The search for rare earths

[Sam Fraser]

Rare earth elements, called "rare earths" by those who use and study them, often prove irreplaceable in green technologies and high-tech consumer products. Yet the world's production of rare minerals relies mainly upon China, and the Chinese government warned last year that its own rising demand will soon force it to stop exporting the precious elements.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100216/sc_livescience/shortageofrareearthelementscouldthwartinnovation

Any data on how much of these elements are expected to exist in nickel-iron NEOs?

[joertexas]

Rare earth elements, called "rare earths" by those who use and study them, often prove irreplaceable in green technologies and high-tech consumer products. Yet the world's production of rare minerals relies mainly upon China, and the Chinese government warned last year that its own rising demand will soon force it to stop exporting the precious elements.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100216/sc_livescience/shortageofrareearthelementscouldthwartinnovation

Any data on how much of these elements are expected to exist in nickel-iron NEOs?

Yep.

http://www.tricitiesnet.com/donsastronomy/asteroidtable.html

JR

[Sam Fraser]

Oh Joe, you're the man. You know it! How's this for a crazy idea:

We have on the PERMANENT home page some sort of meter or graphic that shows how much asteroid 3554 Amun is worth at current market prices for gold, platinum etc. If you move your mouse over it, a table pops up with a breakdown of how many tons of each element exist and how much they're worth at current prices. (Maybe later other main-belters and NEAs can be added.) Compare it to unfunded Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid liabilities and the ballooning national debt (too US-centric?). Or rather than a pop-up table, clicking on the graphic goes to another page where each element is described, including common uses on Earth and estimates of current terrestrial supplies

Now, we'd need an automated way for the meter to fetch the most up-to-date prices automatically (one a day?) and calculate values on the fly, so it could run on auto-pilot. Or maybe prices could be updated manually by a trusty PERMANENT volunteer if that wasn't possible by spending a few minutes visiting a few websites once a day with the relevant info and keying in the new prices.

I think it'd be a fun online tool and might make some people think. I haven't seen anything else like it on the net. It might not need much to set up in terms of programming or artwork.

[Rhyshaelkan]

http://www.goldprice.org/

Up in the corner you can see the price update. I wonder if they would allow you to tap into that for updates. Gold is ridiculously expensive right now.

http://platinumprice.org/

Same sort of thing.

Could write a script that looks up these prices and updates the charts for asteroid value once a day.

The more people could use PERMANENT as an information tool, the more people might get interested in helping to fund a mission.

[sgeos]

I use Kitco (http://www.kitco.com/) for my metal prices, to the extent I can. Johnson Matthey (http://www.platinum.matthey.com/pgm-prices/price-charts/) has price charts for all the PGMs except osmium. The London Metal Exchange (http://www.lme.com/) also looks promising.

The metalprices.com free site (http://www.metalprices.com/FreeSite/) should have some limited information, but they don't provide everything for free. A subscription (http://www.metalprices.com/introduction/intro_UU.htm) appears to run $660 a year (I don't feel that rich).

[Sam Fraser]

These are all great links, especially Johnson Matthey's. Palladium's been steadily rising for two years and quadrupled in that time.

[JohnHunt]

I hate to be a party pooper, but I'm not sure that I am for this idea.

The main reason that I might not support it is because I am concerned that it might distort people's perception of what direction that we need to go next. If pursuing lunar water ice is the right first step and one much more logical than going after precious metals in an asteroid, then the more people that we get pushing to mine asteroid metals, the less grassroots push we'll have to go after lunar water ice.

Also, the value of the metals might not be as much as the cost to extract, concentrate, and safely return said metals. Or even if it could be done profitably, perhaps not as profitably as to extract, concentrate, and safely return lunar water ice.

