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Subscribe to RSSPlanetary Resources video lays out the venture's asteroid-mining plan.
The venture known as Planetary Resources eventually plans to go asteroid mining — but the first step in the billionaire-backed business plan is to launch an orbital fleet of "personal space telescopes" capable of looking out into the heavens or back down on Earth.
Right now, the idea of sending robotic drilling operations to near-Earth asteroids, extracting water for powering interplanetary spaceships — and, by the way, turning that into a profitable business — sounds like pure science fiction. But to quote Planetary Resources' president and chief engineer, Chris Lewicki: "Everything is science fiction right up to the point that it's science fact."
Lewicki knows his way around an outer-space challenge. He's been involved in managing NASA's twin Mars rover missions as well as the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which made the first on-the-spot observations of Red Planet water ice. Even by that scale, however, his new mission at Planetary Resources is special. It's not just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "Maybe once in a species, that kind of opportunity comes along," he told me.
The venture, which was hinted at last week and formally unveiled Tuesday at Seattle's Museum of Flight, is sufficiently down to Earth to attract funding from such A-list investors as Google CEO Larry Page, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Texas billionaire Ross Perot Jr. and spacefaring software executive Charles Simonyi. Filmmaker James Cameron has signed on as a senior adviser.
Planetary Resources is the latest brainchild of Eric Anderson, whose company Space Adventures has helped millionaires and billionaires go on 10-day trips to the International Space Station; and Peter Diamandis, the motive force behind the multimillion-dollar X Prize program, the Rocket Racing League and the Zero G Corp.'s weightless-airplane tourist venture. Anderson and Diamandis serve as co-chairmen of the venture they co-founded.
Diamandis said Planetary Resources follows up on discussions that he and Anderson had starting about three years ago — and also follows up on a nearly lifelong ambition he's had.
"As a teenager, when I was asked what I wanted to be, I'd say, 'An asteroid miner,'" Diamandis told me.
Why mine asteroids?
Planetary Resources' ultimate goal is to set up a commercial infrastructure for fueling trips far beyond Earth orbit, with Planetary Resources controlling the equivalent of oil wells, refineries and filling stations in outer space. That's the long-term promise of near-Earth asteroids.
NASA file
An artist's conception shows a robotic mining operation on a near-Earth asteroid.
"A water-rich asteroid would greatly enhance the large-scale exploration of the solar system," Anderson said in a news release. "Water has many uses in space. For instance, it would not only be used for hydration, but also would be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen, for breathable air and rocket propellant."
But why go to all the trouble, when there's so much water on Earth? "It costs on the order of $20,000 per kilogram to get a liter of water into orbit," Diamandis explained. "If you're able to buy it on orbit for one-hundredth of the cost, that would be transformative."
Asteroids also could yield precious metals such as platinum, gold and rare-earth materials — treasures that are worth bringing back to Earth. Diamandis said a single asteroid in the range of 200 to 500 meters in diameter could contain more platinum-group metals than has ever been mined in the whole of human history.
"When the availability of these materials increases, the cost will reduce on everything, including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts; and with the abundance of these metals we'll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells," Diamandis said in the news release.
Humbler materials could be used for construction of deep-space facilities. "Even dirt is valuable as a radiation-shielding material," said former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who got his Ph.D. in planetary sciences by researching remote-sensing techniques for asteroids. Jones is now serving as an adviser to the Planetary Resources team.
First launch in two years?
Building a commercial empire in outer space may be the long-range plan, but the short-term plan is closer to home. The first step to mining an asteroid is figuring out what's out there. To that end, Planetary Resources' first hardware project is what's known as the Arkyd-101 personal space telescope.
Planetary Resources
Planetary Resources has developed the Arkyd-101 space telescope with remote sensing capability, as shown in this artist's conception. Data gathered from near-Earth asteroids will assist in analyzing the composition of the body to determine a commercial value.
