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QuoteMystery company backed by James Cameron and Google executives may be an asteroid mining project

By Adi Robertson on April 18, 2012 01:37 pm

MIT's Technology Review has just gotten news of a mysterious new project that claims it will "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'" Space exploration company Planetary Resources will be unveiled in a conference call on Tuesday, April 24th. Besides the audacious announcement, which promises to "overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," what makes this unique is its high-profile support group. The venture is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others.

Planetary_resources_medium

We're left to ponder, however, what Planetary Resources will actually do. Technology Review speculates that the project is an asteroid mining operation, reasoning that the other natural resources we need — an Earth-like habitat and supply of fossil fuels — aren't going to be found in space any time soon. Looking at the evidence, asteroid mining seems pretty likely at this point, especially since X Prize founder and perpetual optimist Peter Diamandis is at the head of the operation. In 2005, Diamandis appeared at TED describing an extraterrestrial environment where "everything we hold of value on this planet — metal and minerals and real estate and energy" are available in "infinite quantities." He specifically singled out asteroid mining, claiming that he could finance mining a "20 trillion dollar" asteroid full of nickel-iron alloy by speculating in the precious metals market.

The three other members listed — entrepreneur Eric Anderson, astronaut Tom Jones, and former NASA mission manager Chris Lewicki — will almost certainly affect the project, but it's more difficult to tie their work to a potential goal. Eric Anderson's experience is primarily in space tourism, which could create a new industry but probably wouldn't add up to trillions of dollars, and Jones and Lewicki have stayed mum on any grand plans.

Next week, we'll be finding out for certain what's going on, and then Planetary Resources will have to start actually making good on its impressive claims. The event will apparently be streamed, and tickets are being sold on the Museum of Flight's page, although the information there makes no mention of a new company.

Quote from: Jaron on April 19, 2012, 01:30:05 AM
Why does this excite you so much, Tim?

Quote from: Jaron on April 19, 2012, 01:37:03 AM
Industrialization is about making money, and space travel is too expensive to be profitable right now. Unless they find a solid gold asteroid, I don't see how this could work and be profitable.

Quote from: Tamas on April 19, 2012, 02:03:23 AM
Robonauts, on-site factories, and in general, yeah, sure it will be complicated at first. What wasn't? With your attitude, you would be hunting the enemy tribe in the jungle with a club, as nobody would have bothered to try and cross the Atlantic :P

QuoteAsteroid 1986 DA achieved its most notable recognition when scientists revealed that it contained over "10,000 tons of gold and 100,000 tons of platinum", or an approximate value at the time of its discovery of "$90 billion for the gold and a cool trillion dollars for the platinum, plus loose change for the asteroid's 10 billion tons of iron and a billion tons of nickel."

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on April 19, 2012, 03:27:16 AM
Do we have enough platinum in circulation for 100,000 tons to retain its value?  :hmm:

Quote from: Neil on April 19, 2012, 07:48:54 AM
Tamas, why would anyone be interested in zero-G factories when Chinese ones are more cost-effective?  Hell, it'd even be cheaper to use expensive, First World unionized labour with untenable pensions than it would be to use robots in space.

This seems like a plan to bilk Cameron and Google out of some money, because the technology for asteroid mining is still a long ways away, and the space travel industry has pretty much stagnated.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 19, 2012, 08:03:28 AM

Quote from: Neil on April 19, 2012, 07:48:54 AM
Tamas, why would anyone be interested in zero-G factories when Chinese ones are more cost-effective?  Hell, it'd even be cheaper to use expensive, First World unionized labour with untenable pensions than it would be to use robots in space.

This seems like a plan to bilk Cameron and Google out of some money, because the technology for asteroid mining is still a long ways away, and the space travel industry has pretty much stagnated.

Google will be able to drop asteroids on their Chinese competitors while they hold the rest of the world ransom. Google will then rule the world with an iron fist big brother style using all the personal information they've stored on their servers.

QuoteSpaceX Is "Go" for First ISS Visit
Yesterday NASA gave SpaceX the green light for a planned April 30 launch of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. If it works, SpaceX will become the first private company to send a craft to the space station, and will be one step closer to becoming NASA's next ticket to orbit.

By Michael Belfiore

SpaceX is now cleared to launch the first non-government vehicle to berth with the International Space Station. The launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft is set for April 30 from Cape Canaveral. If anything goes wrong, the next opportunity to launch will be on May 3.

NASA and its partners in the International Space Station approved the launch plan during yesterday's Flight Readiness Review, or FRR. This is the biggest milestone in a six-year program by NASA to use private launch companies to send first supplies and then crew to the ISS.

Asked at a news conference yesterday to evaluate his company's chances of success, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said, "I think we've got a pretty good shot, but I think it's worth emphasizing that there is a lot that can go wrong on a mission like this, because you've got to have the success of the rocket and you've got to have the success of the spacecraft." The Falcon 9 rocket has flown successfully to orbit twice before, the Dragon once. But this will be the first test of the Dragon's new solar panels and its autonomous docking system.

Originally planned as two separate missions, this month's flight will test Dragon's ability to do a close "fly under" of the space station from a distance of about 1.5 miles. If all goes well, SpaceX controllers in Hawthorne, Calif., will coordinate with NASA controllers in Houston and the space station crew to bring the Dragon closer to the station in preparation for docking.

If there are no big surprises, on the morning of May 3, the space station crew will grapple the Dragon with the station's Canadian-supplied robotic arm and guide it the rest of the way to dock with the Earth-facing side of the station's Harmony node. The spacecraft will then spend 18 days berthed to the station while the crew transfers 1148 pounds of astronaut provisions and hardware to the station, and repacks the Dragon with 1455 pounds of hardware for recovery and refurbishment after the craft undocks and returns for splashdown off the California coast. If the entire mission is a success, it will open the door to at least 12 ISS cargo missions for SpaceX and a $1.6 billion contract from NASA for those deliveries.

Musk said that SpaceX's biggest challenge in these last two weeks before the launch is the final software testing. "Essentially we have a complete representation of the Dragon's avionics system on a bench," he said, "and it flies a simulated mission. It's sort of like a brain-in-a-tub thing. It actually thinks it flew to the space station, and we watch to see what it did. Does it do all the right things on the way to get there? If it doesn't, then where did it go wrong? And what happens if we unplug certain devices, essentially simulating failure at the worst possible moment?"

Overall, Musk said, SpaceX has spent about $1 billion designing, building, and testing the all-new rocket engines, rockets, and spacecraft to be used in the launch and ISS berthing attempt later this month. Of that, $381 million has come from NASA. (Comparatively, the space shuttle cost about $1.5 billion per launch with development costs factored in.) NASA has been providing seed money to seven companies for development of commercial space transportation technology, but SpaceX is the clear frontrunner, with the only rocket and vehicle ready for launch. Its closest competitor, Orbital Sciences Corporation, plans to launch its first flight test later this year.

"SpaceX wouldn't have been able to get started without the amazing work that NASA has done in the past," Musk said at the press conference, "and we wouldn't have gotten this far without the help of NASA, so I'd like to be real clear in expressing my appreciation for that. I'd also express an appreciation to the American public, who are ultimately funding this."

NASA certainly has its fingers crossed for SpaceX's success, because the agency's need for a new way to get back and forth from the ISS is more urgent than ever. With the space shuttle's retirement last year and NASA's next-gen Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (formerly Orion) still years away from flight, NASA relies on Russian Soyuz rockets to bring crews up and down from the station. Unmanned craft such as the Russian Progress, European Automated Transfer Vehicles, and Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicles can ferry supplies, but no vehicle can currently bring back equipment and scientific experiments—the existing cargo vehicles burn up in the atmosphere after separating from the station. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft promise to bring a new capability to the station: a cargo craft that can return intact, and the cargo version that will fly first is very similar in design to the planned crew version.

And there's another reason NASA's excited about private space, according to Michael Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager, "NASA needs to . . . help development of the commercial capability to support low Earth orbit both in terms of cargo and humans and other capabilities—robotic servicing, things like that—and NASA needs to start focusing on human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Those of us who are looking forward to the next step for NASA really are very excited about this next step for the space station."

Michael Belfiore is the author of Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space, and is a regular contributor to Popular Mechanics.

Read more: SpaceX Is "Go" for First ISS Visit - SpaceX International Space Station - Popular Mechanics

Quote from: katmai on April 19, 2012, 04:54:12 AM
I fully support this if it means we get to shoot Tim up there.

Quote from: Neil on April 19, 2012, 07:48:54 AM
Tamas, why would anyone be interested in zero-G factories when Chinese ones are more cost-effective?  Hell, it'd even be cheaper to use expensive, First World unionized labour with untenable pensions than it would be to use robots in space.

This seems like a plan to bilk Cameron and Google out of some money, because the technology for asteroid mining is still a long ways away, and the space travel industry has pretty much stagnated.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on April 19, 2012, 03:36:09 AM
Well, it'd be a problem for people holding the metals in question, but I was thinking more of the accuracy of the value estimates on the asteroid.

