May 10, 2019 • 41 mins
Why would we want to mine asteroids? How might we manage the mining operation? What is Planetary Resource's plan? Join Chris and Jonathan as they explore mining asteroids.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and I love
all things tech. And at this time for another classic
episode of tech Stuff. The episode you are about to
(00:25):
hear originally published on June four, two thousand twelve. It
is called text Stuff Minds Some Asteroids. And I remember
when we recorded this because it was kind of funny.
It was right around the same time that Stuff you
should Know, was recording an episode about asteroid mining, and
we didn't know that they were doing it, and they
didn't know we were doing it. So there was a
(00:47):
bit of a rush, a gold rush if you will,
on asteroid mining podcasts. That all came out of How
Stuff Works at around the same time, but it was
completely uncoordinated, because that's how we roll here at podcast World.
I hope you guys enjoy this classic episode. I'll be
back in just a moment to to um. So that
(01:09):
was that was a hint. Actually it would be more
like running Coward. We're talking today about asteroids. We did
an episode about you know, figuring out how to deflect
an asteroid if it were coming towards the Earth in
a in a threatening manner, like it said, it's a
nice play. You got here be a shame with someone
(01:30):
I don't know, flattened it. Um, So, apart from dealing
with asteroids trying to extort your planet for for various resources,
we wanted to talk about extorting asteroids for resources. I'm
a little frightened right now. I'm a little goofy right now.
Bonus points if you get the reference to the video
game in which you do mind asteroids. Yes, so we're
(01:51):
talking about asteroid mining and why would we do it, what,
how would we do it, and what's going on with
that whole idea anyway out? Before we get started, I
should mention we do on how stuff works. Dot Com
have an article about how asteroid mining will work. The
will there is important because as of this moment we
are not mining asteroids. We have um ideas about how
(02:14):
we would do this, and there is in fact a
company that exists right now that plans on mining asteroids,
but that even that plan is about a decade out
from fruition, assuming everything goes well. Yeah, just just for
the record, I want to say that I'm I'm coming
up with my own company to pan for asteroids. I'm
(02:36):
not certain exactly how we'll do it, but I'm gonna
make an effort. I claim that there are a lot
of them on the ground of the Georgia Renaissance Festival,
which is you know, most people would just call it gravel,
but I maintain it's actually asteroids, and that they are
they're they're intruding upon my property because I claim them.
Because well, we'll get into the complications of the legal
(03:00):
system and mining for asteroids and a little bit because well,
we're treading new ground in space. Well, that's that's true. Actually,
some of the people involved with this company are are
very interested in space anyway. I mean, they have been
sort of citizens supporters of the space effort, you might say,
(03:20):
people like Larry Page and Eric Schmidt yes, Googlers yes, yes.
And James Cameron Yes, who has has made a movie
or two involving space exploration. Um documentaries, I should say, right,
he's done some documentaries about ocean stuff as well space stuff. Yes.
(03:43):
Game over man. So so we're gonna talk a bit
about let's talk a bit about in general, about mining
asteroids and why you would want to. Here's why if
we ever want to get to a point where we're
getting off this rock to move to some other rock. Uh,
one of the big problems that faces us is where
do we get our raw materials in order to make
(04:06):
the kind of infrastructure we will require in order to say,
survive somewhere else. It's not like you can go and
take it all with you, not easily anyway, because well
and right now there really is no way because the
last cargo carrying UH ships that we use, the Space Shuttle,
are retired. So now we have to build specific vehicles
(04:29):
to launch stuff out there into space because the vehicles
we would have used are no longer in service. But um,
and there's no at least in the United States, there's
no plan to replace them anytime soon, so at least
not by the government. Privately could be a different issue.
In fact, privately is really where all this is is
(04:51):
falling upon. But if we were to try and create
a colony, say upon the Moon's surface or on Mars,
we would need to be able to get materials to
that place in order to create the right environment for
to sustain life. Because I don't know if you realize this,
but they are both rather hostile environments when it comes
(05:12):
to human survivability not survive. Yeah, if you've if you've
seen the documentary Total Recall, you know that if you
were to take your mask off in Mars, your eyes
would pop out of your head and uh, you would
turn into Donald Schwarzenegger. Um little and in fact, okay,
for in reality, we could not survive in either place
(05:33):
without life support systems. Right, So how do we get
the stuff we need to the plants, including things like
water and oxygen? That's part of it. Actually we would
we would likely ship stuff in various kinds of of
of vessels. But when you absolutely positively need it there
in three months, it would be so much better if
(05:53):
we could get that material either from wherever it is
we land or nearby asteroids. And as it turns out,
a lot of asteroids have materials in them that would
be very useful in either life support features or in
building out an infrastructure itself. And uh, in fact, in
our article we talk about three basic categories of asteroids.
(06:17):
All right, there's the C type asteroid, which is the
vast majority of the types that we would find in
our Solar system. And by the way, we mainly think
that asteroids are sort of remnants of the formation of
the Solar system. Yeah, so in some cases leftovers. Sometimes
it's from uh perhaps a collision, an interstellar collision, but
(06:40):
mostly it's just leftovers from the Solar system itself forming.
