Does Space Mining Solve Our Resource Problem?
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- Опубліковано 7 чер 2021
- Is Space Mining Our Future Gold Mine? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! Rare-earth metals and other minerals are essential for green tech like EVs and renewable energy. Trouble is, we need a lot of them and their availability on Earth is limited. But what if we could tap into all the materials flying around in space? Some scientists claim we could mine asteroids in the future. Yes, asteroids. Is it just an Armageddon remake or will we eventually...dig into them...?
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Do you think space mining is going to be a major source for us in the future? Or should we stick closer to home? If you liked this video, be sure to check out "The Future of Solid State Wind Energy - No More Blades": ua-cam.com/video/nNp21zTeCDc/v-deo.html
Not for this generation.
It will require a resource that will be worth the effort of eventually driving us to the belts but the distances and time will eat alot of the profits.
No, I don’t ever see it being cost effective.
Elon has said no, but I think he's playing possum. People are going to shit when SpaceX land a few meteorites mostly comprised of gold. Considering how much is out there, I doubt gold will maintain it's price when the space mining begins. There is so much of it out there.
C'mon Matt - think OPEC - who would flood a market and destroy their business case?
Always love your channel!!
"Apple has designed a robot to extract valuable materials from discarded iphones."
Having phones be repairable would also help in reducing mining demands.
Items today are built cheaply to fall apart for the simple reason.
If something falls apart. Consumers are forced to buy more.
@@wi11y1960 that’s what he was arguing against. Right to repair is a political topic, where companies will not let you or make it extra difficult to repair your own gadgets. It protects their bottom line.
demand and need and more devices needs more resources
urban mining and recycling is never 100% or cheap
it's a big chunk but not enough
I'm all for repairable phones (I really wish more phones were easy to work on... I still remember spending an hour to replace a family member's iPhone battery) but it won't fix everything. People still buy the next newest phones (which, of course, come out every single year) instead of keeping old ones until they break.
It disassembles them
Repair is VERY overrated btw
2.6 billion really sounds like pennies for the achievement
Yea. For example, today I learned that Turkey’s New Canal Across Istanbul Will Cost $15 Billion.
Probably it's a bit optimistic.
2.6 bill sounds optimistic, just look at how overbudget ITER is.
@@linc234 Even if it were to cost 3 times as much, just like ITER, it would still be a bargain
Gamestop has a 21.23 billion dollars valuation so yeah 2.6 billion is nothing considering 15 billion of gamestop valuation could disappear in minutes like many many other stocks.
I feel like space mining will be more viable for keeping the materials in space to make things for space instead of bringing them back to earth. But It is highly likely that we will figure out a cheaper way to get materials down here from space. This reminds me of Enders Game. I love it!!
The end goal should definitely be to move heavy industry to orbit or the moon. Space is where infinite energy is, beaming it down to earth would just accelerate global warming.
absolutely, industry would be so so much more efficient in a low gravity environment too, jus think of energy saved in lifting alone, then compound that with having a naturally massive energy gradient from 600 degrees sun side and almost absolute zero in shadow. just think of all the crazy stuff you can do with that.
What of the long time effect of increasing the mass of the Earth.......which will occur with the continuous deposit of materials from space on the earth
@@khalids4537 minuscule compared to what is already here
I agree, but ultimately, the fruits of our labor out in space will have to come back down to the surface for it to be beneficial. Re-entering and landing massive amounts of cargo will be necessary.
We will at least have to be able to land a container ship size amount of cargo at a time. for it to be viable for the whole economy.
They talk all the time about "heavy lifting" capability, but we also need "heavy landing" capability.
Massive amounts of e-waste is also in our land fields due to the lack of knowledge/care of consumers; these locations are turning into mines.
Extracting landfills and carrying out landfill mining is going to become very common soon.
@@jamesmason131 isnt it already in certain places? not quite common but still enough
No they are not. Takes too much energy to extract metals from landfills.
Right.. it's the consumers fault govts dump millions of tons of recyclable tech in landfills because it's cheaper or because of red tape apathy or outright bribes by corporations.. sure.
@@Withnail1969 the first clever startup to focus solely on tech landfill recycling will be a powerhouse on the level of an Amazon or an Apple.. it just hasn't happened yet.. but if Murphy's law is a thing.. it ain't far off.
The economics of space mining should include the unbelievable environmental impact of mining heavy metals on Earth. Presently, a heavy metal mine devastates a vast area and poisons the regional water supply for decades if not centuries.
If terrestrial mining is increasingly limited or banned over environmental concerns, then space mining looks a lot cheaper.
And with automation, you can add the manufacturing of fuel on a world that is easier to escape like the Moon or Mars.
"Looks a lot cheaper" - Mining asteroids and routinely bringing those resources to Earth is literally the most expensive thing imaginable...even if you take environmental damage into account.
That's only because you compare an existing technology with known problems with the fantasy of a future technology with no problems beyond cost and technological development needed. I assure you we will find new and exciting problems with space mining a few decades after we started space mining. And some of the options, like destabilisation of the orbit of Earth or annother planet, have the potential to make climate change look like a very minor problem indeed.
Also most space mining concepts seem to ignore the disposal of all those additional ressources we mine for production of more and more stuff. And space disposal will never become a economically viable solution.
In the end, only stable closed-circle economies can really be long-term sustainable, every approach to continue are growth&waste approach to economy (i.e. industry) will only push the inevitable system failure a bit further into the future.
