E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
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.
Leave a Comment:
Perhaps some day in the distant future this would make sense. I would rather bet that we can improve our technology here on earth to create better alloys and do a better job recycling the resoursces we throw away.
Sorry to be such a sci fi party pooper.
I been on the Earth, and betting on improvements is questionable.
Ѱ ф = ∞
Interesting thought. You do realize that most of the greatest technological advances lately have come from space exploration, right? Check out the NASA web site if you don't know about this. Imagine the technological advances that will be necessary, jobs created, and what we will learn if we get off our collective butts. Imagine how great it would be if we would stop fighting the same pointless religious war that has been raging more on than off for 1000 years, (Since the Muslims and Christians met on the battlefield in France) and actually make an effort to do something great. Of course, collectively, we will sit around and complain, but never actually make any real contribution to the world.
But just imagine how wonderful the world would be if we could actually grow up as a human race, act like adults, and actually live for the first time in our short history. What a wonderful day that will be.
There's some other benefits from this project. With all the telescopes they'll have in orbit looking for asteroids, the chance that yet undiscovered asteroid,that could potentially be a collision threat to Earth, might be spotted would be worth the effort. Hand in hand would be the development of technologies needed to "lasso" asteroids and maneuver them into earth orbits for commercial availability could also be used to nudge any asteroid threats into safer orbits.
That was one of the most interesting points of their business plan to me; more reasonably priced space-based telescopes and sensors would be a boon to many research organizations. They won't be world-class observatories, but they'll be able to do a lot of science with them. If they are truly able to get prices down to several million to deploy - a formidable task and probably overly optimistic - it would allow individual universities and small governments to deploy diverse missions.
This is good pioneering work for future orbital manufacturing capabilities. If we can mine metals from asteroids reliably and relatively cheap, figuring out how work these metals while in orbit is a logical next step.
In 1949 putting a man on the moon ws science fiction. In 1969 it was science fact. Whose to say what this man proposes is too far fetched. The part I think that is far fetched is trying to get the stuff back to Earth. I would think the economy would come from selling it in space to the user. More power to this guy since NASA seems to have given up on Space because of our idiot leader.
Blame it on obama...because this is a political issue.
@ihateliberals: yes, anything perceived as a problem has to be Obama's fault because how could it be anything else? Perhaps you might want to meander over to Aviation Week's public site sometime and read about what your GOP friends have been up to in the last week regarding funding of commercial space - it certainly runs counter to your argument.
Blame Obama for Bush giving the (rightful) order to retire the space shuttles.
How boringly typical and true to formula.
GREED. Convert H20 into fuel on an asteroid... and not on our own PLANET? And then send the platinum and gold back for profit. I hope we never see this happen.
Why would you not want to see this happen? We need gold and platinum here on Earth, right? If someone can bring some here that's bad?
Oh no, someone other than you made a profit. That person must be evil.
Oh shut up and take your schizo meds.
I don't want to call this stupid, but at the same time you all are getting way ahead of yourselves. First you need to build the refineries and the manufacturing facilities in Earth orbit so you can take advantage of these raw space resources. Otherwise you are much better off mining these resources on the ground, and many of our resources here on Earth still remain to be discovered. Please remember that roughly 70% of our Earth is covered by water, and we still have yet to develop most of those underground deposits which are covered by water.
That said, you are still overlooking a large resource of highly refined metals in the form of 3rd stage space debris which can be recycled in orbit, instead of simply left to burn up in the atmosphere, should you ever develop the orbital industrial means of doing this. In addition, there is a great deal of non-metalic trash which can also be recycled in orbit this as well, to serve as future throw mass for advanced ion space drives. This should all really come first before we start mining raw resources on the asteroids, while we also develop the means of servicing and refurbishing satellites in Earth orbit at the same time. - Rick Carter
And as "GK Thetruth" so aptly pointed out, this money would also be far better spent improving our recycle capability / efficiency right here on Earth. - RC
PS - He3 (together with He4) is probably the most valuable space resource within our practical reach, and initially that really needs to be collected on our own Earth's Moon. The primary focus of our efforts in space beyond near Earth orbital development should be a permanent international presence or staffed colony on the Moon. - RC
Rick Carter (GSon of John Carter?) Tomorrow on the Moon. Yep! Then what's next? "I had a dream!" (still do)
I have been mining asteroids for 8 years already, nothing new! Oh wait, this isn't the Eve Online forum, my bad. I love it when reality catches up with fantasy. It is the private sector which helps pave the way into the future. Interesting notion though when it comes to ownership of things not even on our planet, I don't have an answer to that, only a dim view of humanities ability to work with each other on the topic.
