and be tourists on the planetsurface...LOL. I can see that we would have to be pretty hard pressed to consider such a permanent move. Either way it would probably be prudent to have the capability to do so....?
Is the space-evelator a contestor in such a radical newthinking of how we get up and down , and how fra progessed are the plans? Has anything happend since that conference a while back?

The thing is that extracting solar system resources especially helium and hydrogen might be the only economically and ecologically sound thing to do if we don't want to live in an eternally stagnated planet. We are already hard pressed:

1) natural energy resources are running out, and are (oil, mining) extremely burdensome on the environment - whereas fusion is non-radioactive, and hydrogen cells only produce water as by-product.

2) Not everyone is noticing but since the 1970's humanity is sliding back into a medieval state. The Concorde is in a museum, moon travel is mythology, ancient diseases are coming back, the dream of universal wel-being is light years away even in rich countries, fundamentalist religions are growing exponentially, mysticism, eco-babble, perpetual crises, walled cities, etc. If it wasn't for the microchip revolution (started by enthusiasts of space travel who were not absorbed into the branch in the 1970 and 1980) I don't know what the world would be now. The Malthusian myth of limited resources and limited science was sold to us in a new format (eco-mysticism) and we bought our own disgrace.

It is our nature to expand and evolve technically. That's what makes us human. In the seventies we threw much of our space-faring dreams into the garbage. No wonder that since that time the number of disappointments with our development vastly outnumbered that of some major achievements. No coincidence there - if we don't move forward, we slide back.

[The Supreme Canuck]

whereas fusion is non-radioactive

Not quite true. Obviously you mean in terms of waste, but in some forms of fusion the reactor vessel eventually becomes too eroded by neutron bombardment and must be disposed of. It would be very radioactive.

[trob]

Hi mopc...
thanks for your post. I like the sound of what youre saying, but according to one of the earlier posts it seemed like the amount of money (and energy) used for such a feat was greater than what we could get out of it...It would be functioning at an economic loss, just as every spaceprobe we send out now (there is of course an increase of knowledge and understanding of our universe...but thats not the issue here).
In addition to the space elevator idea, there have been suggestions of Von Neumann machines so that we should only carry the economic weight of starting the process of economic exploitation, where after the machines would build themselves there (at the resourses) and start exploiting the resourses for our consumption. Bootstrapping it af Stephen Baxter likes to call it. I'm not sure how feasible such creations are or if they are safe in the long run...it sounds very complicated
My point is why not do more research in such areas....?

regards
trob

[mopc]

Well, I cannot defend well the ideas I have posted because theyre not mine, they come from the Mining the Sky, so I'd like to discuss them. The economics and cost-effectiveness of those ideas is discussed with some detail in the book, and they sound quite convincing at least in a fifty-year minimum horizon. Just to think that a single payload of helium-3 from Neptune could supply billions of gigawats of energy is reason enough to speculate seriously that it's not only cost-effective but unimaginably profitable.

The mechanics of the mining probes is quite well described by the author too, all with present or near-term technology.

I'd like to read some counter-arguments.

[trob]

well well well...
Looks like I've got some reading to do. Sounds very interesting to me - I'll have a look at it.

thanks
Trob

[russ_watters]

For raw materials themselves, there is not any chance, ever. If solid gold bars were sitting in low earth orbit, waiting to be plucked, we'd still need to reduce our mission costs by an order of magnitude to make it worthwhile.

And once we are able to reduce our mission costs by such an amount?

Then there still aren't gold bars in low earth orbit... #-o

[SSJPabs]

What I wonder is, would pollution matter in space? I mean its a big place, as long as you stay out of the particles of whatever is the by product of manufacturing and make sure the particles don't descend to earth....

[electromagneticpulse]

What I wonder is, would pollution matter in space? I mean its a big place, as long as you stay out of the particles of whatever is the by product of manufacturing and make sure the particles don't descend to earth....

Well pollution in space could be a big problem. Imagine dropping a screw on a trip from Mars to Earth, if you was using a fusion drive it'd be moving at roughly (searches through paper) 26,500,000 m/s at full thrust. Now if you think of large rifle rounds travelling at 1,500 m/s and you work out the problem.

Another kind of pollution could be that of radioactive waste, not that much of a problem right? Well if we put too much up there then it could mean needing extra protection on everything including satellites.

[tofu]

mopc, thanks for the book recommendation. It's sounds interesting and I'm definitely going to check it out.

1) natural energy resources are running out, and are (oil, mining) extremely burdensome on the environment - whereas fusion is non-radioactive, and hydrogen cells only produce water as by-product.

Does the author deal with the question of oxygen depletion? See, if you mine H2 and use it in fuel cells, you are sucking oxygen out of the atmosphere. True, you're replacing it with water, but you can't breathe water and if you wanted to break the molecule to get your oxygen back, it would take more energy than you got from the fuel cell.

2) Not everyone is noticing but since the 1970's humanity is sliding back into a medieval state.

ugh! That's a terribly depressing thing for me to read so early in the morning!!

