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Economic Corner 20 - 02/26/2025

richardmurray

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This event began 02/26/2025 and repeats every year forever

Economic Corner - Space Mineral Race

MY THOUGHTS
I must first say the parts below. 

  • FISCAL NOTES FROM THE ARTICLE OR FROM CITATIONS- quick notes to look at, all financial info is there
  • CITATION NOTES FOR ARTICLE ELEMENTS- for persons or organizations
  • BASE ARTICLE - the main article that inspired this edition
  • INVESTIGATED FINDINGS - other articles I found that are valuable to share

Now... to my thoughts
The history of mineral rushes throughout human history is clear, 99% who venture for mineral riches end in failure, so the money in the space mining industry is  and will be in the support system to mining. SpaceX and others who have affordable ways to reach outer space will profit on the profiteers. The biggest challenge legally will be on claims to asteroids and ownership of content back to earth. Currently no international framework exist and with the governments of USA/China/Russia all in rattle the saber mode, the legal environment for space mining will offer opportunities. The 1% who strike it rich will change whole industries on Earth for the mineral resources brought to earth will literally augment the quantity and sequentially value of mineral resources on Earth.
Extreme attention need to be made on the management of satellites , routes into deep space. Depending on the legal scenario, money can be made by leasing out space in outer space, for use by space miners or others trying to get their project to work most efficiently.
Black countries need to focus on food grown in space. As wealth from outside earth joins earth, it will lead to excess, and that will need higher demands of food from population growth.

FISCAL NOTES FROM THE ARTICLE OR FROM CITATIONS

  • Cost of Brokkr-1 not mentioned publicly
  • Details to Brokkr-1 not mentioned publicly
  • Rideshare on SpaceX is 1.1 million dollars for 200 kilogram slots
  • Astroforge raised $55 million in funding [ https://www.astroforge.com/updates/firing-on-all-cylinders-announcing-40m-and-mission-3 ] fifteen million is from private or unlisted. Forty million is from : Nova Threshold {citation : https://www.gaebler.com/VC-Investors-FAE25306-F35B-4688-AB64-AF128C7CDA3A-Nova-Threshold } , SevenSevenSix{https://sevensevensix.com/}, initialized {https://initialized.com/}, Jed McCaleb {http://jedmccaleb.com/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_McCaleb}, Y Combinator { https://www.ycombinator.com/ } , Uncorrelated Ventures { https://www.uncorrelated.com/ } , Soma Capitol { https://somacap.com/ } , 468 capitol { https://468cap.com/ } , Day one ventures { https://www.dayoneventures.com/ } , L2 Ventures { https://www.l2v.com/ } 
  • Matthew Gialich stated [goto "The CEO of Astroforge Matthew Gialich said" below] the business model of Astroforge relies on SpaceX customer prices.
  • Cost of Odin - not mentioned publicly
  • Cost of Using undisclosed dishes in  India, South Africa, Australia and the United States- not publicly stated
  • The financial goal is to get rare metals in the Platinum Group [goto "Platinum Group Metals : " below]
  • From Mitch Hunter-Scullion, paraphrase: 117,000 tons of platinum is about 680 years of global supply, 1,000 tons of platinum  is the next half century of mobile phones
  • From Joel C. Sercel industrial steps: 1) living off land in space - early energy from space [ https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11498-economiccorner017/ ]  2) export products back to earth [ Platinum group metals] 3) affordable automated systems will be built for work outside earth 4) factories will turn asteroids into products sent back to earth 
  • intermittent steps - 1a) high speed internet service will mostly come from outer space with hundreds of thousands of satellites 1b) data processing will need to move into space[the biggest cost of data processing on earth is power, solar power in space will make it cheaper] 1c) energy  beamed from space to earth [ maybe earlier than the others] 1d) space products will be built from material in space 2a) space mining will take off with an off earth infrastructure [ rocket propellant from moons or asteroids; asteroid or moon rocks to build structures;] efficient methods will win 2b) real estate will be the most important industry [ first tourism, then people who want freedom ]
  • The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R.2262) focuses on making guidelines, but focuses on private public sector, doesn't speak of penalties, doesn't speak of contingencies, doesn't speak of legal scenarios like ownership claim disputes, it brings no clarity on potential international conflicts, it speaks of designing plans for safety and management. So financially the lack of clarity legally will make future investments value unknown based on the unknown legal climate. The act sets up space as an international wild west in space.

CITATION NOTES FOR ARTICLE ELEMENTS

UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR BASE ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/science/astroforge-launch-asteroid-mining.html

BASE ARTICLE
Earth’s 1st Asteroid Mining Prospector Heads to the Launchpad
The dream of mining metals in deep space crashed and burned in the 2010s. AstroForge’s Odin mission to survey a potentially metallic asteroid is packed and ready to lift off.

By Jonathan O’Callaghan
Jonathan O’Callaghan reported on AstroForge in 2023 when its asteroid mining mission’s destination was a secret.