Oh yeah let's just go destroy OTHER planets because we have already destroyed our own. Talk about colonialism. Go back to Fox News, Trumpie.
...how does mining asteroids destroy planets again?
We don't even need to bring the materials back down to Earth; we could bring them close enough to build space stations directly from the materials in orbit. I imagine that's got to be cheaper than launching resources into space to build with; even given Space-X's reusable rockets.
No government would trust a company with the task of moving asteroids into Earth Orbit.....
The ideal situation would be to somehow get the material to where spacex launches happen. SpaceX sends a ship up for satellites or whatever else they have and then grabs the mined material and lands. The rocket is coming back down anyways.
@@ecognitio9605 That is why I'd use the Moon as my "gravity holding area" and work my reduction to separated ores from near Moon orbit to the Moon surface. You make "care packages" on the Moon with small directional thrusters and shape it like one of Burt Rutan's "falling leaf" designs- which could land on conventional runways. Only a small volume of special parts would need to originate on earth surface and be lifted into orbital space. The long passage is just time and orbital mechanics for the most- hurry costs a bugger when you need 360 K km s of it. FR
Long term certainly, the delay is that all of earths refining/manufacturing resources are on earth. When we build manufacturing capacity on the moon, it's going to become the main source of most of our space infrastructure due to the tiny cost of escaping it's gravity.
@@BrendanKOD That sounds like it would make it a good market for people who know how to work in "different environments" and be safe to start getting ready for. Mankind;s future- maybe more than hundreds of years out, is either extinction by his own hand or immigration from just Earth's surface. The Moon is but a stepping stone. and I'd much rather the "industrial accident" happen while creating a new crater on the Moon than another Extinction Event on Earth. But the Moon will not become a good colony till some broad spectrum method to create a close one gee living space. It will take a deeper gravity well like Mars to make real colonies. FR
"Very first robotic spaceship ever on the lunar surface"
Mate, I have some bad news for you... the soviets beat you to it over 50 years ago with the Lunokhod programme (1969-1977).
I was going to point this out. They had a radio controlled rover on the moon for a long time.
There’s also Chang'e 3 & 4
There's places and achievements outside of America? /s
lmao
@@whiskizyo2067 lol
"There is a balance between cost, value and utility." Valuable insight trying to make sense of all the numbers coming out of the space economy talk!
True that recycling and reusing will be inevitable components in the future.
not if you could bring back an asteroid so rich it destroys the market here as he was talking about then recycling for rare earth would be cost ineffective outside of being part of a landfill.
@@bodhisfattva7462 yeah but you've heard of monopolistic competition where a single entity corners the market and therefore DICTATES the price ... like all good monopolies
demand and need and more devices needs more resources
urban mining and recycling is never 100% or cheap
it's a big chunk but not enough
@@TweiLimLou dude who do you think will spend THAT much money if they didn't do the math on cornering the price
Recycling has actually been declining. My city stopped collecting glass and other items because it was not profitable. Turns out that third world countries are not interesting in sifting thru your garbage either. It also turns out that cheap junk from third world countries is cheaper than recycling. No doubt there will be recycling of expensive materials but I doubt the cheap stuff will be.
Delta V is a fun, pretty accurate sci-fi book about asteroid mining. Definitely worth a read
what is the title of that book? "Delta V"?
@@starstuffs39 Yep! Delta V by Daniel Suarez
@@kylecramer8489 okay noted, thanks Kyle!
Thank you!
Maybe not the most memorable sci fi book but certainly worth a read if you are interested in this topic. It stays relatively close to the tech we imagine being used in the near ish future.
Makes me sad that I won’t be around to see humanity develop. So many technologies, so many possibilities. Makes me hope reincarnation is a thing so I might be lucky enough to witness it even if not myself.
Don't worry too much, nobody else will see humanity develop either, for at least the next ten generations anyway thanks to conservative voters and politicians. They are terrified of progress (by definition) and will do anything to prevent it.
Few years back I went to see an environmental activist speak and she began with "It depresses me how the brightest minds of a generation are wasting their time on space exploration"
Very informative video. What an incredible amount of thought people put into space mining... to me this just proves a point.
Valuations of 16 Psyche, or comments like "this would destroy the platinum market if we mined it" are silly. They don't consider the cost of mining it, or the length of time it would take to actually retrieve any of its minerals, let alone all of it.
Plus, it's looking at the solution only through the capitalist lense of "how can we make a profit from this?" The whole point is to spend the money to extract these resources so that we never have to worry about that resource again. Why is making a rare metal not rare a bad thing? It's only bad for people who currently make a profit off of it.
Exactly. It would only crash the economy if we could mine and refine it all very quickly say within a year. It would probably take many years to mine an entire asteroid.
Sooo right off the bat you have to remember that the estimates of how much of a resource is remaining is approximate at best and downright wrong often times. Oil is a great example. People thought we were running out several times but that just increased the incentive to find more, so we did. While there is theoretically some actual finite limitation - most of these resources will get unlocked progressively and it's hard to ever make definitive statements about how much remains until lots of professionals spend years looking for more for a living.
True, with the upcoming renewable energy and higher storage capacity, there will be a fair bit of oil and gas left that will not be used for transportation, but it might still be used for plastics... Antarctica has huge reserves but currently it is highly illegal to mine...
Yep, that's true. These are extremely rough estimates. When it comes to oil it's getting harder and harder to access new reserves, but we're finding it. But the bottom line is that it's finite and will eventually be too costly and difficult to source.
