Comment by randomdrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randomdrake | Hacker News Reader

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Study: The politics of space mining – An account of a simulation game

Citation: Paikowsky, Deganit. Tzezana, Roey. Acta Astronautica Volume 142, January 2018, 10-17.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016

DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016

Abstract: Celestial bodies like the Moon and asteroids contain materials and precious metals, which are valuable for human activity on Earth and beyond. Space mining has been mainly relegated to the realm of science fiction, and was not treated seriously by the international community. The private industry is starting to assemble towards space mining, and success on this front would have major impact on all nations. We present in this paper a review of current space mining ventures, and the international legislation, which could stand in their way - or aid them in their mission. Following that, we present the results of a role-playing simulation in which the role of several important nations was played by students of international relations. The results of the simulation are used as a basis for forecasting the potential initial responses of the nations of the world to a successful space mining operation in the future.

Highlights:

• The realization of space exploitation will disrupt world politics.

• The simulation highlighted the political tensions and different interests.

• Inclusive international process is needed to reach fast adaptation.

• Creative mechanisms are needed to allow sharing of new global wealth.

Isn't it way too expensive, just like recovering tons of gold from the bottom of the sea from sunken ships?

Yes. What these predictions assume is that there will be a massive orders-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of space transportation. The moon rocks brought back from Apollo missions are estimated to have cost NASA over $50K per gram (see https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-apollo17.ht...). Gold is only $40/gram currently.

I'm not sure Apollo is the best benchmark. The primary goal was to send the astronauts there and bring them back. Just changing the primary goal should result in a huge reduction in the cost per gram. You'd just send a tiny excavation rover and have it fill bins for the return trip. Followup trips might even skip the rover and just use the one already there. There is a huge amount of room for efficiency and cost savings especially if you leave the humans home.

Though, Moon rocks are a bit of an outlier. They don't have much value outside of science and as a curiosity. You might want to focus on something with more predictable demand. In which case, it may get more complicated than "shovel stuff into a bin".

The $50,800/gram figure seems to be based on the total cost of the entire Apollo project - $50,800 * 382 kilograms of material returned = $19,405,600,000, which is about 4/5 of the total Apollo programme cost listed on Wikipedia.

That seems a little unrealistic to me, because the goal of Apollo was not "bring 382 kilograms of moon rocks back at the lowest possible cost", or anything close to it.

Obviously there are some big hurdles to overcome, but I don't think they're as enormous as "reduce cost by a factor of well over 1,000".

Don't Musk's reusable rockets bring down costs by 80-90% if I recall correctly he and the Google founders also own a space mining company. Space mining might come faster than people realize.

I think there's a lot more going on with recovering gold from shipwrecks than just how much it costs for recovery, governments take most of the loot and it's really hard to find the wrecks in the first place.

I was reading about WWII shipwrecks mysteriously disappearing (they think) for the un-irradiated steel and that's worth a lot less than than a bunch of gold bullion that just has to be scooped up.

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