More "big money" getting into the space industry

[sojourner]

Looks like something exciting will be announced next Tuesday. Look at some of the names involved!

http://io9.com/5903345/is-james-camerons-next-big-venture-asteroid+mining

 

[YellowSubmarine]

About time. I was wondering when those three would do something like that.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

If it is asteroid mining, I am really curious to see how they address the time table question. My guess is that they will subtly say something to the effect that it depends upon how much interest they can generate in the project.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Just don't tell the oil industry that there are lakes of liquid methane on Titan.

I'd be interested to know which resources would make asteroid mining economically viable, and also which particular asteroid families would be mined. Do they even seek to bring the resources back to the Earth's surface, or would they be used to set up an economic infrastructure in Earth orbit, such as solar power satellites?

 

[RAMA]

Aw I was going to report this yesterday but didnt have time. Very interesting stuff.

RAMA

 

[publiusr]

Some
From the folks who brought you this:
http://stratolaunch.com/index.html

Is this:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1204/18dynetics/
http://www.dynetics.com/news/293

The mighty F-1 to fly again--we hope.

Rumors http://www.parabolicarc.com/2012/04/22/is-paul-allen-buying-pratt-whitney-rocketdyne/

 

[Gepard]

Yup, it's asteroid mining:
http://m.io9.com/5904599/its-official-james-cameron-and-google-unveil-plans-for-asteroid+mining

Normally I'd write this off as another pie-in-the sky proposal that doesn't stand a chance in hell of going anywhere... But this is James Cameron, and he's a track decks of getting shit done. If he says we're mining asteroids, we are mining fucking asteroids.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

...the roughly 9,000 near-Earth asteroids thought to be orbiting our planet...

That's news to me. Ah well, assuming the rest of the article is more soundly based, it'll be interesting to see if they can make this project financially viable in the medium to long term.

 

[sojourner]

I think 9000 is an outside number, probably including fairly small rocks and asteroids in shared orbits. The article did say they only expect to find about 100 to 150 exploitable rocks.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

But they're not orbiting the Earth as the article claims. They're in orbit around the Sun at about 1AU. There are oddballs like 3753 Cruithne, of course, that are in resonance orbits. Yeah, I'm just nitt picking.

 

[Roshi]

I think 9000 is an outside number, probably including fairly small rocks and asteroids in shared orbits. The article did say they only expect to find about 100 to 150 exploitable rocks.

 

[sojourner]

^I don't get it?

 

[Wanderlust]

its over 9000

 

[RAMA]

I'm somewhat worried that the world, and especially SF fans think of this stuff as old hat, when its really a new breakthrough that has potential to revitalize the biggest attraction to space for most people, and that is $$$!

RAMA

 

[sojourner]

^Nope, they don't think it's old hat, they just aren't interested to begin with until something "cool" is actually done. Powerpoint slides are not cool.

 

[RAMA]

^Nope, they don't think it's old hat, they just aren't interested to begin with until something "cool" is actually done. Powerpoint slides are not cool.

What's cool is that the billionaires are putting money where their mouth is...

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

http://pricesignals.blogspot.com/2012/02/peter-diamandis-on-abundance.html

 

[sojourner]

The public at large won't be interested until Planetary Resources does something big like actually roping an asteroid into earth/moon orbit and start exploiting it (which I hope is soon). Until then, to them, it's just more satellites.

 

[RAMA]

The public at large won't be interested until Planetary Resources does something big like actually roping an asteroid into earth/moon orbit and start exploiting it (which I hope is soon). Until then, to them, it's just more satellites.

No doubt it will make good theater, but people also don't get interested unless $$$$ are involved, that at least means someone is interested in backing it, and often makes others interested.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

The public at large won't be interested until Planetary Resources does something big like actually roping an asteroid into earth/moon orbit and start exploiting it (which I hope is soon). Until then, to them, it's just more satellites.

Well the good thing about this being a private industry is that we only need some people with lots of money to be interested. As it stands there is 50 billion dollars of seed money already in the company. Sure, one can blow through that fast when it comes to this type of project, but given that the company just recently formed, that dollar figure is really nice. It is certainly enough for them to get stage one going. You can bet they will have another significant round of people investing once they start launching the first stage of satellite networks.

Edit: My bad. The article I read about the dollar figure is wrong. Turns out that 50 billion is the net-worth of the investors, not how much money they raised.

Still, it appears that stage one will not be all that expensive:

The target-hunting telescopes would be tubes only a couple of feet long, weighing only a few dozen pounds and small enough to be held in your hand. They should cost less than $10 million, company officials said.

Stage two will involve sending crafts in closer to candidate targets. While that will be a lot more expensive, it is still a very feasible thing to do. By the time they complete that, they will have a lot more information to make a profit/cost analysis with the potential to attract more money.