@@NicolaiVE
If crude oil uses decrease because of transportation, the remaining infrastructure will most likely be dedicated to Plastics, polymers and lubrication, with out transportation helping to support this infrastructure prices on these items are bound to increase.
@@drmosfet we could also recycle the billion tons of plastics that have ever been produced since their creations.
@@carholic-sz3qv
Recycling plastic is more difficult then it seems, alot of plastics are just sent to third world countries and floats back at across the ocean to it origin or somewhere else. Recycling is something our species need to figure out how to do it properly.
6:31 - Helium 3 would also make your voice higher pitched, even more so than regular Helium 4
called it
When Napoleon ruled in Europe, aluminium was unobtainable and it was much rarer than gold. Soon after, after the discovery of electricity and the invention of the battery, nobody shed a single tear when aluminium become available by using electrolysis of bauxite mineral. I believe the same will happen if we chan change the face of many of our industrial processes because of an abundance of space-mined platinum.
Thanks for the video...
I find this whole debate ridiculous. The company that brings back the materials is going to make their money back and more. Maybe not as much more as you would expect, given the theoretical value, but they WILL make a good ROI. And then, the drastically cheaper materials available on Earth will drive an ungodly amount of economic and technological development. Lower material costs will make goods cheaper and more readily available. That is a GOOD THING.
The entire platinum and indium markets combined are less than 10 B USD/year. None of this is profitable.
@@johnmacaulay9132 supply on that scale creates demand.
@@thelonelyrogue3727 I don’t think you realise how small these markets are. There is no pent up demand for platinum large enough to fund asteroid mining. Supply on that scale just crashes prices.
@@johnmacaulay9132 and when the prices go down, people will develop new technologies to utilize the cheap platinum, creating demand and raising the prices again.
@@thelonelyrogue3727 That rarely happens with an oversupply of any other commodity.
Imagine investing hinders of billions in space mining with the hope that someone will find a use for it.
One thing we often overlook is that kinetic components of asteroids are likely to be of even more immediate value than their composition. An exagram asteroid has gargantuan amounts of energy stored in its rotation, and if it's in a good position, and rotating just right, constructing tethers made of even just local steel can be used to donate usable kinetic energy to spacecraft.
That is officially the dumbest thing I heard today
@@morkovija
How? We could use rapidly spinning objects to power a motor ?
@@morkovija Except skyhooks are a legitimate concept thought up by real rocket scientists? It's difficult to do but it's completely feasible and lowrad's way of explaining it was perfectly fine. Kurzgesagt has a great video about the concept if you want to look into it.
@@steventyndall9172 ok with skyhooks at least I understand the concept. But lord, it's one complicated way of extracting energy
@@coazynot6194 How would you hold the motor stationary relative to the asteroid?
On the "side note" of the "totally different video", please do a video about the helium-3. Great video btw!
Space mining in-situ will be huge and beneficial. Especially if used for more than volatile fuels.
Sources:
A) captured/bagged “rubble piles”
B) bore hole mining on the moon
Separation:
1) Crush/grind,
2) concentrate using
A) optical separation/spectral analysis,
B) Ferromagnetic
C) electrostatic
D) centrifugal separation in various solutions of density (ferrosilicone, etc)
3) HEAT using fusion reactors (yes, still a generation away) for impurities.
Use/synthesize separated material into commonly needed strips/bars/beams/walls/forms ready for use, Or send resultant ores to a manufacturing facility, or pre-programmed production to self-repair/enlarge the mining facility until we create The Doomsday Machine (Star Trek: The Original Series).
Space mining is inevitable regardless of the cost
Getting materials from space will be necessary if we become a Class I civilization if not for any reason other than it being cheaper to mine materials into space for production efforts rather than getting those materials out of the gravity well.
"Also, they could implement this process directly on the Moon or on Mars where you get plenty of carbon dioxide out of the air." There is an atmosphere on the moon?
There is, but it's very thin. It also doesn't have much in the way of CO2. Presumably that piece of the sentence was intended to refer to Mars. It is (probably) possible to generate CO2 on the Moon by heating regolith.
Not enough gravity
Edit: there actually is a atmosphere with neglectable atmospheric pressure ( i learned this 5 minutes ago)
this video is filled with errors and oopsies..
this guy just made a youtube video to get views..
send this to #thunderfoot
@@rajadhirajmaharaj He might be busy debunking Solar Roadways.
@@ThePamastymui *Hyperloop ;)
Here's a simplified explanation as to why space mining "makes sense". This is not 100% accurate, but it will cover some bases not directly covered during the video.
Those valuable metals, like platinum and iridium, are dense. That means they will sink through lighter elements if everything is liquified, and when earth was formed, it was molten. So most of the heavy stuff sank down deep, and we have a bunch of the light elements floating on top in the crust. So, earth has plenty of heavy elements, but they're thousands of kilometers beneath the surface. We literally do not have the technology to get there.
Asteroids formed from the same basic stuff as the earth, but they're small. They don't have enough gravity to form a "core" of heavy stuff, and even if they did, they're small enough you could literally drill right through the middle of them. We *do* have the technology to get to those asteroids today. You could just send dozens of large rockets. It would be expensive, but it is, at least, *possible* to get to the resources in the asteroids, whereas it is literally not possible to get to them on earth.
Going millions and millions of km into space is easier than going even dozens of km down on earth.
I think space mining should be a priority, I would love to see us not only mine in space, but to manufacture also. That would take the price of building habitats on the moon down quickly. Which in turn makes Mars more feasible.
