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Answers To: Asteroid Mining Advantage
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- Answers To: Asteroid Mining Advantage
- Answers To: Solvency
Answers To: Asteroid Mining Advantage[____] [____] The long trip time involved in asteroid mining means that no companies will undertake it. Richard Gertsch and Leslie Gertsch, Member of the Rock Mechanics and Explosive Research Center and Mining Engineering Dept. and Cnter For Space Mining, 2005, Colorado School of Mines “Economic Analysis Tools for Mineral Projects in Space,” http://www.kemcom.net/EconAnal.pdf The risk involved in exploiting space resources is very high, from risky to wildcatting (Table 2). Terrestrial investors would like a very high ROI and a very short payback period for this level of risk. However, high ROIs makes the project technologically more difficult. In the example project, 100% ROI is basically prohibited by the very high ore tonnage needed, 500 million tonnes. However, lesser ROIs are feasible (Tables3 and 4). The payback period for the example project also is very long for a commercial venture. However, 11 years before any income is long even for a low risk venture. Perhaps it is in the nature of space projects to have long payback periods. Asteroids, in particular, have a long trip time .The very high cost of space transportation alone (both for Earth to LEO and in space itself) is a significant barrier to commercial success. Lowering transportation costs is one key to furthering successful commercial space ventures. [____] [____] Lack of a stable legal framework for profiting means that private companies won’t mine asteroids. Space Daily, 9/14/1999, “The Challenge of Space Mining,” SpaceDaily, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-99i.html Substantial legal issues have to be addressed before any of this can happen, of course; & for Lunar mining in particular (the issues involving asteroid mining are rather different), these issues are likely to be the most intractable in the short term. Commercial operations on the Moon are currently banned under the Moon Treaty; & - given that only the US-Americans currently claim to have any motivation to industrialise space - there's little or no motivation on the part of the rest of the world to change this situation (Australia has made some noises about trying to change this treat as some bureaucrats can smell a cheap buck here; but noises are all that Australian politicians are generally any good at). Asteroid mining may be legal in the absence of any contradictory precedents; but few financiers are likely to invest in a project where the final product can be legally hijacked by independent parties because there is no legally enforceable ownership. Answers To: Asteroid Mining Advantage[____] [____] Asteroid mining would have to rely on ineffective robotic systems and would not be successful. Charles Gerlach, CEO Gerlach Space Systems, 5/22/2005 “Profitability Exploiting Near-Earth Object Resources,” International Space Development Conference, National Space Society, Washington DC, http://abundantplanet.org/files/Space-Ast- Profitably-Exploiting-NEO-Gerlach-2005.pdf Technology issues present many of the greatest challenges to successfully and economically executing an asteroid mining mission. The prohibitively high costs of sending astronauts and potentially long communications delays require that all operations be highly automated. Automated machinery must work perfectly; even minor failures can cause mission failure. However, terrestrial mining experience with automation has generally been poor, and operations will be complex and hard on equipment. New equipment will have to be developed and integrated. To handle industrial quantities of materials, bench-top processes are not sufficient. Developing industrial mining and refining processes will ultimately hinge on deployment of actual working equipment to learn what works and what does not. These systems will be different from those used in traditional robotic space science missions that essentially consist of one-of-a-kind instrument collections designed for generating very specific types of scientific data. Answers To: Solvency[____] [____] [____] The plan isn’t enough – need to research NEOs for successful mitigation. National Research Council, 2010, Committee to Review Near-Earth-Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies Space Studies Board, “Research” pg. 90, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12842&page=90 Just as the scope of earthquake research is not limited only to searching for and monitoring earthquakes, the scope of NEO hazard mitigation research should not be limited to searching for and detecting NEOs. A research program is a necessary part of an NEO hazard mitigation program. This research should be carried out in parallel with the searches for NEOs, and it should be broadly inclusive of research aimed at filling the gaps in present knowledge and understanding so as to improve scientists’ ability to assess and quantify impact risks as well as to support the development of mitigation strategies. This research needs to cover several areas discussed in the previous chapters of this report: risk analysis (Chapter 2), surveys and detection of NEOs (Chapter 3), characterization (Chapter 4), and mitigation (Chapter 5). The committee stresses that this research must be broad in order to encompass all of these relevant and interrelated subjects. Recommendation: The United States should initiate a peer-reviewed, targeted research program in the area of impact hazard and mitigation of NEOs. Because this is a policy-driven, applied program, it should not be in competition with basic scientific research programs or funded from them. 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