From David Brin. I disagree with this, though:
It also correlates well with President Obama’s wise decision to abandon a fruitless return to the sterile Moon, in favor of studying objects that might make us all rich.
The moon is no more “sterile” (as far as we know) than the asteroids, and there is plenty there to make us rich as well. It’s going to be a trade off between time and velocity, and there’s probably room for ventures in both places. There’s enough water on the moon to make it very accessible even with high-thrust systems, and likely a lot of asteroidal wealth buried under the regolith. And it’s only three days away.
The moon is no more “sterile” (as far as we know) than the asteroids
This is out of context since I’m sure Brin didn’t that literally, but —
The asteroids are a *lot* richer in organic materials than the Moon is. Current models suggest that Ceres may have oceans, underneath its ice, which would suggest the possibility of life. A better possibility, perhaps, than Europa since Ceres is not stuck in Jupiter’s radiation belt.
Yes, that is why the Dawn mission has been placed under planetary protection restrictions in its mission to Ceres, restrictions that will limit it to a high orbit to prevent the risk of its impact on Ceres in the next 20 years.
And that brings up another complication with NEO mining you won’t have with mining the Moon, the risk that samples returned may be placed under planetary protection restrictions until they are proved to not contain any organisms. The Hayabusa spacecraft was placed Category V unrestricted Earth Return under COSPAR rules (spacecraft must be sterilized) while lunar mining missions would be under Category I without any sterilization requirements.
http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/about-categories#5
” A better possibility, perhaps, than Europa since Ceres is not stuck in Jupiter’s radiation belt.”
Eh.
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/4659/how-deep-must-life-hide-to-be-safe-on-europa
If you don’t want to click, the answer is, roughly, with caveats, 60 to 80 centimeters (23 to 32 inches)”.
Ceres is about 10 km/s away from LEO vs 6 km/s for the lunar surface. Moreover, while Ceres 1/40 g surface gravity is a small fraction of the earth’s or moons, that is still enough to inflict big gravity loss penalties on milli-newton thrust ion engines.
If the asteroid is more accessible in terms of delta V, it is likely to be water rich in the same sense as concrete is water rich: 20% water in the form of hydrated clays.
In contrast there are thought to be massive *ice* deposits at the lunar poles. Water ice would be easier to work with than the hydrated clays of carbonaceous chondrites.
I agree. The Moon is rich in resources and makes a much better target near term then the asteroids. And not only is it three days away, its only 1.25 light seconds away which make telebotic operations much much easier then on the asteroids.
And response time is critical when your craft is flying through an asteroid field zigging and zagging a desperate attempt not to take a hit or crash into one. 😀
Who writes those awful scenes, anyway?
Maybe they saw the graphic on my blog? …and didn’t realize the actual separation?
Try tying a knot with a 30 minute reaction time. Or placing a nut on a bolt and tightening it.
This bit about dodging asteroids is irrelevant to Matula’s argument. A rather clueless straw man/red herring.
So far as I understand it, the Planetary Resource plan is to bring back small asteroids and park them in high lunar orbit or EML1 or 2.
For asteroids in these locations, a telerobot’s reaction time would be comparable to that of a telerobot on the moon’s surface. A halo orbit around EML1 or 2 would not have the line of sight issues that telerobots in polar craters would suffer.
The solar system has been lithobraking meteoroids onto the moon for eons. Maybe there’s another Sudbury there. It seems like it’d be a lot easier to get from the moon than from the belt, and a quicker payback.
All the heavy metal on earth came from asteroids. It’s a good thing the same freaks that want to outlaw ownership in space didn’t outlaw ownership right here on earth. Otherwise, we’d have to drill to the core to get green approved earth metal (except they wouldn’t go for that either.)
Humans are an infestation, doncha know. How is it these self loathing types get in charge of anything?
Wait! I live in Sudbury, MA. There’s one on the moon, too???
The REAL Sudbury, Phil 🙂 In north-central Ontario. A large nickle-iron meteor has been feeding the smelters for over a hundred years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
You mean the place in Canada that looks like the Moon because the sulfer from the smelters killing off all the trees . . .
It looked like the moon in the 1960s, before scrubbers were put on the smelters. I visited Sudbury in 2005, it was lushly green all around, and the huge smokestack is now a relic.