Unfortunately, it's at least partially correct. The future doesn't look as bright as it once did. I definitely think we as a species squandered a perfect chance to better ourselves. But you know, we survived the cold war without resorting to all-out nuclear annihilation. That's got to be worth something. Right? That should give us a little hope. I'm convinced that within a decade a terrorist organization is going to acquire a nuclear bomb and vaporize some big city. As bad as that will be, it still wont be as bad as things could have been in the cold war.

[mopc]

mopc, thanks for the book recommendation. It's sounds interesting and I'm definitely going to check it out.

1) natural energy resources are running out, and are (oil, mining) extremely burdensome on the environment - whereas fusion is non-radioactive, and hydrogen cells only produce water as by-product.

Does the author deal with the question of oxygen depletion? See, if you mine H2 and use it in fuel cells, you are sucking oxygen out of the atmosphere. True, you're replacing it with water, but you can't breathe water and if you wanted to break the molecule to get your oxygen back, it would take more energy than you got from the fuel cell.

I didn't understand the question. The H2 is mined from other planets, then used as fuel and releases water. As far as I understand, no oxigen would be sucked out of the atmosphere.

2) Not everyone is noticing but since the 1970's humanity is sliding back into a medieval state.

ugh! That's a terribly depressing thing for me to read so early in the morning!!

Unfortunately, it's at least partially correct. The future doesn't look as bright as it once did. I definitely think we as a species squandered a perfect chance to better ourselves. But you know, we survived the cold war without resorting to all-out nuclear annihilation. That's got to be worth something. Right? That should give us a little hope. I'm convinced that within a decade a terrorist organization is going to acquire a nuclear bomb and vaporize some big city. As bad as that will be, it still wont be as bad as things could have been in the cold war.

But now we are threatened by medieval problems such as diseases, religious fundamentalism, malthusianism, ethnic cleansing, poverty, misery, mass unemployment. The Cold War was a "civilized" conflict between to systems that theoretically sought scientific and economic progress, social justice and mental enlightenment. Now we're back in the Crusades.

[russ_watters]

Another kind of pollution could be that of radioactive waste, not that much of a problem right? Well if we put too much up there then it could mean needing extra protection on everything including satellites.

You're....suggesting we could make space radioactive? Do you have any idea how big "space" is? Ie, could you calculate the volume of a mile-thick shell of low-earth-orbit and figure out just how much plutonium that would take....? For a pallpark-ing number, the US has 52,000 tons of radioactive waste and several hundred tons of plutonium.

Ok, I couldn't resist - 260,000 cubic miles. So if we spread out all that waste and plutonium evenly, it would have a density of about 1/35,000,000 lb/cu ft. You could probably eat it.

[Andreas]

I didn't understand the question. The H2 is mined from other planets, then used as fuel and releases water. As far as I understand, no oxigen would be sucked out of the atmosphere.

H2 + O => H2O

When burning Hydrogen or using it in a fuel cell, it's the combination with Oxygen that releases the energy. A fuel cell actually uses hydrogen and oxygen as its fuel, only that oxygen usually isn't mentioned since it's ubiquitous.

[trob]

So, what kind of space technology is necessary for such a project, how would this require a deviation from the current strategies of space exploration, what are the timescales we are talking here and how does such a project compare to the earlier conceptions of the requirement of goldbars in low orbit (i.e. that it would and could not be profitable?). Lastly, what would this mean for the current strategy of space exploration...would such a longterm strategy result in more scientific understanding of the solarsystem in the long run? are we willing to put off knowing for now, so that humanity kan know more but later?

All the best
Trob

[kucharek]

Earth has still plenty of ressources we don't mine because it is too expensive to do as long there are cheaper access methods in other places.
In "Alien", space travel seems to be dirt-cheap when you can make a profit by carrying iron-ore over interstellar distances. At least I would expect it, that you refine it to iron where you mine it and then transport it to earth. And then iron. What's the market price for iron today? And iron will be one of the last things we will run out of here on earth.

[trob]

The product in discussion here is energy (and more specifically its relation to pollution).
At current rates of usage we have about 100 to 150 years of oil resources left. However demand keeps rising and will continue to do so with chinese development and american automotive culture. This implies rising prices from now on, and shorter supply. Also the quality of the oil is declining pressing the price even higher because of more refining need. Wind and water energy is very inefficient surplying only a small percentage in even the most ecological of countries. Nuclear power is politically unpopular but our best sollution at the moment, if it is kept under very strict supervision.
Because of the time it will require to develop new technologies (f.ex in space or other exotic energy sources...which will be equally as dangerous as atomic energy) maybe it would be prudent to start working on some options. Instead of making sexy probes to find the origins of life in our solarsystem, maybe deep space technology should be put to more pragmatic use? The sexy probes could follow from such a space infrastructure....

Why wait till energy becomes intolerably expensive or we have just run out of voltage...this will also make the evt. space technologies even more expensive and maybe out of our reach...space exploration will increase in price as energy becomes more costly.

