Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Benny Peiser – Congress has just voted to legalise the mining of Asteroids. In doing so, they have opened the way to the next phase of human history – the unlimited expansion of industrial human civilisation throughout the Universe.
According to Popular Science;
After much delay, an important space bill has finally passed in the Senate.
The Space Act of 2015 would do a lot of things to encourage the private space industry–including extending the “learning period” wherein fledgling spaceflight companies can operate without too much government oversight. It would also give companies the rights to the resources they might one day extract from asteroids, such as platinum and water (which, believe it or not, is a valuable resource in space).
The bill has just passed in the Senate with unanimous approval and a few amendments. Now it will be sent back to the House of Representatives, which is expected to approve the changes, and then on to President Obama.
Although the bill hasn’t officially been signed into law yet, Planetary Resources–one such company that hopes to extract resources from asteroids–issued an effusive letter thanking the Congressmen who supported the bill.
“Many years from now, we will view this pivotal moment in time as a major step toward humanity becoming a multi-planetary species,” said Planetary Resources Co-Chairman Eric Anderson in the press release. “This legislation establishes the same supportive framework that created the great economies of history, and it will foster the sustained development of space.”
Read more: http://www.popsci.com.au/space/us-senate-votes-to-legalize-space-mining,411747
Obviously there is still the issue of how to get to your Asteroid – launching traditional rockets is prohibitively expensive. But most alternatives to rockets suffer substantial drawbacks, which have so far prevented their use.
For example, Project Orion powered spaceships would have no difficulty carrying a large payload into orbit, and propelling it to the vicinity of any Asteroid in the Solar System. The tough part is convincing a government to allow a private company to detonate nuclear bombs inside the Earth’s atmosphere, to propel the Orion ship into orbit.
Thankfully there is one solution, which involves far less controversial technology than atomic bombs. A solution which has already been tested, which worked, and which successfully delivered payloads, at a fraction of normal launch costs, into near Earth space.
The man who proved inexpensive launch into near Earth space is possible was the legendary Canadian artillery engineer Gerald Bull. Gerald Bull is well known in military circles. He was a ballistics genius, whose revolutionary design ideas dramatically advanced the world’s artillery capabilities. During the 1960s Bull was the director of Project HARP. His modified artillery pieces successfully launched payloads up to a peak altitude of 180km (110 miles), well above the lower boundary of near Earth space – proving that ballistic launch into space is possible.
Bull wanted to go further, to prove that he could launch a satellite into stable orbit using his cannon. Payloads launched from a cannon need a course correction during flight to achieve a stable Earth orbit, so Bull wanted to build gun big enough to launch an unmanned spaceship, which could perform that required mid flight course correction. But Bull’s desperation was his undoing. The only person at the time who was willing to support his final project was the infamous Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein.
Of course, Saddam wasn’t interested in space research, but he was very interested in a gun powerful enough to deliver large payloads all the way to Israel. Thus was born the infamous Iraqi Supergun.
Bull was assassinated shortly after he became involved with Saddam Hussein. Nobody knows for sure who assassinated Gerald Bull, or exactly why he was murdered. But Bull’s work didn’t die – the knowledge of how to replicate the launch technology which Gerald Bull pioneered lives on.
Now Congress has guaranteed people can keep the fruits of their efforts, other people can and will build on the ideas Bull pioneered, and the ideas of other space pioneers, and will use those ideas to open our way to the stars, to access unlimited resources from beyond the Earth.
Once you achieve a stable low Earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere. There are a host of high efficiency low thrust space drives which could easily carry a low earth orbit satellite to a rendezvous with an Asteroid. Its getting into orbit in the first place which is the difficult part – the problem which Gerald Bull solved.
It’s worth looking at the link.
At least these idiots are not claiming that they own the resources. (As yet that is.)
So the law is not as overweening as it first looks.
***
SEC. 403. Disclaimer of extraterritorial sovereignty.
It is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body.
SEC. 102. International launch competitiveness.
[…](B) consider the impact of the cost to both the industry and the Government of implementing an updated methodology;
I take it then that, either there will be no cost to “the people,” or – more probably, as I see it – any cost to the people will not be considered by Congress.
The topic happens to be the premise to a science fiction adventure I’ve penned.
An asteroid mining company has access to deep space data that reveals a global catastrophe is imminent, ends up using the asteroid to perhaps save the Earth. By crashing the asteroid into Earth, naturally.
Good to know the mining part of this will eventually become legal.