Quote from: Jaron on April 19, 2012, 01:37:03 AM
Industrialization is about making money, and space travel is too expensive to be profitable right now. Unless they find a solid gold asteroid, I don't see how this could work and be profitable.

Quote from: grumbler on April 19, 2012, 11:40:28 AM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on April 19, 2012, 03:36:09 AM
Well, it'd be a problem for people holding the metals in question, but I was thinking more of the accuracy of the value estimates on the asteroid.

:lol:  Someone spotted the elephant in the room!

QuoteBut a source who spoke to Diamandis about his venture — and did not want to be identified because the discussion was private — confirmed to The Huffington Post that Planetary Resources does, in fact, plan to mine asteroids for precious raw materials.

Quote from: Neil on April 19, 2012, 07:48:54 AM
Tamas, why would anyone be interested in zero-G factories when Chinese ones are more cost-effective?  Hell, it'd even be cheaper to use expensive, First World unionized labour with untenable pensions than it would be to use robots in space.

This seems like a plan to bilk Cameron and Google out of some money, because the technology for asteroid mining is still a long ways away, and the space travel industry has pretty much stagnated.

Quote from: Jaron on April 20, 2012, 10:29:52 PM
Certain medical procedures would be a lot less risky in zero grav conditions, but a lot more expensive. And Obamacare doesn't cover trips to the moon.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on April 21, 2012, 04:13:12 AM

Quote from: Jaron on April 20, 2012, 10:29:52 PM
Certain medical procedures would be a lot less risky in zero grav conditions, but a lot more expensive. And Obamacare doesn't cover trips to the moon.

the moon isn't zero-g :p

Quote from: Neil on April 21, 2012, 09:53:31 AM
Nowhere is, really.  What people used to call zero-g is today called microgravity.

Quote from: Ideologue on April 19, 2012, 02:18:58 AM
Now, solar power satellites, that would be compelling.

Quote from: Iormlund on April 21, 2012, 11:26:51 AM
That's the most interesting use I see for space-mining. Low grav also has advantages for certain manufacturing processes as well.

Quote from: DontSayBanana on April 22, 2012, 09:25:47 AM

Quote from: Iormlund on April 21, 2012, 11:26:51 AM
That's the most interesting use I see for space-mining. Low grav also has advantages for certain manufacturing processes as well.

Sure, but there'd have to be insane amounts of shuttling- low or zero gravity might be advantageous for some manufacturing processes, but it seems like most of our material refinement processes are heavily reliant on gravity feed.  Can you imagine the pain in the ass of trying to refine iron or steel in zero gravity?  Do we even have good materials for enclosing a smelting process to keep the molten metal from going everywhere?

QuoteTech Billionaires Plan Audacious Mission to Mine Asteroids

    By Adam Mann
    Email Author
    April 23, 2012 |
    7:45 pm |
    Categories: Space

There's gold in them there hills. You know, those ones floating around in space. Asteroids contain many tons of precious metals, making them irresistible to scientists, aerospace engineers, futurists, fiction writers ... and tech billionaires.

A group of wealthy, adventurous entrepreneurs will announce on Apr. 24 a new venture called Planetary Resources, Inc., which plans to send swarms of robots to space to scout asteroids for precious metals and set up mines to bring resources back to Earth, in the process adding trillions of dollars to the global GDP, helping ensure humanity's prosperity and paving the way for the human settlement of space.

"The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system," said Eric Anderson, who founded the commercial space tourism company Space Adventures, and is co-founder of a new company along with Peter Diamandis, who started the X Prize foundation, which offers prize-based incentives for advanced technology development.

Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 150 feet in diameter orbit near the Earth. Some could contain as much platinum as is mined in an entire year on Earth, making them potentially worth several billion dollars each. The right kinds of investment could reap huge rewards for those willing to take the risk.

Outside of NASA, Anderson and Diamandis are among the most likely candidates to realize such a dream. Space Adventures has sent seven private tourists to the International Space Station while the Ansari X Prize led to a spurt of non-governmental manned spaceships.

"We have a long track record of making large-scale space ventures real," said Diamandis.

Despite the promise of astronomical profits, the long time-scales and uncertain return on asteroid mining has historically driven most investors away from such undertakings. But the new company is also backed by a number of other billionaire luminaries, including Google's CEO Larry Page and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, former Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr. The venture also counts on filmmaker James Cameron, former astronaut Tom Jones, former JPL engineer Chris Lewicki, and planetary scientist Sara Seager as advisers.

Still, this new undertaking will be much larger and more ambitious than anything Anderson and Diamandis have attempted before. The hurdles are many and high. While the endeavor is technically feasible, the technology has not yet been developed. And beyond their initial steps, the details of Planetary Resources' plans remain scarce.

The first hurdle will likely be ensuring that Planetary Resources has covered all its legal bases. While some have argued that governments need to set up specific property rights before investors will make use of space, the majority of space lawyers agree that this isn't necessary to assure the opportunity for a return on investment, said space policy analyst Henry Hertzfeld at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Mining occurs in international seabeds — even without specific property rights — overseen by a special commission dedicated to the task, he said. A similar arrangement would likely work in space.

In terms of extraction, Planetary Resources hopes to go after the platinum-group metals — which include platinum, palladium, osmium, and iridium — highly valuable commodities used in medical devices, renewable energy products, catalytic converters, and potentially in automotive fuel cells.

Platinum alone is worth around $23,000 a pound — nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.

Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources' Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes will figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.

Within five to seven years, the company hopes to send out a small swarm of similar spacecraft for a more detailed prospecting mission, mapping out a valuable asteroid in detail and identifying rich resource veins. They estimate such a mission will cost between $25 and 30 million.

The next step — using robots to remotely mine, possibly refine ore, and return material to Earth safely — is probably the toughest phase, and Planetary Resources is still tight-lipped about its plans here.

This is an unprecedented challenge — the only asteroid material ever returned to Earth comes from the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa spacecraft, which successfully returned a few hundred dust particles from asteroid 25143 Itokawa in 2010.

One possibility might be to find a useful asteroid and push it closer to Earth. A fairly low-power solar-electric ion engine could nudge a hunk of rock into orbit around the Earth, effectively creating a small second moon that could be easily accessed.

A recent white paper (.pdf) written by a team of scientists and engineers for the Keck Institute for Space Studies looked at exactly this proposition in order to use an asteroid for scientific and manned exploration. The team concluded that the technology exists, though such a plan would need at least $2.6 billion in funding. If Planetary Resources went this route, it would rack up a large initial investment, which doesn't include actually mining and returning material back to Earth, potentially adding many hundreds more millions of dollars.

"It's one thing to understand the mining and refining processes and another thing to actually build it," said JPL engineer John Brophy, who co-authored the paper. "And everything in space tends to be harder than you think it will be."

Another option to simplify the process might be to bring the ore back to Earth for refining, though that presents its own set of challenges. Say for the sake of argument that you send a 5,500-pound robot (roughly the weight of a small car) to an asteroid and it can mine and carry back 100 times its own weight in asteroid material. On most asteroids, chopping up a one-ton chunk of regolith will generate less than an ounce of platinum. Even asteroids with the highest concentration of platinum yield only about two ounces of platinum per ton.

This means that with the current commodity prices, each of your robot miners will generate about $875,000, even on an asteroid with the highest platinum amounts. Given a mission cost that is at least hundreds of millions of dollars, it wouldn't be advantageous to refine ore on Earth.

There are also unknown financial aspects of a successful asteroid mining operation. The sudden influx of hundreds of tons of platinum into Earth's economy would certainly drive the commodity's price down. Looking at historical analogues, the enormous gold and silver reserves the Spanish inherited from their New World conquests led to terrible inflation and possibly the decline of their empire.

But Planetary Resources sees a platinum price drop as one of its potential goals.

"I would be overjoyed as a company if we brought back so much platinum that the price fell by a factor of 20 or 50," said Anderson.

Aluminum was incredibly expensive in the 1800s, before new technology allowed it to be easily separated from its ore, said Diamandis. Today, aluminum is used in hundreds of applications, something that Anderson and Diamandis would like to see happen to the platinum-group metals.

While mining platinum and other rare metals is Planetary Resource's way of bringing wealth to Earth, the world still has ample reserves of such material — South African platinum mines alone are expected to produce for another 300 years.

"In my view, its questionable how the economics of asteroid-retrieval works if you're going to bring it to the ground," said Brophy. "It makes more sense if you're going to use the materials in space."

Asteroids contain one substance that is of extremely high value for astronauts: water. Water can be used for drinking and it can be broken into its constituents. Oxygen is valuable for life support in space-based habitats, while liquid oxygen and hydrogen are both used to produce rocket fuel.

Rather than having to lug all the fuel for a mission out of Earth's deep gravity well — an expensive proposition — having a "gas station" in space could help enable missions to Mars and beyond. Such a refueling depot might allow people to permanently live and work in space, another goal of Planetary Resources.