They can always find a way to artificially inflate the cost of the materials brought back. DeBeers has done it for diamonds for several years.
building on mars is just as hard as building on the moon, it just takes longer to get there. now a moon base to make the trip easier, that makes more sense. the ship wouldnt need any of the thermal layers for atmosphere re-entry, which is a LOT of weight. on top of the fuel used to leave earths gravity, it could be dramatically cheaper and faster
@@bradhaines3142 Building on the moon first we would learn so much, since it will be a whole new way of construction.
Topping the gas tanks off on the moon also means a lot cheaper in long run.
@@KalRandom not as much as you think. once they leave earths gravity most of the fuel is used for directional changes, almost all of it is in the boosters to get off the planet.
@@bradhaines3142 If I was making a trip to Mars, I think I would want to carry fuel to get home on, I know there are plans to make fuel there, but never hurts to play it safe.
There are reasons I don't let my cars gas tank get below 1/4.
@@KalRandom that idea doesnt exist for current space travel. they carry just enough to get where theyre going and get back, with maybe 10% safety margin. and my point was about 90% of what they use is take off, to get off the moon or off earth. IN space they use almost nothing
The amount of puns in this one is truly dad-level worthy)
Thanks. The "Omnivore" - I like it. *_THAT'S_* the kind of thing we're gonna need more of: space engines that are fuel-flexible. tavi.
"These asteroids have a value in part because the materials they contain are in finite supply here on earth. But flooding the market with that large supply reduces their value."
It actually doesn't reduce their value, it reduces their price. Rare earth values are intrinsic in their abilities, their price is due to their rarity. When talking about this topic it's so important to be clear about cost, price, and value as they're three very different things. This world would be a much different place if a metal as valuable as platinum were as cheap as copper or aluminum or even raw iron.
A capitalist structure to space mining materials would not be beneficial to humanity. Just look at diamonds and imagine a company or small group of companies with enough of these materials capable of sinking an entire market. They could use the value of the metal to buy out competitors on earth until they became the sole suppliers of the metal because it's simply too unaffordable to mine on earth. It just simply wouldn't be sustainable. Ideally (very ideally to the point it is extremely unlikely) the value of the Platinum itself would lend itself to a national or even global effort to recover the material for use here on earth. If that eventually meant there was enough of the material circulating in the global economy and recycling kept it in the economy and mining could cease that would be beneficial to humanity.
@@outdoornet7111 You seem to think "monopolies like this are illegal" means they can't/don't happen.
If there is one thing I learned about these kinds of estimates over the years is that It won't be that cheap or soon
And the first company to do it is definitely going to form a kartel to deliberately restrict supply so they can ring the world dry
@@ofthecaribbean we will see fusion power first. It only 30^n years away.
@@bowez9 Where n is the number of times it was predicted kkkkkkkk
@Smee Self less likely but also real
It won't happen at all. The economy is getting smaller every year now due to resource depletion. None of the sci fi dreams on this channel will happen.
I remember in the 80ties, they said that we would run out of oil, with the current usage in just 40 years. Since then, the oil usage have increased a lot and we are not expecting to run out any time soon. So I guess it will be the same for rare earth minerals/metals they with come of with new places and new ways to extract them.
It's not that we run out of rare earth metals. It's that we soon won't have cheap, easy, economically viable options. After humanity has exhausted every easy option, collected and mined every low hanging fruit from the surface, we will have a hard time getting more easily. For example we will start to scour the surface of the oceans for these materials. You can imagine what this does to marine life and habitats. Many companies are already starting to do this btw.
Same with oil, except that with oil but it's a whole different thing.
Whoever "they" are who said we'd "run out" of oil in 40 years was misinformed or confused "running out" with running out of cheap and easy accessible oil. Rare earth minerals and metals are far more scarce then fossil fuels.
@@PresidentialWinner Technically we could mine the upper mantle, but...
The truth is we only have 100 years of oil in reserves, but that includes natural gas. This assumes we don't increase our energy needs and find anymore, if both these things happen we might be able to level out at 150-200 years.
In the grand scheme of things we don't have supply for it to be cheap for the entire duration.
@@cletussamboy8650 Actually, most rare earths are not so much rare as they are environmentally negative and otherwise costly to mine and refine.
Yet another classic from Matt!! I feel like a child again - how exciting!!!
We don't have a "resource problem." We have an "economics problem." The economics of heavy lift capacity is prohibitive. The only way to support our needs in space is to find resources in situ. Our problem is how to get enough equipment up there to make use of the resources that are available.
Plus, to make space projects pay for themselves, we will have to acquire stuff up there that we will want down here. Otherwise, earth will always be footing the bill for space, and we won't do that for long. The moon has plenty of desirable resources to share, in return for tech and manufactured goods, and so does Mars. But Mars will have to become the hub for expansion farther out, building ships and stations for miners and colonists. Mars had better focus on hi-tech manufacturing early on, as soon as they can mine their own resources. A six-month trip, every other year, is a pretty slim lifeline to depend on. No one is coming to save you.
That's why we have to start out building a base on the Moon, and create a basic space economy. We don't have all the knowledge and tech to jump all the way to Mars yet.
Thank you for bringing up Apple's recovery system for the rare metals in it's phones. I've wondered why more wasn't being recovered in general. As you mentioned, even what's available in space is finite. We will need space mining to cover our needs, but unless we get better at recovery here, we'll always be short of our needs.
to be fair if we can start mining space then resources arent finite anymore, there is essentially an unlimited amount of resources in these asteroids, the one he mentioned for example 16 Psyche would provide us with so much metal that we wouldn't need more in the next at least 1 000-10 000 years or so even as we will start using way more because the material will be basically free to use. Recovering 2 grams of copper from a phone won't be a priority anymore.