I'm just an average guy with only a basic understanding of things and how life works ... but I've always thought that market prices for precious metals were primarily base on the principle of supply and demand. That the demand for scarce precious metals far exceeds our ability to find these materials. That being said, then I wonder that if this asteroid mining venture is able to find an abundance of these precious metals, thus increasing the available supply, would not that tend to drive down the overall value. Given the enormous energy cost associated with this business, wouldn't the business very success work towards putting itself out of business?
Actually, the best approach to take in space is to mine and refine these mineral resources on our own Earth's Moon, and then use solar powered electromagnetic rail guns to send these refined resources back to Earth. - RC
Mr. Carter -
The Moon colonists should keep most of the resources for themselves and their posterity.
TANSTAAFL
I, have dreamed of the world Constructing a combo rail Gun/ Mag Lev to boost modules approx ( two decks plus room for water and power cables) 30' in diameter and approx 90' long... Ends capped, with a trigger to release ends and space tugs boosted up to link angled ends of the modules together... Goal, a space station, ring type, spinning for centrifigal "gravity"... Spokes going to a core where vessels would land and a ring would spin to mate up with spinning station... Gravity effect and also places to do weightless experiments... I, recall reading in theory metal smelted in zero gravity would be 10 times stronger because mix would not settle...
I think the rail gun/maglev would need to be likely either on suface, or underground for more rigidity, curving upward through a small mountain... Not sure what the curve upwards would do to the g force either...
I like the idea also of a asteroid hollowed out to live in, but unless able to spin, would be to much weightlessness...
The cost of boosting into orbit (if possible with combo maglev and rail gun) is not that prohibitive, but I don't know if the G- Force needed would be to much for modules, or Humans... Nor, whether one could make orbit with them... Is a nice dream anyway...
Seems to me that this is an idea in need of a vision.
Why bring raw materials back to the surface of the planet at all? Build stuff in space with it.
A space-based economy needs space-based infrastructure. An Earth-centric view of things is short-sighted.
TANSTAAFL !
mario, master of the heinleinain repertoire. well done.
This is glorious praise indeed, from he who taught Candide!
Well first they need to find some Wall Street Banks and Stock Companies to borrow money from the Chinese to finace this, then pay the Congress to pass a law that broken, homeless,jobless Americans pay that loan, then hire some illegal immigrants do do the work. It's the american way afterall.
The concept is certainly fascinating and will have application well into the future, but
"already cash flow positive" ???
You must be kidding. How much product have they already produced ?
The only thing that they have "mined" is dollars from wishful investor's pockets.
not everything is about money. everyone continues talking about how much its going to make or what it will help entitle us to. the greatest thing about this is that once it starts, building space vessels as well as stations would become super cheaper and accessible by the amount of materials that are already there so abundantly. maybe we can finally get over this hump that humanity always seems to hit at this point. instead of using our knowledge to kill each other and going back to the dark ages we can finally start the age of enlightenment that everyone hopes for but has never in history seen.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Our resources here on earth are running out id we can mine these asteroids effectively I say do so they are just big rocks!
Hmmm the efficiency was questioned by the articles author. Lets see, 12 troy ounces to the LB x 1500.00 per ounce x 300 Lbs = 54 Million dollars. If they pick the right Roid they could get far more than 300 Lbs of Platinum not to mention Gold and Perhaps even Precious stones...The question is, What kind of Load out would be the maximum you could expect to return to Earth per trip.
If the amount is minimal than it is unlikely to be efficient as of now but perhaps in the future. On the other hand, if you can reach a maximum Load Out of even 1/2 ton I would expect there is mega profits to be made, Even if the Price drops in 1/2 due to an abundance... Reusable Re-entry vehicles means initial costs, while high might be averaged out over time... I wonder how TPTB would deal with Import taxes etc ROFL...
