The New Mineral Economy

[Boxy]

The thing to consider about many metallic asteroids is that they contain many heavy minerals which are extremely rare in the Earth's crust -- such as gold, silver, platinum, chromium, nickel and iron. These elements tend to "sink" due to gravity, and as Earth is a lot bigger than any asteroidal body, they're a lot harder to get to from the third rock from Sol.

So, asteroids -- particularly 433 Eros (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/401227.stm) -- have a whole lot of gold, platinum, and other precious metals in them. We could fairly realistically take out tons of rock per year, if not hundreds or thousands (asteroidal rock is under much less pressure than terrestrial mines -- usually we just have to cut it and float it out with miniscule amounts of energy).

So what happens to the world gold economy when we dump literally a ton of gold every single year? What about platinum? Zinc? Aluminum? Those who have made mineral deposits a cornerstone of their wealth will stand the most to lose from this operation, particularly those who invested heavily in gold, silver, and platinum as "hard currencies." They'll probably be rather irate once their "weight in gold" rivals the price of their weight in nickel-iron alloy.

Many of these precious metals are extremely useful, as well. Gold is an excellent conductor and extremely ductile, which (with falling prices) would make it useful for electronics. Platinum is used as a catalyst in many chemical reactions, but is not consumed in the process. Aluminum is a universally useful building material.

Even if all we do is refine precious metals and send them back to earth for the first couple of years, the initial start-up costs could very well pay for itself. At today's prices ($400 /oz), a ton of gold would be $12.8 million. Let alone all the iron and aluminum we make ready to orbital manufacturing! As prices collapse within a few years, the cost efficiency of orbital mineral extraction would drive terrestrial competitors completely out of business, which would push all mineral extraction into space. Imagine what the billions of steel and gold magnates being poured into cost-effective rockets would do to launch infrastructure!

I'm excited about this. As an engineering student (and former economics student), I'm salivating at the prospect of having access to so much more resources than our ancestors even dreamed of. It's like we crossed the Danube into Europe, ready and eager to have a run at the virgin, unscathed herds our ancestors never had the chance to exploit.

So, in conclusion:
Export precious minerals to Earth
Recoup cost of investment
Spur NEA development

[Rhyshaelkan]

This is the part that I do not understand.

Yes it will take billions of dollars for start up. However the potential is there to make Rockafeller, King Solomon, the Tsars, Emperors of China look like penny-ante contestants. The return on investment, while taking years to reach fruition will be staggering. As well as finally ushering in the future.

Perhaps the powers that be do not want the exploitation of space because it will upset the balance and control they have. Conspiracy!! :p

I personally do not see space for just monetary wealth. I despise avarice and materialism. I want a better future for mankind as a whole.

[Boxy]

I think the main problem is that space development was seen as entirely in the domain of central governments, especially NASA and the Russian Space Agency. SpaceShipOne, the first commercial craft to break the space barrier, is already in the Smithsonian alongside the Wright Brothers plane and the Spirit of St. Louis. That was just three years ago. People will start swinging back to space development once space tourism (or "adventuring") kicks off and lowers prices dramatically.

The current launch price is about $15 million for a single ton of cargo via SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket, $35 million for 10 tons about the Falcon 9, or $48 million for 27.5 tons about the Falcon 9-Heavy. Competition between space tourism companies will probably push crew launch price down to $100,000 a head. So we got our crew and our cargo-carrier -- we'll still need a ship. I vote the Sundancer model by Bigelow Aerospace, which will probably run $500,000,000 a pop, but space enough for a five-man crew in pretty comfortable quarters.

Overall, we need to:
Get there
Carry the solar furnace / mirrors / mining slag
Produce propellant enough to tow it back to LEO

Once we have that, we have more raw resources in orbit than can ever be harvested from the Earth's crust. Or from the Moon, for that matter. All in all, it might take $2-4 billion, depending on the price of mining equipment and so forth. Yet, they would have from this whole escapade:
An interorbital spacecraft
More mineral resources than we could ever get from Earth
An interorbital propellant factory

The returns would be enormous, like you said. Then, to go get another one, you take your Sundancer and mining tools (which you already have in space), launch your crew back into space (roughly half a million dollars), and take off. I mean, you could potentially just sit on your massive windfall and become obscenely rich. Or you could build shipyards on the asteroid and rent a ship to NASA for their Mars trip they eventually get off their ass for. You could also go into a strategic partnership with Bigelow Aerospace and just build interorbital shuttles and bolo colonies. With the crash of the minerals market, you could sell ore to them for dirt cheap and ship up all the labor via SpaceShipThree.

Oh, and send up a fab lab so you can machine-shop any part you need. That way you could design and build a factory for local parts and shipyards. Hell, between the construction infrastructure you build in orbit and the massive windfall of ore you just towed into LEO, you could build satellites and just nudge them into place for an irresponsibly small fraction of their current price.

Proposal for LEO astroidal resources: solar power relays. Cheap energy + cheap mineral resources + cheap transportation = massive increase in GDP, standard of living, and general all-around cool factor.

[Sam Fraser]

These are great contributions, Boxy. I especially loved your scenario of driving terrestrial miners out of business! PERMANENT must more or less fund itself each step of the way after any initial investment. Therefore, it must start producing the most profitable products or commodities in demand from the outset. There has to be a solid economic case to be made, all too often forgotten by the more starry-eyed wishful thinkers (and I've been one of them!)

[Rhyshaelkan]

If we follow the plan of pushing an asteroid into LEO. There would be no real need of a human presence. Tele-operated crawlers would be the way to go. No life-support required.

Sadly no asteroid will be 100% platinum :p

However while extracting the PGMs for export to Terra. We can extrude structural members for SPSs frameworks. Any silicon and calcium can form the matrix needed for the solar panels. To be 100% useful, the asteroid to select should be a good combination of silicas, hydrates, and metals(with emphasis on the PGMs).

I fear mining out the immediately useful PGMs, and leaving the other resources as a hazard until they become cost-effective to mine.

We need probes... more information, hard information. Spectral analysis is not revealing enough.