Hope the rest of my predictions don’t come true.
Another story about asteroid miners is called Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card, when an incoming alien ship is found by the miners. Discussed are quite a few practical issues about ownership and competition among the miners. This is a prequel to the Ender’s Game series.
If you’re asteroid mining, how do you land the stuff on Earth? I have done some thinking on it, deciding in my fictional world on leasing a large ellipsis in the Australian Outback for controlled crashes of lump metal. I imagine that, in the real world, the first landing of asteroid mined metal would most likely crash the commodities markets.
Walt:
One write up I saw has the mwtal solar melted and formed to aerodynamic shape and deorbit burn done. Other than not using a runway, pretty much like the space shuttle. Splash down in shallow coastal waters is easier to cool and recover than a land splat without a parachute… I’d go for a Canadian lake myself… but The Great Salt Lake would do too…
Reminds me of a bumper sticker an old co-worker had.
Earth First. We’ll strip mine the other planets later.
“Throughout the Universe”? More like “beyond Earth orbit”.
Seriously, do you have any idea how faaaaaar it is to the very next star? Do have any idea how small our solar system is, compared to our galaxy? And how small our galaxy is compared to the local group? And that is still nothing, a cosmic piece of dust floating through space, compared to the (visible) Universe. Please don’t use the word “Universe” synonymous with “space”, because the Universe is so freaking vast and big, it will blow your mind once you grasp this. If for comparison sake we say that “mining somewhere in our solar system” is like “taking one step on stairway”, then “The Universe” is more like “flying to the next star” – something with a hugely hugely hugely different shoesize.
Having said that: I will be glad if have some rudimentary mining operation on a solar system body. I don’t care if it is the Moon, or an NEA, or an Asteroid parked in a lunar orbit, or if it is Phobos or Deimos or Mars. We need ISRU, an I hope I live to see it my lifetime…
Project Orion came up with a design for a starship, top speed 0.1c
Too late USA. I am pretty sure the Chinese will be there first dredging up asteroid stuff to build space runways (for peaceful purposes of course) and Obama’s successors will be doing drive byes and waving their weapon systems. I don’t think the Chinese are going to pay much attention to any laws passed in Congress. Move over. The new world order, and off world order, starts here.
What could possibly go wrong?
I don’t think the problem is getting to the asteroid the problem is what do you do when you get there. Do you robot mine it, if so how do you bring the mined material back? Do you bring the whole asteroid back? If so how?
This sounds like the dog chasing a bus scenario…what does it do when it finally catches it?
Hey I’ve solved one problem :-). Seriously the best non nuclear option might be solar sail. It’s slow, but it gets you there without needing lots of fuel. Other options are setting up an ion drive which used Asteroid ice and solar power, or even spray painting the asteroid, to use Orbital lasers to change its orbit.
The first question that goes through my mind is “What idiot came up with this bill in the first place?” We don’t even have a manned moon presence and they’re enacting laws about mining asteroids…those rocks way out past Mars! If you can’t even send a simple manned scientific expedition back to an orbiting body only three days travel away, why are you even considering mineral extraction from a rock that you don’t even have the technology to return from?
Freakin’ idiots!
Some asteroids orbit between Mars and Earth, which is why those which cross our path can and do hit us.
My point is that requirements to prospect, extract, and transport the mineral wealth of the Moon are far less than that of trying to do the same to much smaller objects much farther away in heliocentric orbits. So instead of Congress voting on a pointless bill, which is par for the course for them, a realistic initiative would be to demand NASA come up with a viable lunar strategy.
It’s all meaningless though. I did the math on the world’s oil reserves compared to consumption today and the results are quite bad, quite bad indeed. About 50 to 70 years left…if OPEC hasn’t inflated their numbers in their estimates. If they have, maybe 30-40 years remaining.
” So instead of Congress voting on a pointless bill, which is par for the course for them, a realistic initiative would be to demand NASA come up with a viable lunar strategy.”
Except the legislation isn’t being done for NASA.
Andy,
Asteroids and comets have mineral resources the moon lacks, but the main reason, IMO, for mining asteroids and comets is for water and other assets to facilitate travel to other planets, rather than to bring material back here.
Lunar crust is composed primarily of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium and aluminum. It also contains traces of elements like titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium and hydrogen.
AndyJ November 13, 2015 at 8:42 pm
So instead of Congress voting on a pointless bill, which is par for the course for them, a realistic initiative would be to demand NASA come up with a viable lunar strategy.