Just read an interesting comment. If the metal in an asteroid is worth a trillion dollars on earth it’s worth multiple trillions in orbit. There are two kinds of metal, rare and not rare. While the rare may devalue on earth the not rare will not (much.)
Then of course there’s water and organics all worth much more in orbit.
Vision is not yet dead. I look forward to competition between the moon and asteroids.
Natural gas is now very cheap (~$0.09/kg), so cheap that the raw propellant cost for a LCH4/LOX rocket would be close to $1/kg of payload to LEO, or to anywhere on the planet in under an hour…
This would I think dramatically change the economics of asteroid mining – much cheaper to launch missions and much cheaper to return precious metals from LEO to Earth (all that spare down mass capability).
If payload cost could be reduced to 5x fuel cost (typical of the aircraft industry), then one might fly anywhere on Earth in under an hour for under a $1000 ticket price. This seems a sufficiently economically attractive proposition as to perhaps attract large scale commercial funding.
I was fascinated by the possibilities of those bodies that *may* allow smaller amounts of resources, while combining the closeness, and low latency of the Moon, with the low deltaV characteristics of some asteroids. These are the “temporary satellites” spoken of at one point in the videos. They are temporary captures from the NEO population, at the edge of the Earth’s gravity well, whose orbits are quite a long way from elliptical, and are eventually perturbed back into solar orbit. Usually, they are quite small, but even a carbonaceous chondrite at a 5m diameter could provide 20-40 tons of water, which could, after delivery to an L1 propellant depot, help get 7-14 tons of payload onto the lunar surface at a far lower capital cost than bringing the propellant from Earth.
This payload, in the right place, with the right equipment, could then allow harvesting, extraction and storage for a LOX/LHy supply many times that 20-40 tons. All of this could be done at latency low enough that teleoperation could increase productivity by reinforcing whatever AI is built into the equipment delivered to each body.
While the water market could then be dominated by the lunar supply, at least until Ceres comes online with regular deliveries, the carbonaceous chondrites can still supply carbon, and all else that comes from kerogens and ammonia and other things found in them, like granules of native Iron and Nickel, and inevitably with siderophile elements, smaller amounts of the Platinum group metals. This seems like a very good startup scenario for PRI.
I think one advantage to asteroids is they are cheaper to explore.
Faced with possibility that NASA will continue not effectively exploring space for couple decades.
With the Moon, the exploration needed is to find minable water. As far as I know, NASA failed to even define this. Meaning they failed to even think about it in preliminary fashion and outline what would be minable water.
Not so to inform the world what is minable but rather to have some idea what they could be looking for in terms of exploration.
To mine asteroids, it seems the most important aspect is the location of the asteroid. The most minable asteroid, would be asteroid in Cis-Lunar space. Such easy location trumps a solid gold or solid ice rock in much worse location.
We don’t know if there is or is not an minable rock in Cis-Lunar space.
Any rock in Cis-Lunar is less than 500 m/s from high earth orbit.
A rock could at low delta-v [less than 500 meters per second] and require a very long time to get to. 0.5 km/sec goes a distance of 1800 kilometer per hour and 43,200 kilometers per day and 1.29 million kilometer in 30 days. And Cis-lunar space is ocean bigger than 10 million kilometers in distance.
In terms of the Earth/Moon L-points all the points are within 5 million kilometer. The Sun/Earth L-4/5 are tens of million kilometers of distance from Earth. In terms delta-v the Sun/Earth L-4/5 require low delta-v, if you don’t care how long to takes to get to them
From the Sun the Sun/Earth L-4/5 are at 60 degree angle and L-3 is at 180 degree angle. L-3 is half the earth’s orbital circumference. The diameter being 299.2 million and pi is 939.5 million km is circumference: L-3 is about 470 million km from Earth. And 1/3 of 180 is 60 degrees so these L-4/5 are 156 million kms from Earth. Or about 522 light seconds [8.7 mins] from earth.
Earth has one known Trojan [L4/5] asteroid:
“The 300 m diameter asteroid 2010 TK7 has been determined to orbit in association with the Earth L4 Lagrange point, leading the orbit of the Earth, by Martin Connors and colleagues of Athabasca University using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. It is the first confirmed Earth trojan”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_trojan_asteroid
I don’t think this earth Trojan is “minable” in the near term- mining Mars moon’s seems easier. The traveling time there and the time delay from earth are problems.
