Oleg Zabluda's blog
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
 
Planetary Resources, Inc.
Planetary Resources, Inc. whose founders include Peter Diamandis, James Cameron, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt want to mine asteroids for raw materials. We will find out details later today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Rsources

Some obvious notes:
1. I am skeptical about the current cost of automatic mining. See how much it costs to do sample returns now. Automatic mining may become reasonable only after the cost of launch is reduced, but it'll also reduce the profit margin, since it'll be cheaper then now to ship from Earth.
2. It's best to ship water to LEO, then make fuel, rather then make fuel, then ship it to LEO.
3. If they do want to ship fuel to LEO, don't bother with H2. Just ship O2.
4. The value of Fe/Ni in an appropriate asteroid is much more then anything else. Iron is where the real money is, not Platinum/etc. Even on Earth they mine 2.4*10^9 t (=$400G/yr worth) of iron ore, and 1.3*10^9 t of steel (=$1.3T/yr worth), which have to be smelted, while it's pure Fe/Ni in asteroids. For comparison, 111 t (=$5G) of platinum per year is produced.
5. They can use electric guns to launch freight from asteroids/comets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources

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