Theres differing levels of finite.. for example some asteroid clusters with as much as a hundred times more REMs (gold platinum etc) than all earths mineral deposits combined.
HENCE why the first person to establish an even semi consistent space mining operation will be the richest individual in human/earth history.
@@KhaalixD it'll always be (well should be) a priority if the alternative is waste/destroying the environment.. that's the thing capitalism hasn't been able to figure out false scarcity x abundance imbalance.
It's easy to imagine a future where we master space mining but still have no mechanisms in place handle the effective recycling/disposal of the tech waste that results from this new mineral abundance
Creating even larger landfills/waste issues
We have to get the philosophy political impetus right before we even attempt stuff like this because modern humans are way too good at creating waste we can't manage.. an unending trough of space minerals would only make that flaw even worse. Not fix it.
@@KhaalixDconsumption will increase and a significant introduction of those materials means they are cheaper which in turn means that the product will probably see more use.
Space mining makes sense with space manufacturing. Why build it on Earth and send into space when we can just build it in space? Granted there is the whole issue of capturing asteroids and moving them to a different orbit which takes a lot of energy. But, for some of the really large space projects like orbital colonies space mining and manufacturing would have to be a reality.
You could just make the mining drone make a booster.
I think that would be the end goal here. Shift all heavy industries up into the orbit, and then use resources from space to get it working.
There is literally shit ton of energy in space with the added benefit of zero gravity. Imagine if we could life 100s of tons without using heavy vehicles.
But for this we will need some major advancement in Heavy Landing vehicles which can bring back the finished goods on earth.
The most valuable tech i can imagine would be a simple and universal mineral/resource extraction method.
Think somewhere along the line of nanites disassembling/dissolving any input like space rocks or crushed landfill and spitting out pure elements.
If we ever get that kind of tech the rest will just follow naturally, space mining would quickly grow exponentially.
Imo, all that is produced from here on (here being the historical moment where we get down of this illusory abundance fountain) should be made with the dismatling and recycling of the product in mind. It's incredibly important to consider the whole life of a given item. In existence, ALL gets back to where it comes from. All atoms return to the fabric and so do elements back to the environment. It's just a little more complicated than that but you get the idea.
10:57 damn. the e-waste Apple makes so that old hardware doesn't get into the hands of people. I saw one Aliexpress listing of an iphone with "punched" motherboards like this in the video.
if theres anything apple despises more than their customers it's the prospect of repairing minor damage to apple products.
@@guillermoelnino 👍
@@guillermoelnino Yeah, Apple's business model needs to die.
Unlimited uranium and thorium sure would be nice.
With a space elevator, maybe. So we can leave the waste out there.
Orbital ring is less dumb than space elevator and could be built with our current technology.
@@James-sk4db It all depends on the context. Good luck transferring energy generated on an orbital ring back to earth.
@@madao7865 As strange as it sounds, but rectennas and cables - yes, cables - are a simple and efficient solution for that.
Space elevators aren't an option for Earth yet; materials science just isn't there yet. We can put one on the moon and Mars though, and probably should.
But the cheapest possible way out of our gravity well is Deep Sky Stations and spaceplanes. It's cheaper by far than an orbital ring, and probably necessary for the construction of one.
I think the greatest value of space mining is to use the mined materials themselves directly in space.
If you can convert 16-psyche into stainless steel, you can build spaceships and stations of nearly unlimited size, mega-vessels which are just meant for travel and habitation, not landing. You mine, manufacture, build and fuel ALL of it, in space. That does however require a fairly complete chain of industries.
Love the “dynamic scoring” of a resources economic value.
The turning point will be when we start constracting things in space. Just as bringing raw materials from space is stupid expensive, bringing the same things up is just as bad. Until we need a milion ton of steel and copper(whatever) in space for a large project, it will not be an option. Even if we run out of something essential, 'engineering' our way around the problem might be cheaper.
True I can see a future where the space economy and the earth economy are two separate things due to the cost of getting things into and out of orbit (barring that doesn't get easier as well)
@@pford
I think 'sinking' things into the atmosphere will always be a dead end. You can't just have million tonnes of material freeralling, you must slow it down, protect it from heat, and controll the landing. Which means heatshields, fuel and engines as added weight taken way from the payload. How many of these vessels you need to land to have viable bussinnes when comes to common things like iron? Maybe with rare elements, if processed in space and sent down 99.9% pure. But then they are not rare anymore, so they not that expensive...
@@marrs1013 Once you can build all of those elements in space it becomes pretty cheap. Make those components from lower value mining “waste”
Great video Matt! Definitely, we should start R&D on how we can harvest extra-Earth objects for resources. Our tiny planet is a spec of dust compared to the solar system, and it would only be logical to use those resources to our betterment. Also, we should stop throwing things away and begin using the resources we already have in products we make. In my opinion, every product should have a "close-loop mentality" as part of it's initial design and engineering. Each thing we use should have a way of reincorporating it into other products.
Loved the video. And yes, i think we should definitely work towards mining in space, especially for crucial resources like platinum which are quite limited here on Earth from a long term big picture point of view.
Thank you to you and the team for all the excellent work. I always feel better informed and hopefull about our future if we don't destroy ourselves first.