There no doubt more earth Trojans, and if this Trojan or other found may or may not be minable in near term, I believe they are minable beyond the near term. They might not be good candidate to go to first, but after a few rocks in better locations are mined they perhaps could then be considered- the time involved may be less of an obstacle.
Perhaps for NASA it might be a good rock to first visit.
I think such Trojan could be moved and if put in location with less time delay they become more valuable. And even if on route to becoming closer they would have more value.
When consider that NASA should looking for things in space which could future value to people living on earth, exploration of Earth’s Trojans or say the L4 space [which is vast region] could arguably be a destination of interest.
But it seems within the area less than 10 million kilometer of earth is a more immediate concern. Any rocks in this area don’t have to been there for millions or tens of thousand of years. The timescale of commercial interest is a human lifetimes or less. What rocks will be there in next 5-10 years, and are they going remain within 10 million distance for timescale of months. Not some much if only flying thru this area in days to weeks.
“Not some much if only flying thru this area in days to weeks.”
Not so much if only…
But it’s possible that rock passing thru in days to weeks depending upon the orbit could be of commercial value.
One could intersect the orbit of such rock, and alter it’s trajectory.
Suppose you had rock which had similar orbit of a transfer orbit that gets you to Mars or Venus. And it got close enough to earth to alter it’s orbit [it’s velocity was increased by earth’s gravity]. Any rock passing within 1 million km of earth does what talking about to some extent. How close and how long it’s within Earth’s gravitational sphere determines the extent of this affect.
To describe to simply, suppose object is traveling roughly in same direction as earth orbit, it gains velocity as approach and loses velocity as it leave, and there will a net gain or loss velocity [including vector [change vector is change or addition in velocity- it’s the definition of velocity]. I am not talking about the net change in velocity. Instead what talking about is the temporary increase in velocity- or not concern about net gain or loss or change vector in terms of it’s orbit .
Or maybe this is better way. Start with object at moon distance, have it go towards earth and return to Moon distance. If object passes close to earth it has faster velocity the close it gets to earth. If launching from earth and you intersect that moon distance to earth distance orbit, you have a greater “impact” velocity when it’s near earth distance as compare to when object is at moon distance.
And with a passing rock, in order to change it’s orbit, one want high impact velocity. If you hit it at 10 km/sec it’s a lot better than what a rocket can do.
And you get a powered slingshot effect.
Yes, it might scare the kiddies if one is planning on hitting a rock which is passing close to earth. Of course actually hitting it, could be challenging.
Leaving these details aside, a rock with say a 2 km/sec delta-v to get to it, could if passes in near earth could hit a higher velocity.
And let’s add a wilder idea, one could impact a rock at high velocity and change it’s orbit and put something which is “survivable” on this rock.
One have impactor probe crash into the Moon and survive, one could have impactor probe hit an asteroid and survive.
But one does need to just have some instrument surviving the impact, one could have all kinds of things more or less surviving the impact. Or instead having something survive your purpose could be to “dig a hole”.
So suppose there was rock in a highly elliptical orbit around earth, say perigee of 300 km and apogee of moon distance. One could get to rock using similar trajectory used to get to the Moon, though you land on when at it’s perigee or at it’s apogee [in terms of delta-v from earth there no difference]. With a suborbital trajectory from earth, you could impact such a rock, one could launch a rocket with about 4 km/sec of delta-v and hit the rock [at velocity of about 10 km/sec]. And by hitting the rock you could lower the rock’s apogee. Or dig holes. Or if lower the impact velocity putting things on the rocket one could use when you arrived at the rock.
If this rock had no water, you put water on it, requiring less delta-v from earth- perhaps using cannon on earth. And in sense you would using the orbital velocity of the rock to lift payload to the rock.
Similar things can be done with space rock passing near earth.
My understanding is that there are rocks of one to ten meters that make about three orbits of the earth over a period of nine or ten months before being replaced by a similar rock.
This seems small enough to throw a net around and nine months should give an ion thruster time to have a real affect on its orbit. Would it be enough?
Those temporary mini moons would be an interesting target for exploitation. Minimal delta-V to nudge them into a stable Earth orbit. Short trip time to reach them. And I figure such rocks have a high chance of eventually hitting if nothing is done.
“In terms of the Earth/Moon L-points all the points are within 5 million kilometer. ”
Isn’t that number a little to large? The moon is about 230,000 miles and the L points are within 30,000 miles from the moon’s surface? Where are you getting 3 million miles number from?
