[meteorite-list] Planetary Resources Will Unveil Plans to Mine Near-Earth Asteroids

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:31:31 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201204232331.q3NNVVKW009139_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/science/space/in-pursuit-of-riches-and-travelers-supplies-in-the-asteroid-belt.html?_r=1

In Pursuit of Riches, and Travelers??? Supplies, in the Asteroid Belt
By KENNETH CHANG
New York Times
April 23, 2012

Perhaps it will be a platinum rush that finally opens up the final
frontier.

On Tuesday, a new company called Planetary Resources Inc. will unveil
its plans to mine asteroids that zip close by Earth
both to provide supplies for future interplanetary travelers and to
bring back precious metals like platinum.

The venture may sound far-fetched - perhaps along the lines of Newt
Gingrich's campaign promise to colonize the moon - but it has already
attracted some big-name investors, including Larry Page and Eric Schmidt
of Google, as well as profitable technology development contracts.

"If you believe that resources in space are critical towards a
space-faring future, you will inevitably come to the result that the
asteroids - in fact, the near-Earth asteroids - are the steppingstones
to the rest of the solar system," Eric C. Anderson, one of the company's
co-founders, said in a telephone interview.

He was quick to add that the company's business premise was not as
impractical as it might sound. Because an asteroid is devoid of air and
its gravitational pull is negligible, getting there is relatively easy.
Unlike landing on the moon or Mars, a robotic mining spacecraft would not
need parachutes or a large engine to fly up to and attach itself to a
small asteroid.

"There are probably about 1,500 near-Earth asteroids that are
energetically easier to reach than the surface of the moon," Mr.
Anderson said.

Some of the asteroids are icy - up to 20 percent water - and the water
could be drawn out by melting the ice. The water could be taken to
supply stopovers for future astronauts or broken down into breathable
oxygen or propellant for spacecraft on interplanetary missions.

Other asteroids are rocky and metallic. A throng of robotic mining
spacecraft could grind up pieces of the asteroid and smelt it to capture
precious metals within.

Platinum - which is used for jewelry, electronics components and
automobile catalytic converters - fetches about $1,500 an ounce these
days, so a single spacecraft would not have to bring back a lot of it
for the enterprise to make money. More common metals like iron could
perhaps be used as raw materials in space factories, churning out
spacecraft and other structures.

Mr. Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis, the other founder of Planetary
Resources, are already in the space tourism business with a company
called Space Adventures, which has arranged eight trips to the
International Space Station. While that venture has been a "reasonably
good success story," Mr. Diamandis said, "the realization, at least for
us, was it wasn't on track to really drive humanity opening the space
frontier at the level that we desire."

About three years ago, Mr. Diamandis recalled, he and Mr. Anderson asked
the question, "So what's next?"

They set up Planetary Resources a couple of years ago, but have kept
quiet about it until now. The president and chief engineer is
Christopher A. Lewicki, who previously worked as a manager on Mars
missions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Based in Bellevue, Wash.,
the company employs about 25 engineers and has development contracts for
technologies like laser communications that it believes it will need for
prospecting and mining missions.

"The company is cash flow positive, already," Mr. Anderson said.

In addition to the leaders of Google, investors include Ross Perot Jr.,
chairman of Perot Systems; and Charles Simonyi, a former chief software
architect for Microsoft and one of the space tourists who has visited
the space station. Thomas D. Jones, a former NASA shuttle astronaut and
James Cameron, the filmmaker and deep-sea explorer are advisers.

Mr. Anderson declined to say exactly how much money the company has
raised. "It's plenty," Mr. Anderson said. "The collective net worth of
our investors is like $50 billion, and they know what they're getting
into."

The plan is to launch the first spacecraft - a small telescope to find
small nearby asteroids - within the next two years. Next, the company
would send out a batch of small explorers to visit some of them. Actual
mining would begin after that, first targeting water and then platinum.

>From meteorites that have landed on Earth, scientists know that some
asteroids have concentrations of platinum 20 times that of ore in a
platinum mine on Earth. But the concentration of the platinum would
still be tiny - perhaps a few hundred atoms per million - and the
company would need to develop robotic technology to extract the element
from the rocks.

"To do large, large-scale mining of asteroids, you're talking about
decades," Mr. Anderson said.

One possibility the company is considering is to nudge a small asteroid,
perhaps one as long as a football field, into an orbit around Earth
closer than the moon. Then Planetary Resources - and possibly other
companies - could try out their ideas of how to set up a mining
operation. "As one of the many options of how we could start the
resource development, that's certainly among them," said Mr. Lewicki,
the company president.

Drawing on nearby asteroids for natural resources is actually a very old
idea.

In 1926, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian scientist who worked out many
of the basic requirements of rockets and space travel, listed
colonization of the asteroid belt as number 12 of 16 steps in his "plan
of space exploration." Other dreamers have come along more recently.

"This is actually the fifth or sixth company that has been invented for
purpose of doing it," said John S. Lewis, a retired University of
Arizona professor who wrote a 1997 book, "Mining the Sky" (Basic Books),
that described much of what Planetary Resources is looking to do.

The American Rocket Company in the mid-1980s developed a rocket motor,
but Dr. Lewis said George A. Koopman, one of that company's founders, told
him the ultimate destination was the riches of the asteroids. When American
went out of business in 1995, James Benson, one of its founders, started
another company, SpaceDev.

A decade ago, Mr. Benson made promises similar to the ones Planetary
Resources has. SpaceDev's Near Earth Asteroid Prospector was to
rendezvous with an asteroid, conduct scientific observations and claim
it as private property. It was never built. (While SpaceDev never got to
orbit, the company, now part of Sierra Nevada Corp., did have a notable
space achievement. Its motors powered the SpaceshipOne, the first
privately financed manned flights to space and will also be used in
Richard Branson's upcoming Virgin Galactic spacecraft.)

Dr. Lewis thinks that Planetary Resources has a better shot at getting
to the asteroids - he was involved with both American and SpaceDev and
is also an adviser to Planetary Resources - because unlike previous
ventures, "this one has the distinct advantage in that it has technical
savvy and adequate capitalization to get started."
Received on Mon 23 Apr 2012 07:31:31 PM PDT