Of course, this creates a sort of chicken-and-egg problem. Do you generate tons of resources for your nonexistent space civilization first or do you get your space civilization started and then utilize the available resources?

Wired Science's resident space historian David S. Portree thinks asteroid mining might make more sense when we have a more established space-based habitats with a different economy and better technology.

"Right now it would be like a big oil tanker dropping anchor off the coast of medieval England," he said. "The medieval English might identify the oil as a useful commodity, but wouldn't be able use enough to profit the tanker crew. Heck, they wouldn't know how to get it off the tanker, except in wooden pails and rowboats."

mage: 1) Artist rendition of a robotic mining mission to a near-Earth asteroid. NASA/Denise Watt. 2) A mock-up of the Arkyd-101 Space Telescope. Planetary Resources, Inc. 3) Manned exploration of an asteroid pushed into lunar orbit, from a recent KISS white paper. NASA/AMA, Inc. 4) Prices for various metals. Aluminum is $0.026/oz, barely registering on the chart.

Video: Robot miners rove over the surface of an asteroid, extracting resources. Planetary Resource, Inc.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 23, 2012, 07:55:14 PM
While the endeavor is technically feasible, the technology has not yet been developed.

Quote from: Monoriu on April 24, 2012, 04:33:25 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 23, 2012, 07:55:14 PM
While the endeavor is technically feasible, the technology has not yet been developed.

I don't understand this sentence.  I have this much money, but I need to earn it first? :unsure:

Quote from: Neil on April 24, 2012, 07:55:15 AM
Private companies should not under any circumstances be allowed to move asteroids.

Quote from: Tonitrus on April 25, 2012, 01:55:45 AM
Those numbers are crap, because once you bring in that $2.9 trillion-platinum asteroid, the platinum will no longer be anywhere near worth that much.

Quote from: Tonitrus on April 25, 2012, 02:12:14 AM
Which doesn't change the fact that the fancy chart is bunk on the value of a platinum asteroid.

So the mission to mine the platinum asteroid will probably lose money...but at least we'll be able to drink diet soda from platinum cans.

Quote from: Tonitrus on April 25, 2012, 02:12:14 AM
Which doesn't change the fact that the fancy chart is bunk on the value of a platinum asteroid.

So the mission to mine the platinum asteroid will probably lose money...but at least we'll be able to drink diet soda from platinum cans.

QuoteDoes Asteroid Mining Violate Space Law?

Several well-known billionaires are forming the new company Planetary Resources with plans to send a robotic spacecraft to mine precious metals from an asteroid and bring them back to Earth. Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and their business partners say the enterprise will "add trillions to the global GDP."

But to whom do those trillions belong — the company, or everyone? Does a private company have a right to stake claim to an asteroid, or are celestial bodies such as the moon, planets and asteroids the communal property of all Earthlings?

"The law on this is not settled and not clear," said Henry Hertzfeld, professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University. "There are lots of opinions on the status here, and nobody is necessarily right because it's complicated."

The legal ambiguity hasn't needed to be addressed before, Hertzfeld said, because no company has previously come forward with a serious asteroid mining mission plan and the funds to back it. When the debate over space property rights is forced to ensue, old international wounds will likely be reopened.


The most pertinent piece of law is the Outer Space Treaty (OST), an agreement signed or ratified by all spacefaring nations in 1967, which established, among other things, that no nation may claim sovereignty over space, the moon or celestial bodies. The treaty was intended to protect the rights of lesser developed nations that did not yet have the ability to explore space, and to prevent the U.S. or the Soviet Union — whichever would go on to win the space race — from claiming sovereignty over the moon. However, the question of space resource exploitation is not explicitly addressed in the treaty, and interpretations of its words vary widely.

Art Dula, a space law professor at the University of Houston, believes private companies absolutely have the right to mine an asteroid. "The 1967 Outer Space Treaty specifically permits the 'use' of outer space by nongovernmental entities. There is no suggestion in the treaty that commercial or business use would be prohibited," Dula told Life's Little Mysteries. In his opinion, the treaty and a subsequent United Nations resolution established that national governments themselves are responsible for regulating the use of outer space of citizens and companies within their borders.

Thus, because the billionaires are American and forming their company in the United States, the U.S. government is charged with giving the go-ahead to the billionaires' bold new project, he said, and the Constitution ensures it will do so. The 10th Amendment — which states that all powers not delegated to the federal government, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people — means that the right to mine an asteroid belongs to the people."I am pleased to say that the American people and the corporations they form are presently free to conduct mining operations in outer space for commercial purposes, as this activity has not been made either illegal or regulated by the federal government or the several states," Dula said.

Not everyone agrees. Frank Lyall, public law professor at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and director of the International Institute of Space Law, and Paul Larsen, a space law expert and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, both interpret the OST as meaning that no one — neither a government, nor a person — can claim title to an asteroid, or the precious metals therein.

The point is proven by a 2001 court case, they said. In 2000, an American man named Gregory Nemitz registered a claim to the asteroid Eros. When NASA sent a satellite to investigate this asteroid soon after, Nemitz sent a letter to NASA telling the space agency to pay parking fees for landing the satellite on his property. "NASA declined and so did the U.S. Dept. of State," Larsen explained in an email. "The reason is that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Article II, specifically states 'outer space ... is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereign, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.'" [Images: Planetary Resources to Mine Asteroid Riches]

Thus, as the international law on the matter now stands, "an asteroid in outer space cannot be mined for the purpose of appropriation," Lyall wrote. "All the states whose nationals might mine are part of the 1967 [Outer Space] Treaty agreement and hence their national systems cannot provide the base of a title to the property."

With such polar opposite interpretations of the existing space law in play, another international agreement may be needed to address the question of space resource exploitation more directly — especially if or when the "Planetary Resources" enterprise becomes a reality. Many issues need to be settled, Hertzfeld said. "For example, how will they do it? How much insurance do they need? Are they allowed to leave junk behind on the asteroid? What would flooding the market with something that is rare on Earth do to the market? (The mined material might not get the market price they think it would because the price theoretically would go down.) So, there are so many issues needing to be addressed."

Nonetheless, in Hertzfeld's opinion, the property rights of corporations will probably ultimately trump the idealistic notion that space is the common property of humankind. "The bottom line is if someone wants to risk the money, take the time, thinks they have a business case, it is probably possible to do it," he said.

And if space resources belong to everyone, then no one is going to develop them anyway, said Dula, who is also confident that a U.S. court case would ultimately end in favor of a private company, granting them the right to mine an asteroid.

"We have to have some sort of system that allows people to develop wealth," he said. "We need these resources, and it's going to be really interesting to see how the law develops as these questions become reality. The other thing is, it costs so much just to get up there. You have to get a gang of billionaires together to even talk about this stuff."

Regardless of where they stand, the experts agree on one thing: The debate over who owns space is going to heat up in the not-too-distant future.
Date: 24 April 2012 Time: 02:05 PM ET

Quote from: Tamas on April 25, 2012, 03:02:02 AM
Look at all the bitter and negative people here.

for your grandkids, an industrialized solar system will be as natural as hopping on a New York - Paris flight for you.
Enjoy that you see the first uncertain steps of that future.

Quote from: Tamas on April 25, 2012, 03:02:02 AM
Look at all the bitter and negative people here.

for your grandkids, an industrialized solar system will be as natural as hopping on a New York - Paris flight for you.
Enjoy that you see the first uncertain steps of that future.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 25, 2012, 10:55:53 AM

Quote from: Tamas on April 25, 2012, 03:02:02 AM
Look at all the bitter and negative people here.

for your grandkids, an industrialized solar system will be as natural as hopping on a New York - Paris flight for you.
Enjoy that you see the first uncertain steps of that future.

My Grandparents could fly New York - Paris.  There is a difference though.  Paris isn't a lifeless chunk of rock.  I think a better analogy would be human colonization of the Antarctic.  The technology to go to the antarctic is fairly recent but most people still don't go there, cause there is nothing there.

Quote from: The Brain on April 26, 2012, 12:59:50 PM
Isn't the core of Neptune made of diamond? If we manage to mine that shit no one will ever have to work again.

Quote from: Tamas on April 25, 2012, 03:02:02 AM
Look at all the bitter and negative people here.

for your grandkids, an industrialized solar system will be as natural as hopping on a New York - Paris flight for you.
Enjoy that you see the first uncertain steps of that future.

Quote from: Neil on April 26, 2012, 01:35:52 PM

Quote from: Tamas on April 25, 2012, 03:02:02 AM
Look at all the bitter and negative people here.

for your grandkids, an industrialized solar system will be as natural as hopping on a New York - Paris flight for you.
Enjoy that you see the first uncertain steps of that future.

No, they'll be dead from when some Arab dropped an asteroid onto civilization.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on April 26, 2012, 01:43:35 PM

Quote from: Neil on April 26, 2012, 01:35:52 PM

Quote from: Tamas on April 25, 2012, 03:02:02 AM
Look at all the bitter and negative people here.

for your grandkids, an industrialized solar system will be as natural as hopping on a New York - Paris flight for you.
Enjoy that you see the first uncertain steps of that future.

