How Should We Mine Asteroids: Robots or Humans?

[Vanadium 50]

See message #24.

 

[russ_watters]

Thank you guys for posting some numbers I see now that it is not so much the technology that makes this impossible but simple economics and Vanadium how did you get the figure 6500, because I don't quite see how you did.

No. The economics are a result of the launch technology and try as we might, it has been very difficult to bring the costs down.

In addition to that, some here have suggested we build robotic spacecraft manufacturing plants in space, neither of which have been done and both would present technological challenges.

 

[mfb]

Let's see where we are so far:

• Hayabusa (if it worked properly): $170B/kg
• Luna: $68B/kg
• Apollo: $0.33B/kg

Gold is presently the most expensive element at $50K/kg.

So essentially, we need to make space travel at least 6500 times cheaper before this even starts to be competitive. Not 10x cheaper, not 100x cheaper, not even 1000x cheaper. 6500.

None of these missions was designed to bring large quantities of materials back. If twice the amount of sample returns would have doubled the value of the missions, they would have had a better ratio.
Here is an example of http://pics.nase-bohren.de/ibm3300-vs-3microsd.jpg (more, if you include inflation. And a factor of 4 million for the weight). I do not expect the same for rockets, but as I said, the quoted numbers are misleading.

Just out of curiosity, which number do you get if you include the full life support systems for all successful Apollo missions in the mass?

 

[DahnBoson]

No. The economics are a result of the launch technology and try as we might, it has been very difficult to bring the costs down.

In addition to that, some here have suggested we build robotic spacecraft manufacturing plants in space, neither of which have been done and both would present technological challenges.

I agree bad choice of words on my part I should have said that I realize that the cost of these missions with current technology is a primary inhibitor

 

[bahamagreen]

It is pretty much a techno/medical race between robots and humans...

The mining of the asteroids (and space activities in general) depends on lots of things, but there are two things that need to be developed before any progress comes:

robots
DNA repair

The hard radiation of space is the primary problem with manned space activities. The lifetime maximum exposure is exceeded on just a one-way trip to Mars. This is why all manned missions have been restricted to low Earth orbit and quick missions to the Moon.

The kind of shielding required to be adequate for long term inter-planetary manned missions is on the order of a few meters of lead... kind of heavy for space missions. This means until the exposure problem is mitigated, robots will be used almost exclusively.

If it became possible to successfully and continuously treat and repair exposure damaged DNA and other tissue, then much of the shielding problem is solved. The Human Genome Project and similar are way ahead of schedule...

So, along with the politics, economic/finance, engineering, logistics and all the rest, the actual picture of what this will look like is going to come down to whether it is robots first, then later "hard" humans with self repairing genetic tissue; or "hard" humans first and robots following...

The implications of both are important:
-robots advanced enough to approach "human-like" operations
-humans that self repair with total fidelity