Matt's vids are gonna blow people away in like 2030 when they realize how early he is on this content.
I hope that the AI overlords enslave and exploit us for their own benefits.
People have been talking about this for decades. And it is a major plot point for The Expanse.
Seriously? These ideas have been around since when I was a kid. Which ..ahem... was a few years ago at least.
@@tomcraver9659 Keyword: “IDEAS”. We’re at the point where things are coming together. Actual funding, a business case beyond “cutting edge tech”, and capable science. It’s aligning now, regardless of whether these ideas were thought of yesterday or decades ago.
@@RoderickBishop What specifically is it that you see "how early he is on this content", as I responded to?
Could you make that video about Helium 3?
Interesting material as always. Thank you Matt.
we love Space X & Star Ship, we visited the site last Oct.. & i bought the tsla dips & ..i've ordered the tri motor fsd ct & i can't wait for it to get here!! I may buy the S or the Y in the mean time..i got lots of solar & back up battery system as well.
ive got really big interest in space mining for years now. i think its inevitable not for recources but for safety reasons for our planet. but i think 2.8 billion is way too low for a commerical sized automated buisness
Omg, this is so fun! Thnx for the imagery.
6:45 Love to see a video on the helium that's pretty cool. Cheers Matt.
Why bother bringing it back? If we're looking to space as a future, use the resources we collect in space for building what we need to continue expanding into space. In the meantime, recycle.
you are right why is there a need to bring it back? like just use the resources you mine in space to build space infrastructure. (Is it just me or does undecided seem a bit against space mining?)
DUH!!!! Because there are at least 4 billion humans who are poor. There isn't enough raw materials to provide them with the goods and services that you'll want too even with recycling. Also, to get more raw materials means we'll need to tear up more of this planet. But I get it, you're not hungry so how could anyone be starving?
Really you need both. Send the rare earth elements back to earth to pay for the mining. Use the nickle and Iron to built space stations in orbit.
Build a solar power station in space using these material then send the power 24hours a day to earth via radio waves the earth radio capture area would be over several square miles and so power density would’ve low. This could done all over world. No more investing in fusion power or solar panel. We could have a hydrogen economy.
The rare earths are needed on earth to make things...
The common things (iron and such) could be left out there and used for other construction.
Others have made various points, I'll add the following one:
The economics: If those goods don't come back to add to the supply, then all of the money invested, will not have a Return on that Investment.
^Will be difficult to get people to Invest in this.
If there's annything standing in our way of spece exploration, it's economics 😔
Political will, dedication, and about twenty other things long before economics
politics are more of a problem than economics :(
Space mining is a requirement for building anything on the scales we have been exposed to in Star Trek or Star Wars or other sci-fi works. Imagine the ecological damage created on Earth to supply the metals needed for a vessel of the size of the Enterprise! Of course, this assumes that we survive long enough to become a space-faring species!
Thanks for your great work!
Space mining has one more thing that everyone seems to forget - the rich in metal asteroids are already in space. So capturing one and refining it into usable metals and maybe even constructing ships and robots may be cheaper then bringing them from earth surface - it does cost a lot of energy to send a rocket to space. So maybe if we bring the asteroid is brought back to orbit we could send rockets with manufacturing equipment and then use the material to build probes, rovers, landers, bases....
But aside. I`m astonished that the company showed in this video has trade marked their names already :D they havent built anything yet besides 3d simulations :)
Do you think maybe one day we will be mining our landfill to recover un-recycled materials?
Yes. Look up MSW landfill mining.
Yeah, it's already starting to happen in some places.
moon should be used as a giant space station. it's perfect for that.
It was intended for that
As always thank you for the info!! so many little things i didn't know... and knowing's half the battle
Again super interesting stuff. Thanks for bringing this!
I'm waiting for that video about that helium
👍
Ah yes profit profit profit. How about doing this for the better of humanity and planet earth?
Why don't you work for free?
Matt- loved the presentation, and the thoughts it starts! Many of your visuals had "space gadgets" that went out and brought the asteroids back. For a while, at least until we get most of two million chunks of material (some as small as a couple of kilos to some that may be hundreds to thousands of pounds) need to be swept up from our near to distant orbital space and, as they pass near, we need to lasso the "visitors" as they pass in near space and put them in orbit around the Moon- via low energy, early deflection energies and orbital mechanics. Slower than your method maybe, but once initiated, tremendously valuable. Think of the draw of lots of cheap unobtainium on the manufacturers of gadgets and widgets! We'll be building three bedroom bungalows by 2040! FR
As for covering the world in wind farms, I guess that's a good idea too. Chances are, the world is only going to get windier, so make sure they are robust and adaptable to conditions. Sorry for solar power, having a rare element required for it. However both have weakness for supplying a grid, because sometimes it isn't windy, and sometimes the sun isn't shining... so that's where plants for using these wind and solar farms to put hydrogen into tanks might come into play. Tanks of hydrogen can be like back up batteries.
So basically build endless wind farms, but make sure that when the grid doesn't need that power, it's filling up tanks of Hydrogen for when the power demand increases, and these can tanks can be shipped, and won't even weigh much. Cars can be designed with a rollout, roll-in mechanism for these tanks too (replace the whole tank instead of fill-er-up).
seeing things like this kinda bums me out cuz i wont be alive in 200 years to see these things become a normal part of life yk, seeing its birth is cool but i want to see what comes out of it in the far future
don't worry. The rest of the human race won't be around in 200 years to see these things become a normal part of life, either.