No, they'll be dead from when some Arab dropped an asteroid onto civilization.

That's why you should invest in an orbital home before then.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on April 26, 2012, 01:54:14 PM
I suspect it might be cheaper to build your own self-sustaining space station than to prevent unauthorized launches anywhere in the world for decades on end.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 26, 2012, 07:52:04 PM
I wonder how a space station could self sustaining.  Would you raise space crops?

Quote from: Razgovory on April 26, 2012, 07:52:04 PM
I wonder how a space station could self sustaining.  Would you raise space crops?

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 26, 2012, 07:56:18 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on April 26, 2012, 07:52:04 PM
I wonder how a space station could self sustaining.  Would you raise space crops?

Of course.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/oneillcylinder.htm
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dontpaniconline.com%2Fmedia%2Fmagazine%2Fbody%2F2012-04-01%2Fimages%2Fcylinders.jpg&hash=39d3e2cfc0b0720c3bee24b87ecef3c1a92594ef)

Quote
Wannabe astronaut looks to asteroids

Eric Anderson launched tourists into space on Russian rockets at 23. Now he wants to go out of this world for minerals


    Rupert Neate,    
        guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 July 2012 20.59 BST   
        Jump to comments (48)


For as long as he can remember Eric Anderson wanted to become an astronaut. But knew his short-sightedness would prevent him from joining Nasa.

Instead, he has made it his mission to take others into space. He kick-started the space tourism industry at the age of 23 – so far his company, Space Adventures, has sent seven people (all multimillionaires) into space on Russian rockets – and is now planning a 17-day trip for two around the moon. At $125m (£81m) a seat, it will probably be the most expensive joyride ever. "It's more than a theme-park ride," he says.

One mega-rich customer has already signed up for the trip and Anderson says he's "pretty close" to publicly announcing who has paid to go on holiday to the moon, within four years. He assures those with memories of disastrous camping holidays in close confines that the soon-to-be space travellers "will get along just fine" in the tiny spacecraft.

Anderson, who developed his love of space from stargazing in the Rocky mountains as a child but whose hopes of becoming an astronaut were dashed when his vision seriously deteriorated in his teens, would love to go on the trip. But he hasn't, yet, got enough money.

He reckons he's worked out where he's going to make the millions needed to fund his own mission to the moon: space, of course. Turning mineral-rich asteroids into the next frontier of mining, to be more precise.

It may sound like an idea that came to him while watching Bruce Willis in Armageddon, but Anderson, who read aerospace engineering at university, is deadly serious and has got a string of serious businessmen – including Google bosses Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Titanic director James Cameron, and Ross Perot Jr (son of the former presidential candidate) – to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into his new company, Planetary Resources.

A "$100bn global mining company", which Anderson refuses to name, has also signed a deal to secure rights to the first minerals the company recovers.

"You say it's impractical, but people thought it was impractical to put private citizens on rockets – and we did that," Anderson says during a visit to the UK to tap up interest among London's growing community of billionaires.

"There's no humans in the loop here. We send robots five miles below the ocean to pump out oil – that's more difficult than this is," he says.

The first stage of the project – sending up hundreds of rockets with telescopes to find the best asteroids – should be underway within two years. The rockets will piggyback on Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic spacecraft.

"When we have a set of them [space telescopes], we will use them to create a constellation of telescopes which will be able to explore the near-Earth asteroids," he says. "There are 500,000 to 1m of them."

Anderson says the asteroids, which range in size from 10 metres to 50km, are full of expensive metals – gold, silver, diamonds – "all that fun stuff".

Of most interest to Anderson are the asteroids' huge reserves of platinum, the world's most expensive metal, in some cases "100 to 1,000 times more concentrated" than in platinum mines on earth.

"You have to go back to very beginning of the solar system, to understand why," he explains. "Asteroids were formed at the beginning of the solar system hundreds of millions of years ago - they are planetary cores, basically. The Earth has lots of these metals, but they all sink to the middle, here [on asteroids] all the super-heavy materials have sunk together."

Anderson says some of the asteroids contain so much platinum that one 50-metre-long asteroid could contain "$40bn worth of platinum group metals if you can bring it back to earth".

And that is the difficulty with his ambitious plan. It will be tricky and expensive to reach the asteroids, and even harder and more costly to bring the metal haul back to earth.

Anderson, who claims to have the backing of the White House for his out-of-this world plan, reckons his team of 40 mostly ex-Nasa scientists and engineers have already worked out how to reach the asteroids, but concedes figuring out how to make the return journey will still take quite a bit of work. "15% of them are easier to reach than the moon," he says. "And don't forget you also have to land on the moon – the gravity field of asteroids is so small that you just have to dock with them."

Planetary Resources' chief engineer is Chris Lewicki, Nasa's former Mars mission manager, or as Anderson describes him: "The guy who landed three spacecraft on Mars."

He says: "They've done all this before. Actually, what they did was much harder, they had to land on a planet that's got an atmosphere, is rotating and is hard to see [because of the atmosphere].

He says that the company has put working out how to get the metals back to Earth on the back burner for now. "Eventually we would like to bring the material back to Earth, but the very first thing we will do is use the resources on them to create fuel depots in space."

He says ice deposits on some asteroids could be converted into rocket fuel (by breaking up water by hydrolysis) so that future space rockets can refuel and explore deep into the final frontier.

"We'll put gas stations up there to make it a lot easier and cheaper to explore space," he says. "Getting from Earth's orbit is one thing, but if you want to get a rocket to Mars you have to bring all the fuel with you – imagine if you had to drive from New York to Los Angeles and had to bring all the fuel for the trip with you.

"It will be a game changer in terms of opening up space." The "gas stations" will also greatly expand Planetary Resources platinum prospecting, and the possibilities of getting the resources back to Earth.

"Once you've got gas stations in space you can move asteroids about. Once you've found a 50-metre platinum-rich asteroid that's got $40bn of platinum-group metals you can bring it back," he says. "The fuel is basically free. We will use the sun's energy to heat it up and then when you separate it all out you can take the metal back to Earth."

Though he admits it will cost "hundreds of millions of dollars" just to find the right asteroids, Anderson says the value of the platinum from just one asteroid will be enough to cover the cost of the whole project. "All of the platinum mined in the history of humanity would fit in the corner of this room," he says pointing to a small corner of the lobby of the five-star Connaught Hotel in Mayfair. "There is so little of it out there [on Earth], and so much up there in space."

However, he concedes that if he is able to bring back huge quantities of platinum it is likely to lead to a crash in the price of the metal, which is used in catalytic converters, electronics, fuel cells and jewellery.

"If the price of platinum group metals dropped by a 100 times we would still make money," he says. "We think we can produce platinum for about $300 an ounce." It is currently trading at about $1,400 an ounce.

He also counters fears that bringing back so many cheap metals to Earth will lead to a spike in pollution. "Would you rather we dig up all the mountains we've got left on Earth to get to the last 5% left there or go to space find a rock that's 30m miles away, chew it up completely and use everything that's on it," he asks. "There's no life on these objects – it's just rocks."Another problem his ambitious project could throw up is who owns space and its resources. Could it lead to an international fight for control as witnessed in Antarctica and the Arctic?

"Nobody owns it right now," Anderson says. "If we get to it we basically own it – that's the long and short of it."

But is that really fair on poorer countries that haven't even thought of exploiting space?

"Yeah, if you go out into the ocean and go fishing nobody says they own all the fish in the ocean. If you build a boat and go out and catch a fish, you own it."

Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 26, 2012, 12:26:05 AM
So jealous.  :cry:

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 26, 2012, 12:31:56 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 26, 2012, 12:26:05 AM
So jealous.  :cry:

Not me. Plane rides are annoying enough.

Quote from: Caliga on July 26, 2012, 05:15:38 AM
I didn't realize this was a zombie thread and was going to post 'Tim, relax' in it till I scrolled through it and saw I'd already made that exact same post when it was first created. :lol:

Quote from: Neil on April 26, 2012, 08:00:05 PM
Not only is it impractical, but it's also exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

Quote from: Faeelin on July 26, 2012, 07:32:14 AM

Quote from: Neil on April 26, 2012, 08:00:05 PM
Not only is it impractical, but it's also exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

This is a feature, not a bug. We send everyone who supports space colonization to it and wait.

Quote from: derspiess on April 26, 2012, 01:10:14 PM

Quote from: The Brain on April 26, 2012, 12:59:50 PM
Isn't the core of Neptune made of diamond? If we manage to mine that shit no one will ever have to work again.

:lol:

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 26, 2012, 12:31:56 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 26, 2012, 12:26:05 AM
So jealous.  :cry:

Not me. Plane rides are annoying enough.

Quote from: crazy canuck on April 25, 2012, 10:55:04 AM
Space Law - a niche for marty? :hmm:

Quote from: Siege on July 26, 2012, 09:42:07 PM
I wanna be the Master Chief.