[sgeos]

If pursuing lunar water ice is the right first step
Fueling facilities in space strike me as a logical first step, but I'm not convinced it is the one and only correct first step. I'm also not convinced that lunar ice should necessarily be the top priority even if fuel is. I think focusing on the moon to the exclusion of all other options is a mistake.

the more people that we get pushing to mine asteroid metals, the less grassroots push we'll have to go after lunar water ice.
I don't necessarily agree. Grassroots support is only important if you are appealing to the masses. Frankly, I don't think the various states with large space programs have what it takes to exploit space in a useful and timely fashion, so I do not think voter support matters. If you are going to start a publicly held corporation, grassroots support might be important. I think a well capitalized corporate sponsor is the way to go, and in that case no mass appeal is necessary.

Also, the value of the metals might not be as much as the cost to extract, concentrate, and safely return said metals.
Agree, but rhenium goes for over $167,000 a kilo at current market rates if the $5,000 a troy ounce is accurate, so I imagine a rhenium expedition would be profitable if a sizable amount could be returned to earth. Rhodium is next at just under $83,000 a kilo. Followed by platinum at $55,000 and gold at $44,000. (Iridium $26,000/kg, Palladium $24,000/kg, Osmium $12,000/kg, Ruthenium $6,000/kg)

Refined base metals and other materials could probably be sold in space for just under the cost to launch them. $5,000/kg nickel would be kind of fantastic. Nickel is about $25.68/kg on Earth.

[Sam Fraser]

There'll be PGM deposits on the moon from impactors, so we can prospect for both lunar ice and lunar PGMs.

[Rhyshaelkan]

Yes I think it was mentioned that gold(or mercury) was detected in either the impact of that one probe, or through the various imaging equipment they have used. Either way it could give a nice side business. It was being discusses and I mentioned something about it here (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23661.msg679151#msg679151).

[sgeos]

Would it be safe to say that impactors have probably delivered a sufficient variety of raw materials to the moon to develop it? If there are PGMs on the moon, I might start to seriously consider this whole lunar mission thing. =) (Not to the exclusion of all other options, of course.) Presumably a PGM scouting mission would involve heading off to impact craters to find out what crashed there?

[joertexas]

Would it be safe to say that impactors have probably delivered a sufficient variety of raw materials to the moon to develop it? If there are PGMs on the moon, I might start to seriously consider this whole lunar mission thing. =) (Not to the exclusion of all other options, of course.) Presumably a PGM scouting mission would involve heading off to impact craters to find out what crashed there?

My thought is that we look around as much as possible on the first mission, which is why I'd like to send several "cameras on wheels" scout rovers along. We should be able to tell what needs to be investigated in further detail with the follow on mission - and in subsequent missions. This can be done while we use the backhoe to look for lunar ice.

JR

[Sam Fraser]

I should add lunar PGM deposits from NiFe impactors have yet to be confirmed AFAIK. Here is a speculative but plausible piece from 2005:

The Moon […] would seem to be an unlikely place to find PGMs: the collisional process that formed from the Moon left it mostly devoid of heavy metals. […] Major sources of PGMs on Earth, such as Sudbury in Canada and sites in South Africa, have been linked to asteroid impacts. The Moon’s lower gravity would mean slower impacts, making it more likely that significant portions of asteroids could survive.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/479/1

[Sam Fraser]

I e-mailed Dr. Paul D. Spudis (http://www.spudislunarresources.com/) who runs the excellent Once And Future Moon (http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/) blog about this issue and he was kind enough to send me the following reply:

Hi Sam,

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence at this time for the presence of PGM in large quantity on the Moon. That doesn't mean that they are not there, but existing remote sensing data are of too low resolution to resolve anything smaller than a few tens of meters in dimension.

My suspicion is that if this idea is to ever be confirmed, it will require detailed, painstaking prospecting on the lunar surface. This is the way placer gold and other PGM sedimentary deposits are found on Earth, so there is no reason to think we can by-pass that hard work step on the Moon. That further suggests that we won't find any until we are on the Moon permanently.

I look at the problem differently -- I want to first mine the Moon for something which I know already HAS economic value: water. It is an extremely useful substance that can create new space faring capability. That's why I focus most of my attention on it -- it is the undeniable paydirt of lunar resources.

Best regards,
Paul