[ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today

[Adrian Tymes]

--- On Tue, 4/27/10, samantha <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> How much?  How much money and what kind of personnel
> and other resources are needed to fund and flesh out early
> NEO asteroid mining?   That is the first
> critical question.  Given the numbers then figure out
> how to get the funding.

Exactly.  But even if the questions needed to answer this
are at least identified, that itself can go in your
presentation.

With the plan I outlined, that breaks into 4 major steps:

1. Survey.  Get reasonably certain of a target's mineral
composition.  Be prepared to survey multiple targets, if
the first choice either can not be verified enough or
turns out not to have the desired target composition.
The goal is that whoever funds the rest will agree, "We
believe that W amount of X can be sold for $Y, which is
greater than the $Z this costs, and we believe that we
can obtain at least W amount of X from this specific
asteroid."  This step may have to be preformed
pre-funding; fortunately, it is also something NASA is
capable of doing, if they can be talked into sponsoring
this step (see Centennial Challenge suggestion).
Expected cost: less than one million USD.  (Satellite
telescopes have run from tens of millions to billions
of USD, but this can use existing hardware without
buying new, and may be doable with far cheaper ground
telescopes.)

2. Capture.  Design, build, and launch a tug to move the
asteroid into high Earth orbit, possibly L4/L5.  Solar
sail might be the best technology here, both for
robustness and delivering delta-V to a massive target,
and for lightness of probe (meaning less mass to launch,
which substantially reduces costs; there is also less
mass to accelerate to the target, and thus even less
mass to launch).  Remote operation of the tug needs to
be considered, but will likely only take a few people
part-time work.  Coordinating third party efforts
(other people making sure your asteroid is on track),
among other PR activities, may also a significant cost
component.  Expected cost: tens of millions of USD
(based on cost of previous solar sail missions).

3. Processing.  Design, build, and launch something to
break down the asteroid, build iron-lined recovery
meteorites, and load them with high-priced payloads.
This equipment is likely to be unavoidably heavy, even
if one uses solar power as much as possible, although
since it only needs to be sent to L4/L5 at most,
launch cost is reduced.  Reuse the space tug to nudge
these meteorites into precise landing trajectories,
preferably entering the atmosphere at a steep angle to
minimize the chance of bouncing off the atmosphere
(and to narrow down the radius of possible landing
zones).  Expected cost: tens to hundreds of millions
of USD (most mining machines are thousands or tens of
thousands of kilograms, and launch is to high orbit -
not just to LEO, which is cheaper - so this is
primarily launch costs, though design and manufacture
of processing machinery will likely be in the same
range).

4. Recovery and sale.  Rent ships to screen the
expected landing zone of other traffic during the
splashdown, and to quickly recover the meteorite.
This will likely be a media event, so media relations
may also be a significant cost component - or they
could be a minor, supplementary source of funds.
Then, actually sell the platinum and ship it where it
needs to be shipped.  (In theory, the simplest part of
the deal.  In practice, the biggest potential money
loss.  Recruiting someone with experience selling bulk
precious metals is practically mandatory, though it
can wait until this step so long as no agreements are
made regarding distribution of the metal before this
person is available to review them.)  Expected cost:
single digit million USD (based on cost of renting
salvage tugs).