I will have to admit that your option of reaction mass from other asteroids escapes my understanding completely. I dont have a clue what you mean.

I think O’Neill proposed this as well — drag surplus lunar oxygen out there, mix it with methane, and burn it. But an in situ mass driver is probably the best option, whether to move the asteroid or to send ore bodies to L5 et al.

I don’t know what the cheapest option would be to mine Eros, or whether it’s worth mining at all in favour of other resources; just as I don’t know the cheapest way to manufacture pencils or how to source the parts for an iMac motherboard. I leave that question to self-interested parties to determine. But before they can do their thing, they will need property rights.

Thanks for teasing this out though, I’ve certainly found it educational.

Yes, with ion drive propulsion you might eventually perturb the orbit enough for it to pass even closer to the Earth’s orbit than it does now. You would just have to be very, very patient, I guess. Never mind, those minerals have been hanging around waiting for millions of years, they can wait a few decades more! The trouble is, the old ion drive wouldn’t be much good to you in trying to achieve an Earth or lunar orbital insertion. You could always wait for the next time that both objects approach their orbital cross-over point together – but there’s not a lot of wiggle room with those powerful ion engines if small perturbations have made its path of approach extremely dangerous, either!

The old gas and mirrors trick I am not so sure about. As far as I understand Eros, it has a surface composition similar to chondritic meteorites but with *depleted* volatiles. That is, it is a rather non-gassy rock, probably because it has experienced extreme heat in the past. Short of generating temperatures capable of vapourising silicates (which would require one hell of an accurately focussed mirror) the idea strikes me as a non-starter. Maybe good for a comet nucleus (apart from the kinetic energy that most of these have!), but not Eros.

I will have to admit that your option of “reaction mass from other asteroids” escapes my understanding completely. I don’t have a clue what you mean. That leaves mining in situ which, despite the huge expense, strikes me as at least feasible with existing technology.

I think that you are underestimating the technical difficulties of the “Eros Project” with your dismissive statement that “there’s plenty of energy and matter to do it with”. More importantly, I think that using this as anything more than a purely hypothetical example of the very valid issues you are raising detracts from the argument. You can find better examples than capturing a large asteroid into Earth or lunar orbit – eg mining on the moon, which I would not be surprised to see in my lifetime.

TFK

O’Neill proposed sunlight and mass drivers for moving asteroids. Or you could mine it in situ and use sunlight. Or you can use mirrors to heat up one side causing gas to escape. Or you could reaction mass from other asteroids and burn it off as a conventional rocket. Or you could build ion engines and move it slowly.

Honestly, there’s plenty of energy and matter to do it with. The key matter is cost and patience. Nobody will do it if they can’t guarantee ownership.

On my rough calculation, this thing has a mass of around 6.7*10E15 kg. Moving it from its present orbit in any kind of practical timeframe and (even more to the point) inserting it into a useable orbit when it gets here would require vast amounts of energy to be applied to it. Sourced from what and transferred to the asteriod how?

I am not saying that this could never be done, just that it is not feasible with any known technology. So you would be looking at a minimum ramp-up time of new technological capacities that puts such a prospect a good way into the future, if it ever proves feasible at all.

Apart from that, how to you think steering an object 2,500 cubic kilometers in size in the general direction of Earth is likely to be received back home? We can’t even get support for a low level nuclear waste repository in the outback of Australia. Realistically, the chance of such a thing ever being allowed by our timid race is pretty much f-all!

Having said all of that, I think there are some more fundamental point raised here about property rights in space. Interesting discussion!

Cheers,
TFK

The greatest single step in the history of humankind [...] is waiting for us to shrug off a hangover from another era. And frankly, its about time we did it.

Hmm, are you really sure that’s what’s holding ‘em all back? Nothing to do with the fact that it’s a long way away and really cold? I think you’ve overestimated the current technical capacity of the human race. Give it another 20 years and we can argue over this treaty, and another 20 years after that before the space mines start kicking in.

It would seem to me that scarcity is much more likely to be an issue when it comes to land area on the Moon and Mars.