‘Demand’? Has NASA been given funding and a mandate to go to the moon and has it failed to do so?
Why are they idiots AndyJ? How’s your rocket coming on?
It is called a “diversion” away from what is really happening, just look at how many people have posted on this thread!
Limits to growth is, of course, the misanthropic, Malthusian control freaks’ cri de guerre (Holdren, Ehrlich, etc). Published in 1972 forecasting worldwide famine and the running out of mineral resources by 2000. Interestingly, the population in 1972 was about half the present day’s. Now, according to the World Bank in ~2008, 1.29 billion live in (their definition of) extreme poverty, fewer than in 1972 despite the doubling of pop. The world’s population is living better, longer, healthier lives today and famine has virtually disappeared from what was a chronic Asian condition for centuries. We will peak at 8-9B (at 7.3B, we are already 80 to 90% there!)
The distopians exploit the; bean counter linear idea that the earth has finite resources which we will trim down to some point that we will have clunked up against the ‘limits’. This seemingly logical notion is however gravely flawed because it leaves out the ingenuity of humans (not a trait that biologists or social scientists are aware of nor have any need for, although it would be nice if they were educated in it anyway). The facts are this:
a) except for a few tonnes of metals and other resources that we sent off to Mars, the moon, etc. every ton of material ever mined remains on the surface of the earth. Because of their value, metals have been recycled for millennia and in the latter quarter of the 20th century, we began recycling larger and larger proportions of most other minerals materials (glass, building material, plastic, paper, etc.). The bonus here is a saving of ~75% of the energy required to acquire the materials from mineral deposits.
b) Engineering developments of the past half century have made it possible to stretch resources per unit of output. Computers that once took up a large air conditioned room and had the computing power of the modern hand held calculator, now are eclipsed by powerful machines weighing under a kg.
c) Substitution of materials and entirely new engineered materials have entered the supply chain. The largest airliner in the world weighs in, fueled and ready to fly, at ~580 metric tons. Much of the wings and top half of the fusilage is made up of thin, alloy aluminum-fibre glass- carbon fibre reinforced laminates that are lighter and stronger than ordinary aircraft aluminum alloys. These materials are also now employed in passenger rail cars, autos, computer “plastics”, etc. Electrical conductors that used to depend on copper use aluminum and carbon (note aluminum makes up ~15% of the composition of the earth’s crust – it isn’t in short supply)
d) The USGS in 2013 estimated world accessible geological copper resources remaining in the ground to be 3.5billion tonnes. Today, we use ~20million tpy 30 to 50% of which is recycled at present and the amount of copper mined since antiquity is estimated just over 500 million t (Copper Facts). So even the estimated (conservative) resources in the ground are good enough for topping up our supply for another half a millennium or even multiples of this considering a), b), c) above.
There are no limits to growth on earth as far as mineral materials are concerned and our numbers will stabilize in a few decades. The reason for so much hysteria and possibly the keeping of poor nations poor by dystopians is that this scaremonger’s dream is soon to disappear.
@ur momisugly Gary + 1 ,very well written I recall some-one writing that (less than a 100 years ago) cities would be buried under meters of horse manure and so I have to add to your statement, who knows what will be invented next and what are we not aware of what is already invented but not made public? (as in what goes on behind closed doors?).
Sometimes I worry about America.
I hear ya.
Just don’t mine too many of them. They help damp out mutual tidal forces and other perturbations of planetary orbits. Seriously, there really do need to be EIRs for this.
I guess I could be shouted down by the usual panel of WUWT experts, but I have some expertise in the subject of space operations (patent #8,800,933 B2, “Space Debris Removal”).
Space Elevators: I’ve been following the subject for a long time, and there is a very good technical exposition on the subject (I think it is “The Space Elevator: A Revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transportation System” by Bradley C. Edwards–I read it a long time ago). But as I read through the discussion of each and every problem, with the suggested solutions, I became aware of a huge systemic issue. Everything has to work out exactly correct, or it is a disaster. As a result, I do not think it is at all realistic, in that every engineering enterprise of significance relies on margins of performance to account for any imperfections in our understanding of phenomena or environments. For example, is anyone here aware of the fact that the near-Earth orbital environment is a tenuous atmosphere consisting of atomic oxygen? Or that there is very little in the universe that is a more powerful oxidizer (excepting possibly atomic fluorine)? We have had long-duration missions come back with evidence of severe corrosion from this environment. I would remind one and all that the most prominent structural material for space elevator fibers is graphite, not known to resist oxidation when provoked. Also, space elevators would be terribly expensive to construct. When all is said, it seems to me that it would be less expensive, more certain, and more enjoyable to travel by rocket (I am a confirmed rocketeer)! Not to mention the fact that everyone seems to assume that you can endlessly scarf up excess momentum without having to somehow put it into the system. Conservation of momentum is one of God’s laws that brooks no violation.
