What Happened To Space Mining?

It is inevitable, just on a longer time-scale than most people thought.

One aspect not mentioned...when the prices on formerly rare and expensive resources drop, new markets and product categories open up or are created due to the sudden availability and low cost. This expansion of products and markets, consequently, drives up the consumption of these new resources, thus driving up the overall demand to mine more. It will come down to which companies can survive the transition while these new markets anchor themselves and grow big enough to support the mining. This cycle is seen over and over.

My thought is that asteroid mining won’t take off in a big way until we start building space habitats. It’s a lot easier to mine and refine a million tons of steel in space than it is to launch it out of earth orbit. Iron and silicon are going to be the two most critical minerals mined in space, with oxygen and copper being the follow ups.

Reality bites!! I actually enjoy these 'after all the hype dies down' videos more than I do the original hype balloons. They are somehow more sober, honest.

If I should summarize my main problem with current industry, is that companies who made advertising and marketing are more rewarded then people who actually made product and those who own company and making rules and have more income and wealth then workers who do job for you. It's all about economic and power structure who owns what and who is making decisions. At the end you can just present yourself with tons of promises for service or product where people believe all stupid non sense you say with zero effort, then you just grab the money of investors you're gone. There are dozens of examples of this from just from Silicon valley.

20 years ago: Oh my god is a asteroid we all gonna die! 20 years in the future: Don’t let it get away!!

"What's taking so long ?" Dude it's only been 7 years ! Most countries I can name can't even build a sizable infrastructure project in less than 10 !

Mining on Earth only makes economic sense for as long as there's easy to access materials, once those are used up, then it'll become increasingly costly. Mining asteroids, the moon and Mars makes sense in the long run

Here's a better question: What happened to patience? People have become so jaded to technological advances that if something doesn't happen right away they consider it vaporware.

Mining in space for space makes more sense. Because it cost alot more to bring materials from earth because of earth's gravity. The cost of anything also depends on transportation it doesn't matter if it is on earth or space. The higher the transportation the higher the material cost. Then because of the new technologies once those technologies are in space it makes it easier to build in space. For instance if you build a large spaceships with gravity in space. Once you have the infrastructure on the moon it would cost less to build these ships in moon orbit than earth orbit. On the moon there is titanium and aluminum which can make very strong alloys. You could launch those materials in orbit with a electro magnetic rail. Large ships like this would make us a interplanetary civilization it would be able to go anywhere in our solar system.

The trick will be finding asteroids that are actually worth mining. Not every asteroid will be of value, and they're not exactly just a few meters apart; they could be millions of miles apart, so you'll need a robotic spaceship with a lot of fuel and the ability to locate and navigate to numerous sites without refueling and maintenance needs. If you do score a huge chunk of platinum or gold or neodymium, you'll need to insert it into Earth orbit for retrieval by a Falcon 9 or Soyuz, or some kind of specialized orbital drone that can bring the metal safely down. Eventually most of the metals mined in space will never reach the Earth's surface; they'll be used for deep space construction projects. Robots will build orbital structures and spacecraft for less cost than to fly the materials and structures into space from Earth.

Neil is right though. Jeff and musk are both up there ($200b) and both have their own space programs.

People have mentioned the problems with getting the resources mined back to earth, how expensive it will be to mine them in the first place, and that you have to compete with mining here on earth. What i didnt hear mentioned is the crapload of resources you will need to build things in space and how much cheaper it would likely be in the long run to mine resources close to where they are needed. I mean, if you are going to start building stuff on the moon or mars would it not be cheaper to mine and process resources nearby than to send resources there from earth?.

The first "SPACE MINE" will be the moon mined for its top soil rich in rare H3 which can be easily fusion-ed into electric power.

Most of these startup ventures are driven by profit. Space mining in its current stage is anything but profitable. It took the combined might of a nation and a decade to put the first man on the Moon. SpaceX almost went bankrupt trying to develop a reusable rocket. The current breed of space mining investors probably won’t have the stomach for the amount of technical hurdles that will need to be overcome in order for this thing to work out.

Being a fan of Sci-fi space themed TV series like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargate, I can see space mining being a thing. My original mental image of Space mining with current technology I pictured something like attaching thrusters to asteroid to move it closer to earth (just outside the moons orbital path) then build a space station around the asteroid. Send up linkable tube sections with mining type extension arms that would wrap around the asteroid then u can mine the asteroid at whatever pace u want.

Was anyone else looking forward to the comments than the video itself? 😅

This should be a 2 second video. Second One: What happened to Space Mining? Second two: They were 40 years too early. Fin.

This is awesome. That worker bee could essentially function as an off world worker. Using easily mined resources to power itself. Genius. I think its very possible.

Mining in space IS a good idea, but it's time has not come yet. You MUST have very cheap heavy lift first. Until either New Glenn or Starship start flying, all this stuff about commercial space stations, and space mining are just PowerPoint presentations.