Lewicki hopes the personal space telescope will do for astronomy what the personal computer did for information technology. Planetary Resources plans to put the instrument into Earth orbit to survey the sky for potential targets — asteroids that come close enough to Earth often enough to make them reachable, and have a spectral signal that would make them good candidates for mining. The main target is C-type or carbonaceous asteroids, which are dark and not so easy to detect with existing instruments.
The Arkyd-101 telescope is designed to be launched on any of a variety of rockets, including the Russian Dnepr, the European Ariane, the Indian PSLV or the SpaceX Falcon, Lewicki said. It would have arcsecond resolution for astronomical observations, and if the camera were turned earthward, Lewicki said the resolution would be a "couple of meters per pixel," which comes close to the standard for commercial Earth imaging.
The key factor is the cost: Lewicki noted that an imaging instrument like NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer would typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "We're looking to go one to two orders of magnitude below that," he said.
Diamandis said that price reduction would significantly widen the market for orbiting telescopes. "We're in discussions with groups that might want to buy personal telescopes," he told me.
Another part of the Planetary Resources' early-phase business plan would be to strike a deal with NASA, under which the space agency would buy data about the spacecraft and astronomical observations. NASA may find such data useful for planning its own missions to near-Earth asteroids, culminating in manned flights in the 2020s. Similar data purchase deals were made a couple of years ago with several of the companies that are planning to put landers on the moon to win a share of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.
Thanks in part to technology development contracts with NASA and other partners, "the company is cash-flow positive at this point," Diamandis said.
He said about 20 engineers have already been hired to work for Planetary Resources, with operations based in Bellevue, Wash., east of Seattle. The need to advertise for more employees was one of the reasons why the company's principals decided it was time to go public with their plans, Diamandis said.
He and Lewicki are projecting the first launch of hardware in the 18- to 24-month time frame. Once the telescopes are up and running, the team will identify likely candidates for future missions. The top targets would be near-Earth asteroids that are energetically easier to reach than landing on the moon. Getting to those asteroids would require the development of additional spacecraft for the Arkyd product line, such as an in-space propulsion vehicle and an experimental resource-extraction package.
"Three, four, five years out, depending on trajectory, is when we envision getting up close and personal with an asteroid," Lewicki said.
Time for a reality check
Planetary Resources says space mining could "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," but such an estimate assumes that there'll be a significant demand for the water, fuel and air produced in outer space. If NASA doesn't send out deep-space transports, or goes with a space propulsion system that doesn't require a periodic fill-up, that could reduce the projected demand for the materials that Planetary Resources aims to produce.
That doesn't faze Lewicki, however. Even if NASA doesn't turn into a buyer, "we've got a private interest in developing those resources," he said.
There's also a question about the part of the operation that would involve shipping platinum and other materials back to Earth. Platinum now costs more than $1,500 an ounce, but with current technology, the cost of launching a mining probe, extracting ore, processing the metal and returning it to Earth would almost certainly be more than that on a per-ounce basis.
"The question is, how does the economics come into this?" said Adam Bruckner, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington. "Can it ultimately be less expensive to find it on an asteroid than to find it on Earth? At some point in the future — and it's debatable how far in the future — the two lines will cross."
Anderson acknowledged in a video statement that Planetary Resources would be an unconventional, long-term venture: "On a scale of 20 to 30 years, I envision the resources from space contributing a significant amount to the GDP of the planet — truly creating a world where one plus one equals three."
Bruckner noted that the idea of mining asteroids for water and other resources has been around for decades. Fourteen years ago, for example, a company called SpaceDev planned to take on a commercial deep-space mission to an asteroid. SpaceDev eventually abandoned the idea and turned its attention instead to the development of small satellites and hybrid rocket engines. In 2008, the company was acquired by Sierra Nevada Corp., which is currently receiving millions of dollars from NASA for spaceship development.
Bob Richards, co-founder and CEO of Moon Express Inc., one of the ventures competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, said he welcomed Planetary Resources' efforts but insisted that the moon was a better target for resource extraction than any near-Earth asteroid. Just today, Moon Express announced that it sent NASA a mission plan that eventually could lead to mining missions on the moon.