Gun/Accelerator Launchers: The price for near-Earth orbital velocity is a velocity increment of about 7 km/sec, corresponding to Mach 25 at sea level. You couldn’t do this all with a gun; you would still need an orbital circularization propulsion package. But the muzzle velocity for such a gun would probably be on the order of Mach 25. Does anyone here have any idea of the shockwave overpressure and temperature rise resulting at those speeds? I do, having had the experience of working it out for hypothetical railgun designs back in the SDI years. The overpressure is like an atomic bomb. The stagnation temperature would make the projectile incandescent. The atmospheric drag out of the muzzle would be on the order of hundreds of gs. Let us suppose you can accelerate to 7 km/sec in a device 0.1 kim long. If I do the math right (a = 1/2 v^2/ d), the acceleration is about 24,500 gs. I don’t think anything would stand up to that. Literally, most structural materials would slump (imagine a pound of aluminum supporting a column load of 12.25 tons). Everybody imagines a normal cannon, but they don’t grasp the implications of the basic physics. So, give me a break. Ain’t gonna happen.
How to do it right: http://www.amazon.com/Krafft-Ehrickes-Extraterrestrial-Imperative-Apogee/dp/1894959914
My guess for first returned product from asteroid mining? Mineral samples. (Sort of on the principle that surveying is easier than conquering.)
I agree about mining samples – come back with a lump of something really valuable and you’ll spark a lot of investor interest :-).
The unsolved issues with Space Elevators are why I didn’t include that as a “current” technology proposal.
Bull’s HARP gun achieved a launch velocity of 3600 m / s. It would have been very interesting to see what the Project Babylon gun could have achieved.
I have read, a group of 5 or so of the various tech.internet billionaires are working together with a plan to mine asteroids, and that they realize returning with tins of precious whatever would damage the spot market, so there is consideration of that issue.
Probably not much more. Gas-driven projectiles are pretty much limited to the maximum expansion speed of the gas, which is related to the speed of sound in the expanded gas. The way to increase this is to increase the gas temperature and decrease the gas molecular weight (thus, hot-hydrogen gas guns), but you get tapped out pretty quickly. This is why railguns and coilguns became items of interest in the 1980s, because they do not have such limitations (though they have others, including the “reverse rocket” effect that also imposes a maximum muzzle velocity).
I really recommend the Ehricke book. I saw him in person twice in the 1970s, delivering his lecture on the “Extraterrestrial Imperative.” It was delivered to different technical audiences, and in each case, the result was the same: the audience sat awestruck for the first hour, then there was a comfort break, followed by a second hour of further engrossing delivery. Then the whole crowd was expelled from the venue, because it was closing time. There would have been no problem going for a third hour, either from Ehricke’s voluminous vision, or the audience’s amazement. (He is sort of credited as being the father of the Centaur upper stage.)
Thanks!
How about gun-launching from 19,000 feet in altitude, where air pressure is about half that of sea level?
Then the overpressure will be half as bad. Ever sampled half a hand grenade?
But I’ll admit that an upward trajectory might limit the aerothermal environment. But you realize you are now constructing a complicated and large machine in high topography…and it can only point in one direction.
Mining machinery has been carried to and operates at altitudes of 15,000 feet and higher. Difficult for such a project, but not impossible, in my inexpert opinion.
All of the alternatives to rockets have major problems, to be sure.
Engineering an evacuated magnetic induction megastructure that runs for 500 kilometers and ends on top of a 6km Mountain but extends to 25-30 km will allow you to achieve escape velocity at a constant 5g acceleration.
It would be cheaper, need less material (not to mention it avoids that pesky corrosive atomic oxygen and the huge electrical potentials), and present less of a danger should it collapse, than a beanstalk — and we could probably build it with today’s technology.