Quote from: Razgovory on July 26, 2012, 11:45:05 PM

Quote from: Siege on July 26, 2012, 09:42:07 PM
I wanna be the Master Chief.

I think you have to join the Navy or something.

Quote from: Siege on July 26, 2012, 09:42:07 PM
I wanna be the Master Chief.

Quote from: Scipio on July 28, 2012, 01:50:30 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on July 26, 2012, 11:45:05 PM

Quote from: Siege on July 26, 2012, 09:42:07 PM
I wanna be the Master Chief.

I think you have to join the Navy or something.

He's got a better shot at being Master Chef.

QuoteA new venture dubbed Deep Space Industries is jumping into the marketplace for asteroid mining — joining a billionaire-backed company called Planetary Resources in what they hope will eventually turn into a trillion-dollar business.

In a press advisory, Deep Space Industries says it will create "the world's first fleet of commercial asteroid-prospecting spacecraft." The venture also promises to develop a "breakthrough process for manufacturing in space."

"Deep Space is pursuing an aggressive schedule and plans on prospecting, harvesting and processing asteroids for use in space and to benefit Earth," the company said in a press advisory. Further details came out in a news release issued early Tuesday, and a news briefing is scheduled for 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) Tuesday at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying in California. The briefing will be webcast via Spacevidcast and YouTube.

Deep Space's CEO is David Gump, who has been involved in other space-themed companies including LunaCorp, which aimed to send rovers to the moon and also helped arrange one of the first TV commercials in orbit; Transformational Space, one of the early players in NASA's commercialization effort; and Astrobotic, one of the teams going after the Google Lunar X Prize.

The company's chairman is Rick Tumlinson, who was involved in founding the Space Frontier Foundation as well as private space ventures such as Space Diving and Orbital Outfitters. Geoff Notkin, host of the Science Channel's "Meteorite Men" TV series, announced that he'd join the venture as well.

Financial questions
One of the key questions relates to the venture's financial backing: Theoretically, mining the right kind of asteroid could produce precious metals worth sending back to Earth, such as platinum, gold and rare-earth minerals. Some asteroids also contain water ice that can be converted into fuel and supplies for space travel and settlement. Under the right conditions, such resources could be worth trillions of dollars a year. But it would cost billions of dollars to identify and exploit those resources.

To cover such costs, Planetary Resources recruited a big-name investment group that includes Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, software executive and spaceflier Charles Simonyi, Texan billionaire Ross Perot Jr. and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ram Shriram. Planetary Resources also has a business plan that involves selling its Arkyd space telescopes as the first step toward profitability.

When Planetary Resources had its coming-out party last year, that company's executives said they planned to launch their first hardware in the 2013-2014 time frame. In a technical update released on Monday, the company's president, Chris Lewicki, didn't provide details about the launch schedule. But he did say there were "a number of exciting upcoming events," and indicated that the venture was currently concentrating on the development of low-cost prototype telescopes.
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"With each new prototype build, we're learning a lot about how to strip cost out of the assembly, integration and test process, and that will be incredibly valuable when we start mass production of the units destined for space," Lewicki said.

It's not yet clear whether Deep Space Industries will end up being a competitor for Planetary Resources — or a customer. But as with most outer-space ventures, the venture's financial underpinnings will be as much a key to success as its technological vision.

Update for 1:30 a.m. ET Jan. 22: Deep Space Industries provided more details in this voluminous news release:

    "Deep Space Industries announced today that it will send a fleet of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft out into the solar system to hunt for resources to accelerate space development to benefit Earth. These 'FireFly' spacecraft utilize low-cost cubesat components and get discounted delivery to space by ride-sharing on the launch of larger communications satellites.

    "'This is the first commercial campaign to explore the small asteroids that pass by Earth,' said Deep Space Chairman Rick Tumlinson (who signed up the world's first space tourist, led the team that took over the Mir space station, was a Founding Trustee of the X Prize, and Founded Orbital Outfitters, the world's first commercial space suit company.) 'Using low-cost technologies, and combining the legacy of our space program with the innovation of today's young high-tech geniuses, we will do things that would have been impossible just a few years ago.'

    "FireFlies mass about 55 pounds (25 kilograms) and will first be launched in 2015 on journeys of two to six months. Deep Space will be building a small fleet of the spacecraft using innovative miniature technologies, and working with NASA and other companies and groups to identify targets of opportunity.

    "'My smartphone has more computing power than they had on the Apollo moon missions,' said Tumlinson. 'We can make amazing machines smaller, cheaper, and faster than ever before. Imagine a production line of FireFlies, cocked and loaded and ready to fly out to examine any object that gets near the Earth.'

    "Starting in 2016, Deep Space will begin launching 70-pound DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back samples. The DragonFly expeditions will take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return 60 to 150 pounds. Deep Space believes that combining science, prospecting and sponsorship will be a win/win for everyone, both lowering costs for exploration and enabling the public to join the adventure.

    "'The public will participate in FireFly and DragonFly missions via live feeds from Mission Control, online courses in asteroid mining sponsored by corporate marketers, and other innovative ways to open the doors wide,' said CEO David Gump. His earlier ventures include producing the first TV commercial shot on the International Space Station for RadioShack, co-founding Transformational Space Corp. (t/Space) and Astrobotic Technology Inc. 'The Google Lunar X Prize, Unilever, and Red Bull each are spending tens of millions of dollars on space sponsorships, so the opportunity to sponsor a FireFly expedition into deep space will be enticing.'

    "Bringing back asteroid materials is only a step on the way to much bigger things for DSI. The company has a patent-pending technology called the MicroGravity Foundry to transform raw asteroid material into complex metal parts. The MicroGravity Foundry is a 3-D printer that uses lasers to draw patterns in a nickel-charged gas medium, causing the nickel to be deposited in precise patterns.

    "'The MicroGravity Foundry is the first 3-D printer that creates high-density high-strength metal components even in zero gravity,' said Stephen Covey, a co-founder of DSI and inventor of the process. 'Other metal 3-D printers sinter powdered metal, which requires a gravity field and leaves a porous structure, or they use low-melting point metals with less strength.'

    "Senior leaders at NASA have been briefed on DSI's technologies, which would make eventual crewed Mars expeditions less expensive through the use of asteroid-derived propellant.  Missions would require fewer launches if the fuel to reach Mars were added in space from the volatiles in asteroids.  Mars missions also would be safer with a MicroGravity Foundry on board to print replacements for broken parts, or to create brand new parts invented after the expedition was on its way to the Red Planet.

    "'Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development,' said Gump. 'More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year. They can be like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century — a key resource located near where it was needed. In this case, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century. That is our strategy.'

    "For example, a large market for DSI is producing fuel for communications satellites. Low-cost asteroid propellant delivered in orbit to commsats will extend their working lifetimes, with each extra month worth $5 million to $8 million per satellite. DSI has executed a non-disclosure agreement with an aerospace company to discuss collaboration on this opportunity. In a decade, Deep Space will be harvesting asteroids for metals and other building materials, to construct large communications platforms to replace communications satellites, and later solar power stations to beam carbon-free energy to consumers on Earth. As DSI refines asteroids for in-space markets, it also will harvest platinum group metals for terrestrial uses, such as pollution control devices.

    "'Mining asteroids for rare metals alone isn't economical, but makes sense if you already are processing them for volatiles and bulk metals for in-space uses,' said Mark Sonter, a member of the DSI board of directors. Mr. Sonter combines experience in planning, permitting, and management of large and complex terrestrial mining projects with funded research into the development of asteroid resources. 'Turning asteroids into propellant and building materials damages no ecospheres since they are lifeless rocks left over from the formation of the solar system. Several hundred thousand that cross near Earth are available.'

    "Asteroids that fall to Earth are meteorites, and the Deep Space team includes Geoffrey Notkin, star of the international hit television series 'Meteorite Men' about hunting for them. Notkin has unparalleled expertise in the diversity and market value of these elusive rocks, which are transformed by intense heat during their plunge to the surface. By contrast, the initial asteroid samples to be brought back by Deep Space will have their original in-space composition and structure preserved, creating exceedingly rare specimens for sale to the research and collectors markets.

    "Deep Space is looking for customers and sponsors who want to be a part of creating this new space economy. The company believes that taking the long view, while creating value, opportunities and products in the near term will allow it to become one of the economic engines that opens space to humanity. By getting under way and taking calculated risks, while developing basic industrial technologies, DSI will be well positioned over time to supply the basic needs of life in space. Taking the idea of socially minded companies to a new level, DSI is literally reaching for the stars.

    "'We will only be visitors in space until we learn how to live off the land there,' concluded Tumlinson. 'This is the Deep Space mission — to find, harvest and process the resources of space to help save our civilization and support the expansion of humanity beyond the Earth — and doing so in a step-by-step manner that leverages off our space legacy to create an amazing and hopeful future for humanity. We are squarely focused on giving new generations the opportunity to change not only this world, but all the worlds of tomorrow. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?"