“In terms of the Earth/Moon L-points all the points are within 5 million kilometer. ”
“Isn’t that number a little to large? The moon is about 230,000 miles and the L points are within 30,000 miles from the moon’s surface? Where are you getting 3 million miles number from?”
Yeah, maybe.
L-points are points but also regions. One could say Earth/Moon L-point ends as enters region of Earth/Sun L-1 and L-2.
Or Earth/Sun L-1 is about 1.5 million km [1 million miles] and it’s L-2 is about the same distance from Earth.
I usually think of Moon’s L-1 and 2 points as about 75,000 km from Moon [or in miles 46,000] but region could said to be around 150,000 km across -or both of them wraps around the Moon.
The Moon’s L-4/5 are 60 degrees ahead and behind the Moon.
so, lets see, lunar diameter is 384K times 2 is 768 K with circumference of 2.4 million. So 402,000 km ahead and behind the Moon- and same distance from Earth as the Moon.
So lunar L-2 point is furthest from Earth around 450,000 km.
Here diagram of Earth/Sun L-points:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lagrange_points2.svg
So when Lunar L-2 is aligned with Earth/Sun L-1 or 2 the Lunar point could to end at some point between them. And when Lunar L-2 [and L-4/5] is aligned with Earth/Sun L-4 or 5, Lunar L-2 ends at some point between them.
Or simply I don’t know where Earth/Moon L-points ends- and said 5 million kilometer be be on the safe side.
But seems a rock could transition between Earth/Sun L-4 or 5 and Earth/Moon L 2/4/5-points.
And any Earth orbit beyond the Moon- say object transitioning from Sun/Earth L-1 to L-2 would be in the influence moon’s gravity/L-points and according to the diagram either Earth/Sun L-4 or 5.
Oh here is diagram of Earth/Moon L-points:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mechanics/lagpt.html
And, love this quote:
“The three-body problem is famous in both mathematics and physics circles, and mathematicians in the 1950s finally managed an elegant proof that it is impossible to solve.”
Though approximation have been done and these are called fuzzy boundary solutions.
Anyways the diagram seems to show the Moon when
it’s full moon on Earth.
And should look a bit different when moon is at quarter
“My understanding is that there are rocks of one to ten meters that make about three orbits of the earth over a period of nine or ten months before being replaced by a similar rock.”
Last week:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135446/Robert-Ward-Arizona-discovers-small-meteorites-California-U-S.html
“The speeding meteor which was the size of a minivan…
The meteor probably weighed about 154,300lbs”
“A meteor hunter who has spent two decades searching for unremarkable-looking lumps of space rock has discovered two marble-sized meteorites worth ten times the price of gold”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135446/Robert-Ward-Arizona-discovers-small-meteorites-California-U-S.html
I don’t having space rock explode in the atmosphere makes them worth more then little rocks in space. And 2 meter rock is a larger space sample then all space sample combined, if one were to bring a pieces of the a 2 meter space rock back to earth it would seem to worth more per gram than pieces of meteorites found on the ground.
So most of these small rocks coming close to earth are worth more than gold- on earth.
A space rock as small as 1 meter in diameter could possibly be worth a lot money if delivered to earth. Perhaps such space rocks could also be delivered to ISS.
So 1 meter rock is about 1 ton. Or million grams, probably highest price one get would a rock blasted off from the Moon or Mars and going for $1000 per gram. Or 1 billion dollars.
But the typical rock would around $50 per gram, so 50 million.
2 to 5 meter is 4 cubic meter to 65 cubic meter. Ordinary Chondrites have density 3.21.
http://www.meteorites.com.au/odds&ends/density.html
So with a density of 3, it’s about 12 to 210 tons. If they are spherical shape.
No one seen such small rocks, they may tend to be similar to the shapes of larger space rocks or maybe not. Also since they are smaller mass they are capable of a fairly high spin rate.
It seem to me possible to mine space rocks which are 1-10 meters in diameter.
“This seems small enough to throw a net around and nine months should give an ion thruster time to have a real affect on its orbit. Would it be enough?”
1 meter rock is about as massive as spacecraft which has used ion thrusters. Therefore an ion engine should be able provide a significant amount delta-v.
But 10 meter diameter is which has density 3 is around 1570 tons.
1 meter is about 1 ton and 10 meter is about 1570 tons.