One concern that does occur to me is that if something really scientifically interesting turns up, there should be some provision to protect it from mining – with some compensation to whomever discovered it, of course, so they don’t just quietly bury the equivalent of the dinosaur bones they’ve dug up.

BTW: “I thought you were an economist..” No need to resort to personal abuse there Jacques. I am actually a mathematical statistician who happens to work in a business school.

Let the companies develop the technology to get us to LEO at reasonable cost first. The lack of space law at the moment is certainly not impeding that. Then get the asteroids properly surveyed in an open manner so that everyone knows what is up there. Then private companies can develop proposals on how they get the stuff down and we can develop space property law around giving them amount of property rights these companies need to operate profitably, and prefably no more than that. If we blindly allow property rights to space based resources we could easily end up with almost all of them owned by a monopoly/oligopoly. Microeconomics 101 says that a monopolist or group of oligopolists are going to exploit those assets as minimally as possible because that is the most profitable thing for them to do.

I purposefully left off “traffic control”, which is a messy beast already partly covered by treaties. It’s another area that needs to be settled in a similar fashion — rights to orbital tracks, rights to occupy volumes at Lagrange points, traversal rights throughout intrasolar space, that sort of thing.

The wildcatters are not stealing; the ore because it is not owned.

I thought you were an economist, not a lawyer. Well played. I don’t think that’s how the parties involved will see it — it’s still quite literally a free rider problem.

I just dont buy your argument that selling the solar system is a pre-condition to exploiting it. The reason it doesnt happen is that there are just much easier ways to turn a buck that dont involve an uneconomic gravity gradient.

I don’t buy your argument that we can do without property rights. Point to somewhere on Earth where the absence of property rights and legal structure makes mining and industry cheaper and less risky, if you please.

With property rights to homesteaders you create a massive incentive to get out and explore. Even if it doesn’t happen right away, it’s better sooner than later. As for the costs of exploration, they are falling all the time as more and more companies begin to enter to field with that very goal in mind.

Say that Australia proposed a new treaty allowing homesteading of celestial bodies, would you oppose that? If so, why?

What you say about asteroid mining sounds confused and ill-thought out to me Jacques. Risk? Space is inherently risky. The question is whether lack of title to the asteroid is a deal breaker.

Lets say that Virgin Space Mining spend a billion dollars pulling Eros into earth orbit. Captain Branson sets up mining equipment and starts sending gold containing ore down to Earth/ Or, even better, uses the unique zero-G environment to refine it more efficiently than is possible on Earth. This invention is patent protected. (I reason that patents must be enforceable in space otherwise illegal video downloads would become legal as they bounce off the satellite.)

What will the wildcatters do? It costs hundred of millions to get up there and set up their equipment on the other side of the asteroid. They are free riding which is annoying but not a deal breaker for Captain Branson. The wildcatters are not stealing; the ore because it is not owned. So saying using this emotive word is a circular argument. Existing law would prevent wildcatters from attacking our equipment. Otherwise, countries would routinely shoot down each others satellites with legal impunity,

I just dont buy your argument that selling the solar system is a pre-condition to exploiting it. The reason it doesnt happen is that there are just much easier ways to turn a buck that dont involve an uneconomic gravity gradient.

I’m not supposing we ignore the treaty. I’m saying we withdraw from it, or at least threaten to in order to provoke some movement in this area. As for it being “pointless”, what does it cost us to try? Nothing. What could we gain? Heaps.

As for Eros, the key word is risk. No company will expose themselves to that kind of risk at the moment. If there’s homesteading rights then it becomes far less risky to actually go and do it. Put yourself in the position of a mining company board: “You mean we could spend billions going there and tugging it back, but could stop wildcatters from attacking our equipment and stealing ore? Bugger that for a laugh”.

I do not see that the lack of title to the asteroids is stopping this entrepreneurial activity required to get things started. First mover advantage should be enough incentive. At some stage, when space gets past the initial stages of economic development, it would become a big issue.

I met Harrison Schmidt at an airport a few years ago, when he was out spruiking for mining the moon for hydrogen. I even got to sit next to him and hear what it felt like in a Saturn 5 when it burns. Big thrill for a 1960’s NASA groupy like me.