Image
Three Astroforge workers in hairnets and blue gloves give a thumbs up to the camera as they pose next to a small spacecraft in a large white facility.
From left, Astroforge personnel Ashton Meginnis, Wesley Tunelius, and Ben Fields with Odin during final assembly testing.Credit...Astroforge

Feb. 23, 2025
A private company is aiming to heave a microwave oven-size spacecraft toward an asteroid later this week, its goal to kick off a future where precious metals are mined around the solar system to create vast fortunes on Earth.

“If this works out, this will probably be the biggest business ever conceived of,” said Matt Gialich, the founder and chief executive of AstroForge, the builder and operator of the robotic probe.

That may sound familiar: A decade ago, news stories were aflutter about the wealth promised by asteroid mining companies. But things didn’t quite work out.

“We blossomed three or four years too early for the big gold rush of investor enthusiasm for space projects,” said David Gump, the former chief executive of Deep Space Industries, one of the earlier batch of would-be asteroid miners. Eventually the money dried up; Deep Space Industries was sold off in 2019 and never reached an asteroid.

AstroForge is betting on things being different this time around. The California company has already launched a demonstration spacecraft into Earth orbit and raised $55 million in funding. Now the company is set to actually travel toward a near-Earth asteroid in deep space.

AstroForge’s second robotic spacecraft, called Odin, is bundled into a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will also launch a privately built moon lander and a NASA-operated lunar orbiter as soon as Wednesday from Florida. About 45 minutes after the launch, Odin will separate and begin its solo journey into deep space, while the moon missions — the Athena lander from Intuitive Machines and NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer — take off on their own separate journeys.

No commercial company has ever launched an operational mission beyond the moon, and AstroForge is the first company to receive a license from the Federal Communications Commission that allows it to transmit from deep space. AstroForge will communicate with the spacecraft using undisclosed dishes in India, South Africa, Australia and the United States.

At first, AstroForge kept its target asteroid a secret, fearing competitors. But in January, the company announced the destination, an object called 2022 OB5. Mr. Gialich said he was more confident of AstroForge’s advantage.

“We’re the only one that’s actually doing anything,” he said. “Who else is preparing to go to an asteroid?”

Asteroid 2022 OB5 is small, no more than 330 feet across, about the size of a football field. AstroForge’s science team assessed the asteroid by using telescopes, including the Lowell Observatory and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, to estimate its metallic content. They believe that 2022 OB5 is an M-type, a class of asteroids comprising 5 percent of known space rocks that may have a high amount of metal. The analysis of the asteroid has not yet been published.

Image
A view looking into two very large mirrors of a ground-based space telescope at dusk.
The Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, which helped Astroforge’s science team assess Asteroid 2022 OB5.Credit...Joe McNally/Getty Images

Stephanie Jarmak, a planetary scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the company’s analysis was plausible.

“There are several different ways to determine whether it’s an M-type or not,” she said, including studying the asteroid’s brightness, or albedo. A higher brightness suggests the presence of more metal. She lauded the company for being more open about its target asteroid. “I thought that was really nice,” she said.

M-type asteroids are thought to be rich in metals such as iron and nickel. These could be useful as a resource for construction in space, perhaps to build new spacecraft and machinery. However, some M-types may also be rich in more valuable platinum group metals, or P.G.M.s, used in devices such as smartphones. The windfall would be huge if these could be mined in abundance and brought to Earth.

“A single one-kilometer-diameter asteroid, if it was platinum-bearing, would contain about 117,000 tons of platinum,” said Mitch Hunter-Scullion, the founder and chief executive of the Asteroid Mining Corporation in Britain. His company is taking a slower approach and plans to demonstrate technologies on the moon later this decade.

“That’s about 680 years of global supply. You’re talking about centuries of platinum demand from a single asteroid,” Mr. Hunter-Scullion said. “Even if you get 1,000 tons of platinum, you’re sitting there with the next half century of mobile phones.”

Not everyone is convinced that so much valuable metal will be found inside M-type asteroids.

“There’s not enough P.G.M.s in asteroids to justify that as a stand-alone business,” said Joel C. Sercel, the founder and chief executive of TransAstra, a company that is developing a giant bag that could be used to grab and extract resources from asteroids in the future. The company will test a small mock-up of the technology aboard the International Space Station following a launch to the station this summer.

The legalities of mining asteroids and selling their resources remain uncertain.

In 2015, President Obama signed a law allowing asteroid resources to be sold on Earth. But no one has yet put this law to the test.

“Is AstroForge going to make a claim? Does the fact they reach this asteroid before anybody else mean nobody else can go to it?” asked Michelle Hanlon, a law professor specializing in space at the University of Mississippi. “It’s going to be interesting to see the international reaction.”

