The Asteroid Mining Problem (& Why Elon Refuses To Do It)

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We've all heard about the great riches that can be made by asteroid mining. A lot of articles and videos even describe asteroid mining as potentially the most lucrative business venture out there. Considering this, it would only make sense that SpaceX steps into asteroid mining as soon as possible in order to leverage the first mover's advantage and fund mars and their various other endeavors. However, you might be surprised to hear that Elon Musk thinks that there is no case for mining asteroids and bringing back the resources to earth to sell. For starters, Elon Musk believes that it will simply always be cheaper to simply mine here on earth. But more importantly, he'd rather focus on Mars especially given that he has limited time and manpower. This video explains the various challenges in asteroid mining and why Elon Musk and SpaceX aren't too interested in the idea.

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Timestamps:
0:00 - The Great Riches of Asteroids
1:22 - The Gravity Problem
2:46 - The Energy Problem
4:14 - Logistics
5:41 - No Purpose
7:01 - Split Resources
7:53 - Time

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Disclaimer:
This video is not a solicitation or personal financial advice. All investing involves risk. Please do your own research.

[Jimbogf]

6:07 You missed something: mining on Earth is highly destructive to the environment.

[devindykstra]

Even if SpaceX doesn't try this themselves, I bet some company will use a SpaceX rocket to launch the first asteroid mining operation in the coming decades.

[Scaliad]

Asteroid's low gravity seems like an advantage for manfacturing in space for space... I think Elon just already has enough to do before that becomes necessary or practical.

[jpx]

He was only talking about mining for the purpose of bringing resources back to Earth.

[Global_Optimization]

I agree that asteroid mining could be very difficult, but I disagree with some of your reasons.

1) For the low-gravity problem, we could just surround the mining equipment with a shroud to contain all the flying rocks. This would be one of the easiest parts of designing the mining operation.

2) Landing the rocket is not an issue because it's just as easy as mating with the ISS, which we can already do. The fact that Earth's gravity is so strong makes it harder, not easier, to land propulsively. You just use the thrusters to match the velocity and position of the asteroid and softly touch down.

2)  For energy, you'd probably just use some of the onboard methalox in the Starship fuel tanks. It can carry enough fuel to go Earth to Mars roundtrip with cargo, so it certainly can carry a whole lot more cargo for an Earth to Asteroid round trip. The weak gravity is a huge advantage here.



3)  There is a important purpose of asteroid mining. Gold, platinum,   silver, Palladium and other precious metals have plenty of practical uses, but are severely limited by their current scarcity. Yes, Earth's crust does have immense amounts of these minerals, but the problem is that they're very diluted and hard to access because they're covered in heavy overburden, whereas in some asteroids they're highly concentrated and gravity is negligible. I think you might be able to just blast the rock apart and somehow separate the good stuff from the waste. Furthermore, mining on an asteroid has zero environmental constraints. The current market price of many of these metals is $10, 000+ per kg, yet Starship cargo will cost maybe less than $100/kg. That is a rather wide budget for figuring out the logistics and mining engineering and still turning a profit. Maybe that's still not enough to cover the costs, but I wouldn't dismiss is without seeing some estimates of just how expensive an asteroid mine would actually be.

[LarryNgetich]

He's just kind enough to leave something for the next generation to conquer

[paprykus]

Venus is our closest planet and is almost identical in terms of size, so yes, Earth is the biggest rocky planet in the solar system, but only by a small margin

[Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman]

So he won't do it?

Fine I'll do it myself

[michelbruns]

4:00 "portable mining rig", a car battery and my computer?

[dav]

Moving mining and refining to space would help with pollution.

[morteza]

They'll start doing it 30 years from now

[merxellus]

This channel has a "Cold Fusion" channel vibe

[ricardomilos]

"Clearly, we won't be seeing any bellyflop landings on an asteroid any time soon" you wouldn't need to "land" on an asteroid, any more than you need to "land" on a space station, because of the low gravity.

[okamijubei]

Even though, I think asteroid mining is necessary in anyway:

1) It would spare the Earth's environment and 0 carbon emission on the Earth. Mining in the asteroids would help to replace mining in the earth as we seem to already take enough (or perhaps more than enough) resources on earth. Take any more would likely hurt and harm the earth's ecosystem. But some mining like salt is still a necessity as salt is pretty scarce in space as Earth is enrich with it. (Mars does have salt as well... but likely not as much.)

2) Reduction of asteroids. For asteroid mining would help to hallow out the asteroids that are consider to be a threat for the Earth and Mars. For there are really large asteroids in the belt. Besides Ceres (as it should be an outpost or a small colony) mining on the larger asteroids can help and likely reduce the chances that the Solar System had to face a planet destroying asteroid like the one happens 65 million years ago. For mining those large ones would help to turn those giant ones into teeny little pieces, one by one at each time.

3) Foundation purpose. There's plenty of asteroids that can be useful by turning them into an artificial space colony. Likely can hold for over thousands or perhaps 10s of millions of people (depending on the size). All they had to do is mine from the inside out. Extract as much minerals as they can and leave the core hollow and start to use steel-plates or concrete on the inside of the asteroid and add in some components in and on the asteroid and add in pressurize air and give the inside an ecosystem and make the asteroid twirl so it can create its own artificial gravity and that's when it will turn into a foundation of a space colony.

4) likely a 100k-10M years of resources. I'm for recycling but asteroids did have plenty of useful materials that we can use for space explorations, colonization, water, etc. Doing so would only decrease scarcity and give us all the materials we need like iron or copper or water or rare-earth metals and such.

5) Economic stability and increase in opportunities. Asteroid mining can increase jobs and also increase in financial gains. Likely over thousands or perhaps billions of jobs be open. Mars likely be using the asteroid materials as their own commodity. Since Mars is the closest to the Asteroid belt. Earth would be a 1# (perhaps the only trade planetary partner for now) and the Moon would have its purpose to become a Trade Outpost (Which too create jobs). As the Earth likely will trade Martian commodity with food surplus. Since doing agriculture on Mars will be a struggle do with having a barren environment. As mining would not only do good for the Earth but more importantly for the Martians.

[undertow]

1. De spin asteriod
2. Enclose in bag
3. Mirrors and lens to focus sunlight into bag vaporizing surface of asteroid
4. Condensate collected and desirables purified
5. Galactic Empire

[fulcrum]

Sadly, this guy does not have all the information. Also, no one should trust Bloomberg. This guy is getting information from them about asteroid mining, but Bloomberg says that asteroid mining is impossible. It is possible today to mine asteroids. It's just that no one is doing it...

[roggerduffy]

Thanks for this perfect inspiration you gave, This was incredibly useful. Nice to get a realistic view of opportunity like this.

[levy]

Actually, the current goal for spacex to go to mars is still 2022 for cargo and 2024 for crew. Starship Dear Moon is happening in 2023 with the crew being selected right now.

[shecanatakeitcaptain]

"A crap ton ..." ? That must be an old Imperial unit.

[theicedragon]

asteroid mining isn't to provide resources for the earth but provide them for in situ utilization.