Quote from: Razgovory on January 22, 2013, 09:12:30 PM
Has Tim invested in it?

Quote from: Razgovory on January 22, 2013, 09:12:30 PM
Has Tim invested in it?

Quote from: LaCroix on February 13, 2013, 03:15:38 AM
i share tim's excitement in space adventures, but not his faith that they will actually occur within this lifetime :(

Quote from: Tamas on February 13, 2013, 03:56:43 AM

Quote from: LaCroix on February 13, 2013, 03:15:38 AM
i share tim's excitement in space adventures, but not his faith that they will actually occur within this lifetime :(

ESA planning lunar base

QuoteSenator says NASA to capture asteroid, park near moon
6p.m. EDT April 5, 2013
NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator revealed Friday.
asteroid

    The operation would allow astronauts to explore the asteroid
    Senator says asteroid project will be included in proposed 2014 federal budget
    Mission would be preparation for sending astronauts to Mars in 2030s

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator revealed Friday.

The robotic ship would capture the 500-ton 25-foot asteroid in 2019. Then using an Orion space capsule, now being developed, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth.

Nelson, who is chairman of the Senate science and space subcommittee, said Friday that President Obama is putting $100 million in planning money for the accelerated asteroid mission in the 2014 budget that comes out next week. The money would be used to find the right small asteroid.

"It really is a clever concept," Nelson said in a press conference in Orlando. "Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back."

While there are thousands of asteroids that size out there, finding the right one that comes by Earth at just the right time to be captured will not be easy, said Donald Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near Earth Object program that monitors close-by asteroids. He said once a suitable rock is found it would be captured with the space equivalent of "a baggie with a drawstring. You bag it. You attach the solar propulsion module to de-spin it and bring it back to where you want it."

Yeomans said a 25-foot asteroid is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earth's atmosphere. The mission as Nelson described is perfectly safe, he said.

Nelson said this would help NASA develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, he said.

The government document said the mission, with no price tag at the moment, would inspire because it "will send humans farther than they have ever been before."

QuoteSenator says NASA to capture asteroid, park near moon

QuoteBillionaire Teams Up With NASA to Mine the Moon
BY SUSAN CAMINITI

Moon Express, a Mountain View, California-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year, just took another step closer toward that lofty goal. Earlier this year, it became the first company to successfully test a prototype of a lunar lander at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The success of this test—and a series of others that will take place later this year—paves the way for Moon Express to send its lander to the moon in 2016, said company co-founder and chairman Naveen Jain.

Moon Express conducted its tests with the support of NASA engineers, who are sharing their deep well of lunar know-how with the company. The NASA lunar initiative—known as Catalyst—is designed to spur new commercial U.S. capabilities to reach the moon and tap into its considerable resources. In addition to Moon Express, NASA is also working with Astrobotic Technologies of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California, to develop commercial robotic spacecrafts.

Jain said Moon Express also recently signed an agreement to take over Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral. The historic launchpad will be used for Moon Express's lander development and flight-test operations. Before it was decommissioned, the launchpad was home to NASA's Atlas-Centaur rocket program and its Surveyor moon landers.

"Clearly, NASA has an amazing amount of expertise when it comes to getting to the moon, and it wants to pass that knowledge on to a company like ours that has the best chance of being successful," said Jain, a serial entrepreneur who also founded Internet companies Infospace and Intelius. He believes that the moon holds precious metals and rare minerals that can be brought back to help address Earth's energy, health and resource challenges.

Among the moon's vast riches: gold, cobalt, iron, palladium, platinum, tungsten and Helium-3, a gas that can be used in future fusion reactors to provide nuclear power without radioactive waste. "We went to the moon 50 years ago, yet today we have more computing power with our iPhones than the computers that sent men into space," Jain said. "That type of exponential technological growth is allowing things to happen that was never possible before."

An eye on the Google prize

Helping to drive this newfound interest in privately funded space exploration is the Google Lunar X Prize. It's a competition organized by the X Prize Foundation and sponsored by Google that will award $30 million to the first company that lands a commercial spacecraft on the moon, travels 500 meters across its surface and sends high-definition images and video back to Earth—all before the end of 2016.

Moon Express is already at the front of the pack. In January it was awarded a $1 million milestone prize from Google for being the only company in the competition so far to test a prototype of its lander. "Winning the X prize would be a great thing," said Jain. "But building a great company is the ultimate goal with us." When it comes to space exploration, he added, "it's clear that the baton has been passed from the government to the private sector."

Testing in stages

Jain said Moon Express has been putting its lunar lander through a series of tests at the space center. The successful outing earlier this year involved tethering the vehicle—which is the size of a coffee table—to a crane in order to safely test its control systems. "The reason we tethered it to the crane is because the last thing we wanted was the aircraft to go completely haywire and hurt someone," he said.

At the end of March, the company will conduct a completely free flight test with no tethering. The lander will take off from the pad, go up and sideways, then land back at the launchpad. "This is to test that the vehicle knows where to go and how to get back to the launchpad safely," Jain explained.

Read More: SpaceX, Elon Musk and the reusable rocket dream

Once all these tests are successfully completed, Jain said the lander—called MX-1—will be ready to travel to the moon. The most likely scenario is that it will be attached to a satellite that will take the lander into a low orbit over the Earth. From there the MX-1 will fire its own rocket, powered by hydrogen peroxide, and launch from that orbit to complete its travel to the moon's surface.

The lander's first mission is a one-way trip, meaning that it's not designed to travel back to the Earth, said Jain. "The purpose is to show that for the first time, a company has developed the technology to land softly on the moon," he said. "Landing on the moon is not the hard part. Landing softly is the hard part."

That's because even though the gravity of the moon is one-sixth that of the Earth's, the lander will still be traveling down to the surface of the moon "like a bullet," Jain explained. Without the right calculations to indicate when its rockets have to fire in order to slow it down, the lander would hit the surface of the moon and break into millions of pieces. "Unlike here on Earth, there's no GPS on the moon to tell us this, so we have to do all these calculations first," he said.

Looking ahead 15 or 20 years, Jain said he envisions a day when the moon is used as a sort of way station enabling easier travel for exploration to other planets. In the meantime, he said the lander's second and third missions could likely involve bringing precious metals, minerals and even moon rocks back to Earth. "Today, people look at diamonds as this rare thing on Earth," Jain said.

He added, "Imagine telling someone you love her by giving her the moon."

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 11, 2015, 02:41:22 AM
Such an exciting time to be alive!

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 11, 2015, 03:59:39 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 11, 2015, 02:41:22 AM
Such an exciting time to be alive!

Indeed. We can look forward to reality shows about people mining on the moon in addition to the ones we already have about people mining in Alaska and Greenland. Can't wait.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 11, 2015, 02:41:22 AM
Whoop Whoop!!! :w00t:

Such an exciting time to be alive!

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 12, 2015, 04:55:36 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 11, 2015, 02:41:22 AM
Whoop Whoop!!! :w00t:

Such an exciting time to be alive!

What exactly is so exciting about this?  They've built a prototype of a vehicle whose sole purpose is to demonstrate landing capability and perhaps send back images - both things that were accomplished by NASA over 45 years ago.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 12, 2015, 06:07:36 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 12, 2015, 04:55:36 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 11, 2015, 02:41:22 AM
Whoop Whoop!!! :w00t:

Such an exciting time to be alive!

What exactly is so exciting about this?  They've built a prototype of a vehicle whose sole purpose is to demonstrate landing capability and perhaps send back images - both things that were accomplished by NASA over 45 years ago.

That was NASA, this is a private company. That's a huge difference.

Quote

The nascent asteroid-mining industry is set to take its first steps into space this summer.

Planetary Resources' Arkyd-3R probe currently sits aboard the International Space Station and is scheduled to be deployed sometime in July, representatives of the Washington-based asteroid-mining company have said.

Once it's flying solo, Arkyd-3R will perform a demonstration mission, testing out systems that will enable future probes to study and eventually mine asteroids in deep space. [Gallery: Planetary Resources' Asteroid-Mining Plans]

"During its 90-day Earth-orbiting mission, it will send back data on the health of its subsystems to our team at our headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and complete its mission with a fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere as a result of its natural atmospheric orbital decay," Planetary Resources representatives wrote shortly after the Arkyd-3R reached the orbiting lab aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon cargo capsule last month.

The "R" in Arkyd-3R stands for "reflight," reflecting the fact that it took two tries to get the spacecraft off the ground. The original Arkyd-3 flew aboard the third resupply mission of Orbital ATK's unmanned Cygnus freighter, which was lost on Oct. 28 when Orbital's Antares rocket exploded just seconds after liftoff. (SpaceX and Orbital ATK both hold billion-dollar NASA deals to fly unmanned cargo missions to the space station.)

The people behind Planetary Resources, and another outfit called Deep Space Industries, aim to help humanity extend its presence out into the solar system by tapping asteroid resources such as water and precious metals — while making a nice profit along the way, of course.