@@smoothkid765 Even if humans are around space mining will never be feasible due to the enormous technological challenges
@@cletussamboy8650 people said the same thing about flying lmao
Humanity has never had a problem with technological hurdles, only sociopolitical ones
@@Bluelimesuxcom You can't compare flying in earth's atmosphere with space mining or other ridiculous ideas like colonizing and terraforming mars or trying to travel faster than light. These are technological hurdles that work on paper but don't work out in real life.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper & easier to mine the moon first? The moon has been receiving meteor & asteroid impacts for billions of years. Guaranteed to have massive precious metal reserves.
woah woah woah slow down there buddy. we couldn't possibly send a ship to the moon! completely impossible!
Fighting a gravity well takes huge amounts of energy (and thereby cost) to get materials off a planet. Although the Moon has less gravity than Earth, this is still a prohibitively large expense. It is far more cost effective to source materials that are already in space, as it is much cheaper to transport them large distances, than it is to launch it off a planet.
Off world mining is going to be most valuable when there are off world construction projects, getting on / off the surface of planets is the hardest part of space travel the more we can avoid it the better
What about "Dump Mining" - mining old landfills for materials that were discarded in the past when they weren't as scarce as they will be in the future?
This will happen first.
It's already happening. Ever heard of garbage pickers. Try googling ghana e-waste problem
@@cletussamboy8650 I'm talking going back to dumps that have been closed and mining them - mainly in first world countries. I'm sure there's a wealth of useful materials in there that were just thrown out back in the day
@@brilang71 Mainly computer parts that have precious metals. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth but the cost to extract it makes it uneconomical at this time.
The point of mining in space is the value of not having to deplete Earth, or expend resources to put materials into space. Once mined and processed, we can save huge resources on materials that are already "up" there. We don't need to bring mined materials down here.
While the cost of a metal would drop - the need for the metal wouldn't thus - if we can use said anything from the rock - it will just simply be used in more projects thus re-increasing the value of said metal. For example, a large amount of that would simply stay in space to build more ships and robots to send to other locations to mine more resources or "ship"/used to build colonies on Mars. While the value of said metal again would drop still - the end products wouldn't - cars would still cost 10k+ while driving laws and the needs to everyone to switch electrical cars. The need to keep mining would drop on Earth - but the need to mine out in space would open new jobs as well.
Thanks for the Urban Mining information....
Two aspects of Space Mining are outstanding. A : refining metals in a vacuum allow us to cheaply create ultra high purity ingots and final products with no included oxygen (or other gases) which is near impossible on earth, and anyway currently ultra expensive. These pure materials have highly enhanced and unique properties that will allow us to make huge leaps in our understanding of the universe and vital technological advances. For example oxygen free steel has completely different strength and ductility to the stuff made in an atmosphere. B: manufacturing at the top of Earths gravity well allows us to fabricate and assemble much larger ships and other machines - solar furnaces, habitats, cities, than we can economically create by assembly on earth and launching to orbit. If ever there was a case for building a Master Printer ( one than prints other printers and everything else besides) , creating such a thing in orbit has to be the best of good ideas. Additionally the relatively simple task of disposing of hazardous mine tailings in orbit can be perfectly achieved by sending such material into the sun for ultimate re-cycling.
Blatantly going to happen. It'll also be fantastic for the global economy.
Seems that none of Matt's experts are up-to-date on Starship.
Why do you keep talking about bringing the resources back down to earth? I thought the whole point of space mining was that it made the resources cheaply available IN SPACE. Bringing things in and out of a gravity well is expensive, so shifting our economy to space-based production is the whole point.
Yep not having to get stuff out of our gravity well is the main part in saving our resources.
I have wondered at times if Elon Musk fairing recovery for the Falcon 9, might be his way of dipping his toes in the water for single-use cargo atmospheric reentry sled that would be made in space with space resources.
There are more buyers willing to pay for the resources here on Earth.
The demand on Earth would be tenfold what space ventures may demand.
@@prolarka For now
Earth is where I keep all my stuff! Also, it's where the people are. Also, it's where all the existing infrastructure is. Also, it's where all the products made from that infrastructure need to be delivered.
The TRANSITION to a dominant space industry will take many decades, perhaps over a century -and that would probably only benefit a small segment of the people of Earth.
Don’t forget that these rare earth metals are super useful. You touched on it, but the decrease in cost would astronomically increased demand for them, which would for the near term keep costs high. Luckily, these rare earth metals are the very things that we need for making cheap long term habitation on the moon and Mars which means it will get even cheaper to mine these materials in space and then to mine them for use in space.
I believe it will be needed in space building, when we build huge structures and space crafts in space it will be cheeper to source things already in space like fuel and minerals
I think space force is the coolest thing trump has done
It was actually a really good strategic move. But seriously WHO LET HIM NAME IT?!?
Yes it is cool, but i also think it was inevitable, with the military industrial complex being impervious to political leadership changes and all.
@@dillonvandergriff4124 I know why not "Starhoppers" or something badass
@@Futuremason It was never "inevitable". We've just been giving them the funding and confidence (in that order) over several decades to do so practically without question.
@@henryviiifake8244 Either way, let the star wars begin!
Imagine a show where people sell asteroids on auction ☄️ for crypto then discovering there’s no precious metals. 🕺🏽 Like one of those abandoned storage auction shows 📦
"(Mineral) Storage Wars!"
This might be a little under ambitious for Matt's work.