To further lower the density of the atmosphere at rail tube exit — rf energy can be used to create a cavitation space in front of the launch vehicle — basically a vacuum that extends in front — like a cavitating torpedo in the water — in fact, if the kinks were worked out, it’s possible 10 km altitude would work — which is only 5 burj dubais on top of a 6 km mountain
The 500 km trip up the rail would take approximately 2.5 minutes
To get to 8km/s you would need another 150km and 20 more seconds
Wonderful; so how much have you made from your patent rights so far ?? You get 20 years from the issuance of your patents to make a buck out of it.
g
I just wondered who would show up with a cargo of snide.
George, whether any money can be made from the patent depends on whether the government wants to award a contract for orbit-clearing. But, if you had actually read the patent award, you would understand that I have no prospect of making a cent, inasmuch as I have signed the rights to my employer–who thought the idea was important enough to protect with a patent.
The difficulty with obtaining the patent was that there was a previous patent along similar lines–which never would have been feasible to implement (the inventor was assuming conveniently-advanced technology available to plug the holes in his Swiss cheese of ideas). But my patent lawyer and I managed to overcome that problem, and my patent is probably the only feasible way of clearing orbital debris, assuming anyone wanted to achieve that objective. (It is almost on the order of defining a feasible way to move Mount Everest to New Hampshire.)
Getting a patent is like winning a chess tournament: a lot of mental work and some cleverness results in a pretty plaque one can mount on the wall. On to the next problem. The real issue is whether the invention solves the problem. If you can come up with a better solution, be my guest.
Re-read From the Earth to the Moon. Jules Verne came up with this idea in the 1800’s
This is the start of the learning process to redirect asteroids to a lunar orbit for mining purposes..
https://youtu.be/3UkEximY6lc
What could go wrong?
OK. So you go out to try to put an asteroid in a lunar orbit to mine it and the engines misfire and put it into a collision course with Earth.
Paul Erhlich’s dreams come true. New Extinction Event. The Law of Unintended Consequences in action.
;Too pessimistic Wayne…they are starting small so any and all “bugs” can be ironed out as experience is gained…the space age is just in the dawning phase… That is not to say there won’t stuff ups…but hopefully never catastrophic ones…
…won’t ‘be’ stuff ups…
Huh, I didn’t know that asteroids were within the U.S. government’s jurisdiction…
They’re not. US businesses however need to know that they can legally mine them and use in space or sell on earth whatever resources they obtain from them.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to just mine the earth?
That will proceed as normal based on cost-benefits…but initially the valuable resource from asteroids in space will be water which will be needed for rocket fuel (H and O2). Here is a blurb from Planetary Resources Co….
http://www.planetaryresources.com/asteroids/composition/
Never mind Bull-guns. SpaceX is developing re-usable launchers, >1% of the cost of single launches.
Corr. That’s <1%.
The US government cannot at present launch even a single astronaut into orbit. How are they going to do anything about asteroid mining? I guess that”s what government is for – “to get in a man’s way” (Capt Malcolm Reynolds)
For those looking for alternatives to rockets or beanstalks, look up “Lofstrom Launch Loop”
” The US government cannot at present launch even a single astronaut into orbit. ”
This is not about the US gov launching anyone, it’s clearing the way for commercial investment of billions of dollars into space exploration.
Yes it is a relief.
For a long time humanity has been threatened by the possibility the US and USSR would sign an international agreement declaring space resources the common property of all mankind, achieving through international agreement what they could not with domestic legislation.
Since a single metallic asteroid has more iron than the world uses in a year, and there’s over 40,000 of them, we might not run out of metal resources after all.
A special thank you on behalf of the free world to Doctor Jerry Pournelle.
” we might not run out of metal resources after all.”
And It can be done with none of the various “damage” conventional methods for extracting and processing of those materials.
I’m sure someone will develop a computer model that’ll prove global warming will happen on any astronomical body where mining occurs. And, in the interest of preventing the human infection from destroying the universe, all off-world mining should be banned.
Hmmm… What do you think a medium-sized NiFe asteroid delivered to lunar orbit, would be worth?
“you are halfway to anywhere”. Interesting, I wonder how well read the author is?
Read G. Harry Stine’s book of the same name
http://www.amazon.com/Halfway-Anywhere-Achieving-Americas-Destiny/dp/0871318059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447541739&sr=8-1&keywords=G+harry+stine+halfway+to+anywhere
The key is to develop fully reusable launch vehicles, which will drop the cost-to-orbit to a level comparable to that of a commercial air-flight. This is precisely what SpaceX is working on with its Falcon 9 rockets.
Once you’re in space, there are any number of possibilities, from nuclear rockets to solar sails. Getting into orbit is the hard part.