Water may be key to the entire enterprise, because the stuff can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel. Asteroid mining could thus lead to the establishment of in-space propellant depots that allow voyaging spaceships to fill their tanks up on the go, and relatively cheaply, advocates say.

Planetary Resources aims to achieve its grand vision via a series of incremental steps. For example, the Arkyd-3R — a cubesat that's just the size of a loaf of bread — should be followed into space by the larger Arkyd-6 later this year, company representatives said.

The Arkyd-6 is twice as big as the Arkyd-3R and is part of a line of "ScienceCraft" that "we'll use not only to test the scientific instruments and deep-space technologies at the heart of our asteroid-prospecting missions, but to also provide a platform that will allow others to fly their mission with our technology," Planetary Resources representatives wrote.

A future spacecraft called the Arkyd-100 will demonstrate asteroid-observation techniques and technologies from Earth orbit; thereafter, the plan calls for sending other probes out to study space rocks up close.

"We look forward to many flights of the Arkyd series spacecraft, in Earth orbit, to asteroids and wherever they can be of service," company representatives wrote.

Quote

Bill Nye wants your help exploring space
May 13 NEW YORK

In the future, humans may be able to sail through the universe to discover new lands, much like the early explorers on Earth.

A Kickstarter campaign that launched Tuesday is looking to make the first step toward this dream. The campaign, which is fronted by Bill Nye (of "the Science Guy" fame), is asking for contributions to send a small spacecraft into the universe next year. It will hurtle through the cosmos thanks to a large, solar-powered sail.

Nye hopes the public will be willing to take an active role in space exploration, and said crowdfunding is a way to make the universe more accessible.
"This is where you don't have to answer to everybody, you don't have to satisfy everyone," Bill Nye told CNN's Rachel Crane. If NASA did this mission, Nye said, it would be at least three times as expensive. With this, "you can take chances and be risky."

The project is backed by The Planetary Society, an organization founded by Carl Sagan that invests in space innovation and exploration. Nye is its CEO.

Sailing through space may seem strange, but there's some serious science behind it. The sail is made of a large piece of thin mylar (the shiny stuff that helium balloons are made out of). It won't fill with wind, but will instead be powered by light.
Particles of light actually have momentum, and when they hit something reflective, like mylar, they exert a little force and push things along. Since the power comes from light, not jet propulsion, there's no need to worry about fuel.

This idea has been in the works since the 1970s, when Sagan first brought it up to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Nearly 40 years later, and Nye is attempting to realize the dream.

"At my age, we grew up with Apollo and that was an extraordinary thing. People walked around on the moon. We learned more about the age of the Earth and it just brought out the best in us," Nye said.

The spacecraft the society is looking to send into space is small -- about the size of a loaf of bread. The technical name for it is a CubeSat, and the sail is folded inside. The CubeSat is stored in a box the size of a toaster oven, which attaches to a rocket that's shot into space. When it reaches the right elevation, a spring launches the CubeSat into orbit.

Once there, engineers will flip a switch, and the sail -- about size of a studio apartment -- will open. It can be controlled from Earth so the engineers can navigate it around space.
"When we explore space, we solve problems that have never been solved before," Nye said. "We learn more about what I like to call our 'place in space.'"

The CubeSat is equipped with cameras and will take photos to send back to Earth.

The Planetary Society tried to launch something like this ten years ago. In that mission, the CubeSat was attached to a Russian rocket, which was actually a repurposed nuclear submarine missile used in the Cold War. It took off, but the engines failed a minute and a half into the flight. It crashed into the Arctic Ocean.

The society is going to try again with two upcoming missions -- one in two weeks, where it will attach to an Air Force rocket in a test mission, and another next year, when it will attach to a SpaceX rocket. The second is the one they're seeking funding for.

The goal of the Kickstarter was $200,000 -- well below the cost of the mission, which will be $5.45 million (about $4 million has already been used for development). It's the first time the society has used crowdfunding. Nye is optimistic, and he should be -- in less than two days, the campaign has surpassed its goal of $200,000 and is still going strong.

"When you go exploring, two things happen," Nye said. First, you make discoveries. "The other thing is you'll have an adventure, and I think we all want to be part of space exploration."

QuotePlanetary Resources' first spacecraft begins testing asteroid prospecting technology

Cecilia Jamasmie | July 16, 2015

Asteroid mining company Planetary Resources successfully deployed Thursday its first spacecraft from the International Space Station's (ISS) Kibo airlock, beginning a 90-day mission aimed to test extraterrestrial prospecting technology.

The Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R), launched to the ISS onboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 last April, will spent its three-month orbiting mission sending back data to a group of scientists based at the firm's headquarters in Redmond, WA.

The demonstration vehicle, said the company in a statement, expects to validate several core technologies, including avionics, control systems and software, which Planetary Resources plans to incorporate into future spacecraft that will venture into the Solar System and prospect for resource-rich near-Earth asteroids.

"Our philosophy is to test often, and if possible, to test in space (...) We are innovating on every level from design to launch," Planetary Resources president and chief engineer, Chris Lewicki, said.

He noted that the A3R is the most sophisticated, yet cost-effective, test demonstration spacecraft ever built. Its deployment, added co-founder and co-chairman Peter H. Diamandis, represents a "significant milestone" for the company.

Many consider asteroid mining a first and key step to the eventual colonization of outer space, something like California's Gold Rush, but out of this planet.

Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 36 meters (150 feet) in diameter orbit near Earth. Geologists believe they are packed with iron ore, nickel and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, making up a market valued in the trillions of dollars.

Asteroids are also a prime source for water in space, essential for interplanetary outpost.

Quote from: Ed Anger on May 14, 2015, 08:16:48 AM
Bill Nye is kinda of a dick nowadays.

No funding from me.

Quote from: Valmy on July 17, 2015, 08:57:46 AM

Quote from: Ed Anger on May 14, 2015, 08:16:48 AM
Bill Nye is kinda of a dick nowadays.

No funding from me.

It got funded anyway :nelson:

Since when do you demand everybody be nice? I thought you were Hitler.

Quote from: Ed Anger on July 17, 2015, 08:59:38 AM

Quote from: Valmy on July 17, 2015, 08:57:46 AM

Quote from: Ed Anger on May 14, 2015, 08:16:48 AM
Bill Nye is kinda of a dick nowadays.

No funding from me.

It got funded anyway :nelson:

Since when do you demand everybody be nice? I thought you were Hitler.

Sine when did I demand? It was a fucking observation.

This place gives me a headache.

Quote from: Monoriu on July 17, 2015, 09:09:04 AM
The world should stop funding kickstarter projects. 

Quote from: Valmy on July 17, 2015, 09:13:40 AM

Quote from: Monoriu on July 17, 2015, 09:09:04 AM
The world should stop funding kickstarter projects. 

Everything should be controlled by the central committee.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 17, 2015, 04:49:53 PM
Funding kickstarters is not inherently against one's self interest.

Quote from: Monoriu on July 17, 2015, 08:34:18 PM
I think it is.  The best solution is to hope that somebody else funds your favourite pet project, then sit back and hope it gets done.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 17, 2015, 08:58:33 PM
Well, some people make more money than you and enjoy less expensive hobbies. Once they've got enough money saved for their needs, what would you have them spend their excess cash on?

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 17, 2015, 10:05:30 PM
Having children is in one's self-interest. Giving them a trust fund isn't. (Perhaps the opposite, don't rich people tend to have less kids than poor people?)

As for spending more on travel & food, that costs time and may not be as enjoyable to the individual as the things they were doing before. As for second house, more goods, etc, there is no guarantee that improves their lives either.

Point being, it's possible for somebody to have "enough", even if they're not a whale who could finance an entire game or movie themselves.

Quote from: Razgovory on July 17, 2015, 10:35:04 PM
I kickstarted a PC game that and got a copy of it for 25 dollars less then it sold for.

Quote from: The Brain on July 18, 2015, 02:05:30 AM
I'm not in a position to complain about a schtick being overused, but I might just do it anyway.

Quote from: Monoriu on July 17, 2015, 10:39:20 PM
You also bore the risk that it became vapourware.  It turned out ok for you, but not every kickstarter project is a success.

Quote from: frunk on July 18, 2015, 09:35:14 AM

Quote from: Monoriu on July 17, 2015, 10:39:20 PM
You also bore the risk that it became vapourware.  It turned out ok for you, but not every kickstarter project is a success.

How is that materially different from saying "I've bought this stock, it might go up or down in value."

Quote from: Razgovory on July 18, 2015, 11:39:22 AM
There's a much greater chance I'll get the game then Mono becoming wealthy playing the stock market.

Quote from: Razgovory on July 18, 2015, 11:39:22 AM
There's a much greater chance I'll get the game then Mono becoming wealthy playing the stock market.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 18, 2015, 03:48:17 PM
A trip to Thailand is not "reinvestment" though.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 18, 2015, 03:48:17 PM
A trip to Thailand is not "reinvestment" though.

