Strategy for mining asteroids, part IX

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The last post presented an alternative to mining 3554 Amun.  This presupposed that you could get Uncle Sam to finance the enterprise.


What if you wanted to keep it private?

You'd have to raise the money somehow.  The investors would have to be patient enough to wait for a profit.  They'd have to invest a hefty sum and they'd probably not want to wait longer than say, about 7 years.

With that in mind, then we take only what we need to do the job so as to bring back 50 tons of platinum.

That should take about 50 tons for equipment, and 20 tons for life support.

You'd have to leave all the processed ore on the asteroid.  One way to make good use of it is to dig a trench and cover it with what came out of the trench.  That way, it would be covered.  You could cover up the life support system and equipment.  Or, you could operate remotely from the hovering space sail.

The trench could be used to tuck away a life support system on the next trip.

Anyway, you'd have to process about 2.5 million kg per day.  That would translate into about 5 million pounds.  This would mean excavating about 312 cubic meters per day, if you work for a year, that is.

If you have 2 years, or more, you can adjust the numbers accordingly.

Provided that you could do all this, which would entail:

1. Building a 2 km x 2 km space sail located at LaGrange point 2,
2. Outfit it with solar panels that could provide sufficient energy, which would also be made in space,
3. Launch a life support system as well as the necessary mining equipment,
4. Figure out a way to feed a crew and keep them alive for 2 or 3 years,
5. Plus anything else I haven't thought of yet,

and do all this within 7 years.  Seems rather daunting.  In the end, you would have about 1.6 billion dollars worth of platinum at today's market prices.  To make a profit off the first trip, you have to do all this for less than 1.6 billion dollars.

The risk would probably seem too great as there would be too many things that could go wrong.  Several of those things in the list haven't been done before.  It would be hard to estimate how much time it would take to do all of this.


A government sponsored program would provide the least risk, but the greatest cost.  The money would go to Uncle Sam.   The losses, if there were losses, would be borne by Uncle Sam.  But being that this is a big country, most people wouldn't notice.

On the other hand, in a private venture, even if you don't make a profit on the first trip, the next trip would likely be profitable.  The more trips, the more profit.  The profit in the long term would be hard to fathom.

It would be a high risk- high reward type of enterprise.  Those taking the greatest risks will potentially receive the greatest rewards.  Perfect reason why wealth production must come from the private sector.  A government wouldn't do this.  People in government don't think this way.  People in government only think of the risks and don't care as much about costs.  So, the project would probably cost too much and be too timid.

"The pioneers take the arrows."

Update:

Verdict:  The project will probably have to wait.  Too much risk, too many unknowns.  The state of the art has to advance further before enough of the unknowns can be understood and most of the risk quantified and accounted for.   The odds of a mission soon is still not good unless there is somebody who is willing to undertake the risks now because of a compelling reason.

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