"I looked at this myself," Richards told me. "The energy argument doesn't trump the fact that we've sampled the moon and we know what's there. ... But it's a big universe. There are trillions of trillions of dollars in space resources, so there's enough room for a lot of players."
More about extraterrestrial investments:
- Google billionaires back space resource venture
- Could legal loophole lead to extraterrestrial land claims?
- Private property in outer space? It's debatable
- To infinity and beyond: Investing in space travel
- How to make the moon pay
This report was last updated at 3:40 p.m. ET.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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While this seems like a "win-win" scenario, there is a very real expectation that such activity would alter the asteroid’s trajectory. If such a venture were to be approach, part of their budget would need to account for monitoring of the asteroid’s trajectory to prevent sending it into an orbit that would clash with either Earth or Earth's Moon. Wouldn't it just be simpler to set up mineral mining operations on Mars? Certainly it would be more real time cost effective to set up on Mars, as mining of asteroids would need to match on the orbital timeline for the insertion and retrieval of equipment and product over literally years. Seems like a big risk at this point.
First, there is not much to mine on Mars, at least as far as anyone knows. Second, landing and taking off from Mars takes FAR more energy than landing and taking off from an asteroid. Third, "need to match on the orbital timeline for the insertion and retrieval of equipment and product over literally years" equally applies to Mars -- launch windows to Mars come every 26 months.
The odds are probably somewhere in the Billions to one that any Asteroid would be affected enough where it would hit the earth. That is unless they actually plan to do that which is often talked about. Move the asteroid into Earth orbit to make the mining and delivery easier.
Currently, international agreements on space do not allow for property rights. Without property rights, there will be no private development of space, (which is exactly what the liberal/socialists want).
This lack of space property rights would make for a sticky situation should E.T. move in and start laying claim to our planets (kinda like Europeans did to the "no one *owns* the land" Native Americans.)
Sounds like the movie Enemy Mine. We move in and start mining and piss off those who already lay claim to the area. I'm just amazed at how many would prefer we stay here on earth with our heads in the sand. Guess the same percentage felt the same way in the past, which is probably why they preached the earth was flat and you'd fall off the edge. Fear cripples advancement. Also greed doesn't just involve the wealthy. Those complaining about someone else spending their money on something besides those complaining are being just as greedy as the rest.
Mr. Darthdon -
Outer Space Treaty - “The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.” The Outer Space Treaty demands that we do this. Depending on how we regulate activities of US entities, we can bootstrap a private property regime by only granting a single US entity the right to exploit a certain tract on Mars. We will be expanding an American way of doing business into space.
We've already screwed up our own planet big-time, and left god knows how much of our garbage orbiting in space. As a basically immoral species unconcerned about nothing other than our own interests, should we really be spreading our cancer to other regions of the universe?
I hate to break it to you, but, apart from Earth, the Universe looks pretty sterile. Given the sheer number of cosmic, gravitational, and evolutionary bottlenecks that would preclude our existence, I'd bet dollars to donuts that we're the only intelligent species in the galaxy (I hesitate to say the only intelligent species in the Universe. That assertion is a bridge too far for me). Wouldn't it be a shame if humanity, the only local representative of matter evolved enough to start to understand and appreciate itself, were limited to a single planet? Wouldn't it be a tragedy if this if we were to be extinguished by a plague, or a nuclear war, or an asteroid strike?
So, in a word, yes, we should be spreading our seed throughout the universe.
Frankly, I get sick of the anti-human sentiment that I sometimes read, particularly when it's written by people who are ostensible progressives.
gravis, we humans aren't so bad. We've only recently descended from the trees. Some of my best friends are human. Seriously, why so down on humans?
I agree with Armando wholeheartedly. Life is infectious, and we should make it our duty to contaminate the galaxy with it (I mean this in the best possible way; look how pervasive life is on Earth). If there is life elsewhere, it will make itself very apparent. If it is one of those "forms of life we don't recognize," then why should we care? If there is such a thing and we are bad for it, then we're probably already doing harm to it. How would we know either way?