How about Claims in the International arena?? Are we mapping the near earth asteroids to stake claims before mining even begins??
I see a potential for political tensions over space resources, particularly the Close Asteroids that will show a potentially faster R.O.I. Of course we will all likely go to war over potable water before any of this comes to fruition!!
Prepare for the Great Drought of 2012...
The Great Earthquake.........
and the Year of the Weather Demons.....
Its going to be Loud , Scary, Death dealing, and it will not be mistaken for terrorists on parade!!
There is no escape from the wrath which is about to descend on humanity. We were warned!!
London Metal Exchange
Official
and UnOfficial Prices 23 Apr 2012
USD/LB
Cash
3 Month
Official
Unofficial
+/-
Official
Unofficial
+/-
Aluminum
.9124
.9131
.0007
.9319
.9317
-.0002
Al Alloy
.8850
.8868
.0018
.8958
.8958
.0000
NASAAC
.9104
.9231
.0127
.9344
.9435
.0091
Copper
3.6854
3.6648
-.0206
3.6514
3.6310
-.0204
Lead
.9466
.9496
.0030
.9471
.9503
.0032
Nickel
7.9810
7.9356
-.0454
7.9968
7.9719
-.0249
Tin
9.5549
9.5822
.0273
9.6003
9.6162
.0159
Zinc
.9006
.9017
.0011
.9058
.9072
.0014
Molybdenum
14.4016
14.4016
Cobalt
13.7439
14.0614
COMEX/NYMEX 24 Apr
2012
USD/LB
Month
Open
Settle
USD/Troy Oz
Month
Open
Settle
Copper
May 12
3.6335
3.6260y
Gold
Apr 12
1634.40
1631.90y
Copper
Jul 12
3.6410
3.6340y
Silver
May 12
30.825
30.531y
Oil/barrel
Jul 12
103.57
103.55y
Platinum
Apr 12
1555.30
1552.50y
Nat Gas/mmBTU
Jul 12
2.212
2.203y
Palladium
Jun 12
671.90
670.90y
Cash flow is king and the present US government is running the printing presses as "quantitative easing" to cover how huge the cash burn is and the size of the deficit. Whether private investors choose asteroids to pluck from the stars, or just say that while their lawyers figure out how to tap the moon for profit despite the UN agreement that supposedly prevents that is largely up in the air (or vacuum) at this point. The key to generating cash flow is sell the vaporware concept now to who has the cash or at least the printing press. What sells to the Obama administration is a private enterprise partnership that can get a rendevous to a promising asteroid to simulate how it could be blown away should it come to close, or harvested should it contain rare earth elements or the kind of metals industry now loves (e.g. palladium, platinum, neodyium, etc.). As for the moon, it has plentiful titanium, aluminum and probably a fair share of rare earth elements that the Chinese and Russians hanker for in those untapped 'mass cons" already identified by the Japanese moon survey satellite. If American free enterprise is so lazy or so addicted to making money via programmed trading that it can no longer be bothered to invest in real ventures then so be it, America will be swept away as another failed nation state. Those who will take on the risk, and work, will earn and own in the long term. 'nuf said.
The deficit is an illusion.
The economy in America is constantly revolving door that when one system goes down because of old age a new system will take its place to continue the base of operations that was conducted by the old system.
In this case planetary mining has produced a new foundation, space based mining, that humanity will continue to build upon.
As long as we can keep funding up for the advancement of computer technology the faster that the evolution of a space based mining system will occur.
As the first mining ships set down upon the first asteroid and begin their history making event you can be assured that the next generation of mining craft is already in the process of being developed so that when the old mining craft become obsolete the new will be ready to replace them.
all that money we spend on rogue nations like food aid to north korea could be used for nasa instead of wasting money
And like in all the SF books, where there are gritty asteroid miners, there is going to be a need for a place for miners to get a little R&R! That means work for prostitutes, drug pushers, criminals of various sorts and so on.
Remember E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman SF series? I think this might have been one of the first books to incorporate asteroid mining and the above in space opera.
The first mention of asteroid mining in science fiction is Garrett P. Serviss' story Edison's Conquest of Mars, New York Evening Journal, 1898.