Image
Looking up at the payload of a SpaceX rocket just before encapsulation.
Odin, lower right, will be hitching a ride with the Athena lander from Intuitive Machines aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.Credit...SpaceX

Odin will arrive in late 2025 after a journey of about 300 days to 2022 OB5. The asteroid follows an orbit around the sun similar to Earth’s. The probe will fly past the asteroid at a distance of 0.6 miles, using two black-and-white cameras to snap pictures. Zooming by the object at thousands of miles per hour, the spacecraft will have an encounter that will last five and a half hours.

“And it’s probably only the last 10 minutes that we’re getting pictures bigger than a pixel,” Mr. Gialich said.

The goal is for these pictures to be enough to tell if the asteroid is metallic.

“Hopefully it looks shiny,” Mr. Gialich said. However, it’s very possible that any metal could be mixed into the asteroid’s soil and not be visible.

“I’m not sure how much compositional information they can get purely from images,” Dr. Jarmak, the planetary scientist, said.

Craters on the surface may hint at hidden metal though, Mr. Gialich said, adding: “We expect to see cracking on the surface” that could be indicative of metallic content.

The spacecraft will also precisely track the asteroid’s position in space during the flyby. Doing so could allow the density of the asteroid to be calculated, based on its gravitational tug on the spacecraft. Higher density would hint at more metallic content.

Success is not guaranteed. AstroForge’s first mission, Brokkr-1, was launched into low-Earth orbit in April 2023 to test the company’s planned asteroid refining technology. But the mission encountered problems and burned up in the atmosphere. Mr. Gialich said that AstroForge had improved its technologies on the Odin spacecraft by relying on components produced in-house.

Vestri, the third mission of AstroForge, will be its most ambitious. That spacecraft, the size of a refrigerator, will be designed to land on an asteroid as soon as next year, possibly even 2022 OB5 if the metallic content is confirmed. Vestri’s landing legs would be equipped with magnets designed to stick to the surface of the asteroid and be capable of estimating how many P.G.M.s are present.

Image
The Odin spacecraft rests on a small platform in light from the sun at the edge of a large facility.
Testing Odin’s solar arrays with natural sunlight from the loading bays at AstroForge’s facility in SealBeach, Calif.Credit...Astroforge

It’s unclear how successful this mission will be. “If it’s made out of solid metal it will stick,” said Benjamin Weiss, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, many asteroids are known to be rubble piles, essentially collections of rocks held together loosely by gravity, such as the asteroid Bennu that was visited by NASA’s ORISIS-REx spacecraft.

“They are barely held together,” Dr. Weiss said, meaning that the magnets might just end up pulling a few rocks away from the surface as the lander drifts away.

Only one spacecraft, the Rosetta spacecraft from the European Space Agency, has visited a suspected M-type asteroid before, a flyby of the asteroid 21 Lutetia in 2010. The presence of metal at that time was inconclusive. A much more capable mission, NASA’s $1.2 billion Psyche spacecraft, is currently on its way to an asteroid bearing the same name by 2029. Astronomers think the asteroid may be a fragment of a failed planet’s core and is rich in metal.

Results from the Odin mission’s analysis of 2022 OB5 could be a tantalizing tease for Psyche. “If it turns out it’s made of solid metal, that would support the idea that some of these larger bodies like Psyche could be the cores of differentiated bodies,” Dr. Weiss said.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton at Arizona State University, the principal investigator on Psyche and also an adviser to AstroForge, said that the opportunities afforded by commercial deep space missions like Odin are exciting, enabling small and fast missions at low cost. “It’s going to be a bit of a game-changer,” she said.

Others are more focused on what Odin means for asteroid mining in the present tense.

“It’s probably the highest achievement in the sector so far,” Mr. Hunter-Scullion of Asteroid Mining Corporation said. Mr. Sercel of TransAstra also applauded the company.

“We’re gung-ho for AstroForge and wish them the best of luck,” he said. “We’re behind them 100 percent.”

Now there’s just the small matter of the launch and journey to the asteroid, and the hope that what Odin finds will lead to the riches long touted from asteroid mining.

“If we make it, I’m popping champagne,” Mr. Gialich said.

INVESTIGATED FINDINGS

Brokkr-1 mission
Uniform Resource Locator
https://youtu.be/K83Jp3V_hac?t=340
Video

 

SUB TRANSCRIPT
 

IN AMENDMENT
The CEO of Astroforge Matthew Gialich said [ https://youtu.be/K83Jp3V_hac?si=3bxF2s0s9e2HxiNQ ] 
SUB TRANSCRIPT

 

 

Building Civilization in Space | Joel C. Sercel
URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBZ3GaNeUbo
VIDEO


TRANSCRIPT


Prior Edition : https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11503-economiccorner019/

 


space mining

POST URL
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/11507-economiccorner020/

PRIOR EDITION

https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/202-economic-corner-19-02232025/

NEXT EDITION

https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/322-economic-corner-21-06032025/

 

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