I believe in a sort of "Galactic Manifest Destiny." We should expand across the stars until someone else tells us it's not a good idea. The alternative is to keep squeezing this blueberry called Earth until Mother Nature decides to pull the plug on us.
What is the matter with everyone, this plan will never get off the ground. Bruce Willis made a movie called Armegeddon. Well before anyone spends anymore money on this boondoggle please consider buying my book Another Orndinary Man listed at the URL Sure it is my first book, but it talks more physics than minning astroids. How many of you knew besides Newton's Theory of Gravity, he discovered calculus. If a meteor gets within 10,000 miles of the Earth it is going to crash on the Earth or the Moon, bam ELE.
Expertise in one field does not carry over into oher fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so. - L.L.
It's not hard to envision a time when people journey to space for economic benefit. How many people died just trying to get to the Yukon for the gold rush? The rewards need to justify the risks. If an asteroid with a high concentration of nickel/iron is found, I'm sure most of it will be used on site to build habitats and eventually space vessels. Once the first asteroid is found and exploited, it will expand the entire sphere of human exploration exponentially.
Someone should make this thread and these posts into a sarcastic movie about follish, gullible people.
Notice the idea that billionaires could make trillions and trillions of dollars by landing on an asteroid that was found to be rich in water. Water is said to be useful because it could be refined into oxygen and hydrogen and the hydrogen made into fuel for space exploration. And what is the intrinsic value of space exploration? Not much. We might putter around more with the possibility that Mars once supported very low life forms. (And then, so what?) Or we might think more about the volcanism of Io, or the frozen surface of Europa, and the possibility of liquid water below, or exoplanets light years from earth...and then, so what?
Those things have intrinsic value to to The Space Community, who would benefit a great deal if you entered their tent. They have no intrinsic value otherwise, notwithstanding GPS, Earth imaging and satellite communications satellites have been useful and have obvious intrinsic value. They have no intrinsic value to The Non-Space Community, that is to say, you and I, who will eventually foot the bill for such foolishness...except for our personal entertainment...and you and I, I'd say, are entertained in different ways by different things.
Something like a carnival barker urging bystanders and passers-by to come into his sideshow tent and view the bearded lady.
Or, Elmer Gantry.
On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the USA. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. The famous evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort". The novel remains unpopular with many evangelical Christians.
Elmer Gantry ranked as the number one fiction bestseller of 1927, according to "Publisher's Weekly".
Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely-syndicated newspaper article called "The New American People", in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels.
So this is just more extrinsic pie-in-the-sky, like landing on the Moon, for example...because we could, and because doing so would greatly embarrass the Soviets, who had previously and greatly embarrassed us.
But intrinsically funny, I'll give you that.
A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased -- he hates all creative people equally. - L.L.
I know where I would invest some of my monies if I ever won the Lotto
Money is truthful. If a man speaks of honor, make him pay cash. L.L.
Yea the way I see it is... if I were to actually beat the odds and win; I might as well check and see if lady luck has decided to hang with me for another long shot.
I have a thought. If Resources starts messing around on these asteroids, what are they going to do to keep the asteroid from spinning out of control and smashing into earth? I have not read every post here but I have tried to at least skim all of the posts. If I missed this some where I apologize.
The solar system is so large it would be difficult to do EVEN if they wanted to do it. In fact one of many ideas floated out there was to bring an asteroid into earth orbit to mine it.
It is a very very difficult thing to do and the odds that an asteroid would be accidentally re-directed to earth are billions to one.
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. - L.L.
