In The Future™, when mankind is Sufficiently Advanced®, nations, companies and entrepreneurs will be shuttling huge cargo spaceships to and from the asteroid belt. Asteroid mining is going to be the first REAL gold rush, “thars gold in them thar rocks!” But not only gold, we’ll be able to consume asteroids of all their constituents; platinum, iridium and silicon (silicon?). Global economies will be flooded with a new-found wealth being fed by the new Solar System’s bounty. Times will be good, after all, this is The Future™.
Although asteroid mining looks good on paper, once you do a little bit of adding up, you suddenly realize it’s actually one hell of an undertaking. Looking at the economics of asteroid mining is especially daunting, and believe me, my co-author Greg Fish has done the number crunching.
When Greg and I started out researching our book, Astroeconomics: Making Money from the Vacuum of Space, we initially made the assumption that the key way to make vast wads of cash in space is from asteroid mining. This assumption was purely based on… well, an assumption. A quick glance on the various space advocacy websites will demonstrate just how accepted asteroid mining is as a future industry. After all, science fiction has been telling us this for years. Given a sufficiently advanced technology, we’ll be able to build a spaceship, with a mining platform, send it to the asteroid belt (obviously a very short distance), fill up the cargo hold with ore (or, if we are that advanced, refined precious metals) and be back on Earth by a week next Friday.
However, when we looked at the situation, we decided to focus on the economics of the beast (in all honesty, Greg did the calculations, I can barely balance my own books, let alone the books of an entire space-faring industry).
Naturally, we assume it’s going to be businesses (not governments) wanting to mine asteroids, and we assume mining/spaceflight technologies that could possibly be available within the next few decades (and no, we didn’t consider nanotech; I’m thinking rock-eating nanobots wont be available in stores for a long while yet). We also assumed these space mining companies will want to make a profit (we might be wrong). Unfortunately, asteroid mining doesn’t make an awful lot of sense from a business perspective. The risk is too high, the overheads are whopping, and the payback — while impressive — won’t pay the bills. And then there’s nasties like space pirates and industrial accidents to consider, adding to the ‘risk’ factor.
All in all, it’s not a very attractive business proposition to build a mining fleet and send it on an interplanetary joyride; most businesses would rather set up a mining installation in the middle of Antarctica. But we’re not pouring cold water on the whole venture either, we’ve worked out a few ways future businesses can actually turn asteroid mining into an industry.
So, today, Greg contributed a guest article to my “other” blog, Space Disco on Discovery Space. If you want to find out more about the ins and outs of asteroid economics, have a read of Mining Asteroids And Getting Rich (Or Not)…
Enjoy!
astroengine.com 