First we get three or four modified Starships to make an ISS. We send up fuel missions to it. We send another one to the Moon. In Cis lunar orbit you make a grave yard for Starships or falcon rockets or what have you that are on their last legs. Out of them you make the scaffolding platform for an O'Neil cylinder. You make an ice cream cone shaped O'Neil cylinder that you use to break down and refine payloads to send to Earth, the Moon, and Mars. This would also allow for the production of space assets. By using the space ships to snag smaller asteroids you can use ice to weld them onto a bigger and bigger O'neil.
You could make a space telescope 10x the size of hubble. None of the pieces need to be crammed into a space ship. There is so much stuff that NASA and other space agencies would pay for that can be done exclusively in space. A Private/Public partnership made in heaven.
One of the biggest benefits of mining in space is receiving large quantity of high quality materials in space (instead of starting on earth). This will enable space ship building in space, leading to more advancements. Additionally, a glut of materials in space, would lead to cheaper methods of delivering those materials to earth. Materials from asteroid mining would put us in a favorable position to build a space elevator, which would vastly reduce the cost of moving materials, craft and personnel to and from earth.
Space force was a brilliant idea by an amazing president.
If we did away with capitalism and just embraced our post-scarcity reality, then "flooding the market" would be a moot point.
Oh yes, because anyone can make anything out of any resources from scratch for free, sorry, but in the real world, there will never be a truly post scarcity civilization.
@@73_65 The value of the material is irrelevant. They can still have a proper market with the finished products.
@@Zeon01 The value of the material is never irrelevant, it's part of what determines the value of the product.
@@73_65 They can lock the price at a minimum price to artificially control the market.
@@Zeon01 Then you over pay for a resource that isnt actually worth the price being charged, would you pay $20 USD(or equivalent) for a gallon(or equivalent) of sea water if you live in a town near a sea or ocean? of course not, you could just go collect the water for free as long as you have a container to put it into.
I think we can mine deeper and under the oceans too... We've yet to actually run out of a resource, we usually replace resources with an alternative before they run out..
Earth has a ludicrous planet-load of resources!!
Mining asteroids is a good idea anyway however... :)
Mine in space to build in space..
Collecting an asteroid isn't flooding the market... You can gradually mine it in orbit, trickling the resources to earth...
I was waiting for this kind of info. four a Long Long time. Thanks from Madrid, Spain.
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Nearby there is a lot heavy particles for example in asteroid belt. Mining methods 1` controlled drop 2` orbital extraction ..... etc.
i think space mining will make most sense for space construction and development. and i don't think we're quite done with exploring alternatives to currently used materials on earth, which will sustain our ways of consumption for way longer. also recycling is of course a very big thing we have to get better at if we don't want to run out of stuff.
I think space mining is something meant for future development on the moon or mars and we should really focus on manufacturing processes that can both make stuff and reuse the materials to 99% by weight. Machine design needs to incorporate post life repurposing capabilities.
Matt I think we will need both!
I hope to see this happen. We could off-world all eco-destructive operations, avoid pollution on earth and as the minerals and metals needed for a green future are quite rare, we will need to either go back to medieval lifestyles or start exploring space.
This will become more feasible as we gain experience, scale up our tech n start seeing returns n then ur simply into economies of scale.
The worrying bit is who owns space? mars? moon? will it be a free-for-all? or divided up like antarctica
Maple seed: the pod at the center of a Maple seed has many tough spikes that provide wind resistance slowing the rotation of the pod to decrease spin force during falling. a maple seed is probably the very best natural design of how to deliver space mined products to a planet.
Fantastic episode. Do you think SpaceX should put more energy into mining for liquid oxygen - getting it into low earth orbit - so we don’t have the launch so many starships and boosters.?
Every space video I see so special never get I enough to take in. Simple days I watch and listen to music I like imagine me travel the space. New band too and legend like the deltaparole tool foofighters nirvana and other.
I don't have the figures with me, but there is an enormous amount of valuable elements sitting in landfills. You don't need space craft to access it. You need a regular excavator, an arc furnace and a shitload of cheap (solar) power. Same goes for processing seawater. Once you have enough cheap (solar) energy, anything is possible, here on Earth.
Some are suggesting that we use the materials in space for things we need in space. Like building ships refueling them on on the spot.
I love the name space force. It makes today seem like the future imagined decades past. Even if we are not exactly there it gives you hope that maybe, in part, we are progressing.
if we can cheaply and reliably transport from space it would be good. but the best scenario is if you could also refine the resource in orbit or on the moon before bringing to the earth would bring the cost down even further.
Something to think about. Space mining is expensive, because of the cost of bringing stuff back for processing. Idea, move processing and production into orbit and shuttle technicians for long shifts in orbital processing the same way we already move workers for several month deployments on oil rigs. That along with automation should cut cost considerably. We can then move ready products back to the surface in bulk, cheaper than moving raw materials. Setting up an industrial moon colony would be great for easier take off and landing of mining vehicles.
Transporting material from space to earth can be really dangerous in the long term. The more materials we bring down from space, the more mass we add to the planet, and in turn add more gravity. We would need to set up a mass exchange system to prevent adding so much gravity that we can’t leave the planet or damage infrastructure from an increase of weight.
My concern is the exact opposite regarding the moon. Has any studies been done on the risks of removing so much mass in the form of the ice? Any issues with massive cavities left behind from mining? Life as we know it is very dependant on our moon and can't afford to screw things up. Even a slight change in the delicate dance between the moon and earth will have devastating consequences!