This has to be the most stupid idea I have ever heard of? Obviously, some bored billionaire hasn't got enough to do with their time, so they concocted this half baked idea about flying out into space and mining near Earth asteroids? Even if they managed to get to one of these asteroids that are orbiting around the sun at 50,000 miles per hour, manage to attach a satellite rig to it and start drilling, it would be like finding a needle in a hay stack? Even if they found gold or platinum, how are they going to recover these precious metals? By dropping them into the atmosphere and hope they make the target? Please? The worst part of this looney concept is in the mining operations themselves? By busting loose rock and debris from the asteroid, they are changing the orbital weight of the asteroid, which could alter it's orbit and hit the Earth, thus creating a doomsday asteroid we have all feared??
These asteroids have circled the sun in their orbits for millions of years. Leave them alone and find more intelligent uses to put your money towards, like world wide peace or finding a cure for AIDS!!
Obviously you are not an engineer.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make msses in the house. - L.L.
Obviously your an idiot who doesn't understand anything beyond his calculator? Gee, do you tell your wife and kids (if you have any?) they are subhuman because they may don't measure up to your criteria too?
Mr. Lynx -
You seem to have defined yourself.
Natural laws have no pity. - L.L.
This has to be the most stupid idea I have ever heard of? Obviously, some bored billionaire hasn't got enough to do with their time, so they concocted this half baked idea about flying out into space and mining near Earth asteroids? Even if they managed to get to one of these asteroids that are orbiting around the sun at 50,000 miles per hour, manage to attach a satellite rig to it and start drilling, it would be like finding a needle in a hay stack? Even if they found gold or platinum, how are they going to recover these precious metals? By dropping them into the atmosphere and hope they make the target? Please? The worst part of this looney concept is in the mining operations themselves? By busting loose rock and debris from the asteroid, they are changing the orbital weight of the asteroid, which could alter it's orbit and hit the Earth, thus creating a doomsday asteroid we have all feared??
These asteroids have circled the sun in their orbits for millions of years. Leave them alone and find more intelligent uses to put your money towards, like world wide peace or finding a cure for AIDS!!
Clarification:
"By busting loose rock and debris from the asteroid, they are changing the orbital weight of the asteroid, which could alter it's orbit and hit the Earth, thus creating a doomsday asteroid we have all feared??"
For the technical skeptics:
Yes, I know that everything in space is weightless, but the shear size of an object and the density of its matter affects its gravitational attraction to the object its orbiting. Thus, if matter is dislodged from the object, it may have an effect on its gravitational relationship to the object its orbiting.
Yes, it's true that dislodging material from an asteroid would change its orbit, however the orbits of asteroids also change naturally due to gravitational interactions. Thus we need to monitor asteroids and prepare to deal with an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, even without any mining or other human activity. I doubt that carefully monitored mining activity would increase the risk of a collision.
Good article. I do see the moon as a better choice, but others may have even more choices. A wait and see attitude is very purdent here for now, it should be obvious that they have much to do, if they are smart they will keep a flexible plan, but thank god they have a plan. I like it better than one of my many plans, like bringing fuel back from titan in large inflateble robotic tankers....It's late here so I gotta say congrats to space resources and best of luck. They know where to find me when they need me....like they care, still, if nothing else, more eyes looking out has got to be a positive thing. I do note, like the others, nasa's money is A PART of the biz plan....me, not so much, right now I just want to know a lot more about the shuttle crafts tires, the valves and it's construction and the gases and concerns related to those wheels, I feel that nasa does it's work for all of us, giving these guys special access to engineering information ain't in the best spirit of competition...still, wish em luck, hope more companies follow suit.
Not "Wait and see."
"Get out and Do!" is much better.
Interesting conversation...Frank, G, Rich...thanks.
Hey you trolls put a sock in it.. I think this is just wonderful considering i live in a poor ass state with like hundreds if not a thousand areospace and electronics manufacturers and subcontractors teetering on oblivion or completely shut down.. so many out of work it is causing everything to wither and die as a result. Intel corp is doing good but so many others are skidding along on skeleton crews.. We here in New Mexico have hand in everything high tech and cutting edge..No sence in giving away all our jobs and intellectual property to some other country.. USA is starting to become a euphamism for {Used to Amount to Something} now its dry rotting into the ground like so many factories are.