All The Best
Trob

[mopc]

Earth has still plenty of ressources we don't mine because it is too expensive to do as long there are cheaper access methods in other places.
In "Alien", space travel seems to be dirt-cheap when you can make a profit by carrying iron-ore over interstellar distances. At least I would expect it, that you refine it to iron where you mine it and then transport it to earth. And then iron. What's the market price for iron today? And iron will be one of the last things we will run out of here on earth.

That's why John S Lewis in Mining the Sky only explores the possibility of using heavy common materials for in-space assembly and usage, not bringing to earth. The only thing worth bringing to earth are high-energy-per-ton elements that are rare on earth, like He3 or H2, for nuclear fusion and H2 cells, a few tons of which could suply a large country for quite some time.

The key in my idea is the second step: once we learn to use space resources to enhance our presence in the solar system, we won't have to launch everything from earth. And once there are huge facilities in space, energy could be beamed down and material could be shipped down in non-reusable tanks.

And once we tap at least a tiny part of the solar system's resources, humanity will be able to increase average energy consumption by a factor of ten if not a hundred, thus liberating human creativity and ingenuity as much as the industrial revolution has, and also enabling us to reduce the cost of space launch - one thing will feed the other.

All of that could be happening right now, for according to Lewis, the technology already exists, and what doesn't exist like fusion, doesn't exist due to lack of funding and lack of vision.

If I were Greenpeace, my slogan would be "If you love Earth, you love Fusion & Space Mining". Ok that's a lousy slogan but something along those lines :wink:

[trob]

Even if the technology exists we must still plan 100-200 years ahead here if the solar system is to provide energy by the time we run out of petrochemical sources here on earth. First of all, even with conventional technology it will still take a long time to build ships, productionlines and so on and so forth. Secondly the distances in the solar system are so vast, that getting there and back is going to take years and years. The position of the planets might not be correct for a return trajectory, plus time at the source for mining. Perhaps this is the main problem in regard to investment....we will never in our lifetime see the profits...
But still it seems to me that it is far more desirable to focus on harvesting the planets and astroids, or quantum-based energy sources to relying on backdrop technology to oil, such as coal liquification, wood to methanol, corn to ethanol (notice that these are biologically intesive compared to more advanced strategies, and more expensive than oil - oil is currently around 4-6 us cent/ kw hour, whereas alternative methods easily come above the double price. Source: Richards & Waterbury: A Political Economy of the Middle East. 2 ed. Westview Press 1998. Capter 3.).

Regards
Trob

P.s. this is a great discussion.

[tofu]

Does the author deal with the question of oxygen depletion?

I didn't understand the question. The H2 is mined from other planets, then used as fuel and releases water. As far as I understand, no oxigen would be sucked out of the atmosphere.

So I guess that means the author doesn't discuss it. The H2 combines with free oxygen in the atmosphere. That's how you end up with water; the O2 is taken from the atmosphere and never ever replaced. You can't just bring in and use H2 forever and ever. Eventually, we WILL deplete the oxygen in our atmosphere.

If fusion doesn't pan out, there has to be another option. H2 isn't it.

[trob]

Is it possible to synthesize oxygen in a way that is positive on the energy balance sheet - we need a chemist... :-k

trob

[tofu]

Is it possible to synthesize oxygen in a way that is positive on the energy balance sheet

LOL!!!! um, no.

The big bang created hydrogen, a little bit of helium, and a tiny amount of lithium. Every other atom in everything that you've ever seen in your entire life was created by stars.

Humans can create atoms one by one in super colliders. If you took all the energy ever produced by our civilization from the time we invented the steam engine until now, and used it in colliders to make atoms, you still wouldn't have enough to see with the naked eye.

When chemists use the word synthesize, they are talking about molecules, not atoms. For all intents and purposes, creating atoms is beyond the capability of our technology and will be for millions of years - at least until, ironically, we have virtually unlimited energy available to us.

No, you'll either have to mine oxygen from space just like you're planning to mine H2, or else just live with the fact that you're sucking O2 out of the atmosphere. We live with that as a reality today. We suck O2 out of the atmosphere and use it to make CO2. Any way you look at it, using H2 to make H2O is still better than making CO2 (unless you are a plant), but it's still not perfect unless you can replenish the O2.

For this reason, I don't think there's any point in mining H2 for use on earth. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble by just concentrating on generating electricity some other way and using that electricity to break ocean water into H2 and O2. Then you can store the H2 in fuel cells and when you burn it you get the water back. It's a closed loop except for the portion of electricity that is wasted and whatever gases are lost to space.

At any rate, we're back at square one. How do we generate electricity? I think fusion is many years away.

[trob]

LOL...You make me sound like the president of the moron convention. I might be a philosopher but Im not that demented.
I wasn't thinking of creating individual oxygen atoms from the quantum level. But if we manipulate molecules containing oxygen it will cost energy - but will it cost less engergy than when we use the it (the free oxygen produced) again for molecular oxidization - will there be an energy surplus on the bottom line? Basic accounting.

Laughing regards
Trob