Quote from: Monoriu on July 18, 2015, 03:31:28 PM

Because the reason somebody has to go the kickstarter route is because he can't get commercial funding otherwise?  So there is a selection bias that these are inherently more risky. 

Stocks on the other hand are regulated, with auditing and accounting requirements, and there are ways to reduce risk such as diversification.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2015, 03:43:34 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on July 18, 2015, 11:39:22 AM
There's a much greater chance I'll get the game then Mono becoming wealthy playing the stock market.

You seriously underestimate the power of compound interest and reinvested dividends.

Quote from: frunk on July 19, 2015, 11:30:48 AM

Quote from: Monoriu on July 18, 2015, 03:31:28 PM

Because the reason somebody has to go the kickstarter route is because he can't get commercial funding otherwise?  So there is a selection bias that these are inherently more risky. 

Stocks on the other hand are regulated, with auditing and accounting requirements, and there are ways to reduce risk such as diversification.

Presumably companies go public because they wanted more funding than they could get staying private.  Yes there's more regulation in stocks, but there have been successful prosecutions for fraud involving crowd funding.  If this type of funding continues to have success it will almost certainly become more heavily regulated.  I think the differences are much less than you think.

Quote

Goldman Sachs is bullish on space mining with "asteroid-grabbing spacecraft." In a 98-page note for clients seen by Business Insider, analyst Noah Poponak and his team argue that platinum mining in space is getting cheaper and easier, and the rewards are becoming greater as time goes by.

"While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and
technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn," the report says.

$2.6 billion (£2 billion) sounds like a lot, but it is only about one-third the amount that has been invested in Uber, putting the price well within reach of today's VC funds. It is also a comparable to the setup cost for a regular earthbound mine. (This MIT paper estimates a new rare earth metal mine can cost up to $1 billion, from scratch.)

Quote from: Eddie Teach on June 14, 2017, 01:00:42 AM
So I guess Mono is on board.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 13, 2017, 11:27:09 PM
Goldman Sachs: space-mining for platinum is 'more realistic than perceived' :w00t:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-asteroid-platinum-2017-4

Quote

Goldman Sachs is bullish on space mining with "asteroid-grabbing spacecraft." In a 98-page note for clients seen by Business Insider, analyst Noah Poponak and his team argue that platinum mining in space is getting cheaper and easier, and the rewards are becoming greater as time goes by.

"While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and
technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn," the report says.

$2.6 billion (£2 billion) sounds like a lot, but it is only about one-third the amount that has been invested in Uber, putting the price well within reach of today's VC funds. It is also a comparable to the setup cost for a regular earthbound mine. (This MIT paper estimates a new rare earth metal mine can cost up to $1 billion, from scratch.)

Quote from: Monoriu on July 19, 2015, 07:53:32 PM

Quote from: frunk on July 19, 2015, 11:30:48 AM

Quote from: Monoriu on July 18, 2015, 03:31:28 PM

Because the reason somebody has to go the kickstarter route is because he can't get commercial funding otherwise?  So there is a selection bias that these are inherently more risky. 

Stocks on the other hand are regulated, with auditing and accounting requirements, and there are ways to reduce risk such as diversification.

Presumably companies go public because they wanted more funding than they could get staying private.  Yes there's more regulation in stocks, but there have been successful prosecutions for fraud involving crowd funding.  If this type of funding continues to have success it will almost certainly become more heavily regulated.  I think the differences are much less than you think.

Corporations exist for the explicit purpose of making a profit for shareholders.  Kickstarter projects are different.  I've seen a kickstarter project with the sole aim of putting a lance on the surface of the moon (to recreate a famous anime scene in real life).  When you compare stocks and kickstarter, I suspect you are thinking of stock floatations.  Floatations are regulated and, at least in HK, require a track record of revenue and profit.  And stock markets are a lot more liquid that kickstarters.  I can trade stocks with a few clicks.  Can I do that with my kickstarter rights or whatever they are called?  I can buy an exchange traded fund that passively track S&P 500.  Where is the kickstarter equivalent if you say they are similar?

Quote from: Tyr on June 14, 2017, 04:52:52 AM

This was written by one of their pros or a work experience guy?

Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 13, 2017, 11:27:09 PM
Goldman Sachs: space-mining for platinum is 'more realistic than perceived' :w00t:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-asteroid-platinum-2017-4

Quote

Goldman Sachs is bullish on space mining with "asteroid-grabbing spacecraft." In a 98-page note for clients seen by Business Insider, analyst Noah Poponak and his team argue that platinum mining in space is getting cheaper and easier, and the rewards are becoming greater as time goes by.

"While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and
technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn," the report says.

$2.6 billion (£2 billion) sounds like a lot, but it is only about one-third the amount that has been invested in Uber, putting the price well within reach of today's VC funds. It is also a comparable to the setup cost for a regular earthbound mine. (This MIT paper estimates a new rare earth metal mine can cost up to $1 billion, from scratch.)

QuoteA Samurai Swordsmith Is Designing A Space Probe

If you wanted to slice stuff up in space, what would you bring with you? 'Samurai' swords, which have been made in Japan for centuries, might be on your list because the tempered steel used in them is notoriously tough. There are plenty of videos online showing these Japanese swords, also called 'katana', cutting up everything from thick boards of wood to metal pipes.

Now, a trio of engineers have teamed up with a master Japanese swordsmith to design a rock-sampling device made with the same steel used in these blades – and the plan is to use it on an asteroid.

Japan's Hayabusa missions have so far sent spacecraft, rovers and sampling tools to a one kilometre-wide asteroid called Ryugu, which orbits the sun between Earth and Mars. Hayabusa2's rovers recently sent back stunning images of the asteroid's black, rocky surface. But bringing fragments of Ryugu back to Earth is an enormously tricky task, which is why novel ideas are being suggested for how to do it.

In a paper detailing early experiments, the team – including Genrokuro Matsunaga, a 70-year-old swordsmith and Takeo Watanabe at Kanagawa Institute of Technology – explain how they have made several rock corers with various metallic compositions. Four contain tamahagane, the traditional metal made from iron sand and charcoal that is used in Japanese swords. "To achieve the sharpness and plasticity demand of the corer tip, we borrowed the techniques of traditional Japanese sword-smithing in fabricating the corer samples," the authors write.

Matsunaga used iron sand from a beach in Japan, melted it down and tempered it to make the tamahagane. The process involved heating the metal to searing temperatures and then cooling it rapidly, over and over again.

The resulting corers are small, cylindrical devices with a bladed edge angled inwards. Instead of swiping a katana sword at the asteroid – which would be cool but impractical – the idea is to launch the tamahagane-tipped corer at the space rock at great speed. In theory, it will dig into the asteroid and allow for a sample to be scooped up. A tether back to the mothership spacecraft could then reel the device and asteroid fragments in.

Back in 2005, an earlier Hayabusa mission showed how difficult it was to grab significant quantities of rock from an asteroid. Two attempts to sample Ryugu were not triggered properly, though a small amount of dust was collected in a canister. One and a half thousand grains were later returned to Earth, but ideally an asteroid-sampler could gather up a lot more than that – and go deeper than just the surface rock.

This is because the surface of an asteroid is "weathered" over millions of years by cosmic rays, ultraviolet light and X-rays from the sun.

"Clearly it would tell us more about solar system history if we could get a sample from deeper into the rock to look at the unexposed pristine rock," explains Martin Elvis at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

But even getting surface or near-surface samples is difficult because of a basic property of asteroids: they're small and don't have much of a gravitational pull. Every time a rover or collecting device connects with or pushes down against an asteroid, it can easily bounce back off it again.


"Anything that allows you to use less force to cut into the asteroid surface – like this tamahagane steel – has to help," says Elvis.

You might think of asteroids as solid boulders zooming through space, but often they are more like "rubble piles" of clustered rock that can be extremely unstable. Try slicing into that in near-zero gravity.

Indeed, we've very rarely got close to asteroids, let alone analysed what they're made of directly, so one can never be quite sure of what we'll find when we show up, says independent geophysicist and disaster researcher Mika McKinnon.

"You can even have ice mixed in and then as it heats up you can have an explosion as it turns to gas," she says.

So far, the Japanese team have tested some of their corers by dropping them down a long pipe towards a concrete slab at the bottom of a tall stairwell. The samplers successfully extracted some concrete, but occasionally dropped it when being retrieved.

"A mechanism to prevent samples from falling off during the extraction and recovery phase needs to be devised," the authors note.

Plus, the tamahagane corers themselves were not tested – because they were so expensive.

Still, these are the first steps towards blasting a sword-inspired sampling technology into space.

Is such a metal really the best material for the job? McKinnon is unsure, but she does point out that the emotional appeal of such a culturally significant metal is not to be ignored.

"By sending human elements with our spacecraft, we create ties to these machines that have gone on our behalf," she says.

Perhaps that is the real value of tamahagane – it forges a very human link between us down here on Earth, and the asteroid the steel may one day sample. A samurai-inspired emissary whizzing through the solar system would connect Japan's history and its future.