So it's sort of like you know when you take
apart piece of electronic equipment or car's engine and you
reassemble it, and then there's the there's pieces. I think
of it as any time I buy anything from Ikea,
and I think, oh, there's some pieces here that should
(07:01):
have been used in the formation of this cabinet, and
yet here they are in my hand, and I don't
see any place to put them in. Three years later,
all my dishes break. The two are the two I
maintain are not connected. No one tell my wife anyway.
So the Yeah, the the asteroids. You would expect to
find many of the same elements within asteroids as you
(07:24):
would find within the various planets and other bodies in
our Solar System, And as it turns out, that is
exactly the case. So in the C type of asteroid,
which comprises about of the asteroids in our Solar system.
They have uh a lot of the same elements that
you would find in our in the Sun, apart from
(07:48):
hydrogen and helium and other volatile elements, because they would
have boiled off into space, which is really too bad
because helium mining for helium would be great because, as
it turns out, we're running out on Earth, and you know,
the main culprit of why we're running out of helium
on Earth, that's right, it's crazy to think about. But
those party balloons that we enjoy oh so very much
(08:11):
are actually a problem in scientific research because helium is
very useful for doing things like using it as a
cooling agent. You know, the large Hadron collider uses liquid
helium to get the superconductors as cold as possible to
reduce electrical resistance. But meanwhile, little Timmy, who's speaking a
long the has been brilliant in his balloon all day long,
(08:34):
has just to set scientific research back for decades. Thanks Timmy,
happy freaking birthday. You can switch to hydrogen. I can't
see a problem with that. And looking for balloons get
too near the birthday, can right? Yeah, so hydrogen combustible,
don't put it near the birthday. Candles um, unless you
know you don't like timmy anyway. Moving on, so let's
(08:56):
see type of asteroid. Then we've also got the S
type of asteroid. This is about sev of the asteroids
we would find in our Solar system, and they contain magnesium, nickel,
and iron. These are very useful elements. Uh. The M
type asteroid not an M type planet, as we learned
in Star Trek, which by the way, no scientific basis there.
(09:19):
They just decided to call it M type planet to
mean any sort of earth like planet that human being
could survive upon. You No M is for my planet.
So the M type asteroids have uh, nickel and iron.
And so once we see these asteroids out there, and
(09:39):
we you know, most of them exist between Mars and
Jupiter and a belt, an asteroid belt. You may remember
famous explorations of asteroid belts, like in the documentary UH
Empires Strikes Back, which was had a very expirited exploration
of an asteroid belt. What, yes, they have giant animals
on them? They do not. That is that's me being
(10:02):
silly again. But no, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,
that's where the majority of the asteroids in our Solar
System reside, but sometimes they break free from that belt
and they float around in space. Occasionally they come near
the Earth. Near being a relative term. We're talking in
thousands and thousands and thousands of miles, but that's still
relatively close when you think space is enormous. So, uh,
(10:25):
we would probably be targeting the asteroids that break free
first because maybe the easiest to get to getting to
the asteroids beyond Mars would take so much time that
perhaps by the time they would get back with whatever
resources you are trying to mind, you might not have
anything to build anymore. So, uh, the asteroids that break free,
(10:46):
we can actually determine what type of asteroid they are
based upon the way they reflect light. And that's because
different materials reflect light in different ways, and you will
get a different spectrum if you were to uh to
measure that light and based upon the the composition of
(11:06):
the light that you are looking at. Based upon that,
you can determine what kind of elements are in that
asteroid and you could figure out, oh, well, this is
a perfect candidate for us to go in mind, and
there are other elements that could also be on on
an asteroid, including oxygen. Uh, platinum, gold, both of both
gold and platinum are very useful in electronics, and uh,
(11:29):
perhaps even water. So you might be able to find
frozen water on an asteroid, which could be obviously very
important to human survival. So if you find a few
asteroids with frozen water on it and you mind them,
you get the water off of that, you bring it
to whatever space colony you have, then you can have
not just water, but also oxygen. And I understand too
(11:52):
that it's possible that rarer Earth metals might be on
some of these asters and golden platinum kind of fall
into that category, but but others as well. There's and
and these are very important, like I said, in electronics.
You know, platinum, as it turns out, is very useful
in electronics, but is also very rare on Earth. So
again one of those things where we would be able
(12:13):
to to exploit a an asteroid without having to do
the same thing on the surface of the planet. You know,
clearly mining on Earth can be a very disruptive process.
It can be ecologically disastrous depending on how you're mining
and what it is you're mining. Um, So if we
were able to offload that literally to an asteroid, then
(12:37):
that would be beneficial, not just from a resources standpoint,
but an ecological standpoint, because I mean, really, who cares
if your asteroid is falling apart, right, I mean, there's
there's no one there. Um. So using telescopes we look
at these asteroids, we determine what is what those asteroids
are made of based on the light that's coming back,
(12:59):
and then that would allow us to say which ones
are good candidates for mining. Now, how would we actually
mind the asteroids? Okay, Um, that's a good question, I'll admit. Uh.
Turns out, um, no one has the answer right now
because because we're just not there yet. Even the company
that we were talking about, which is called Planetary Resources.
(13:22):
Planetary Resources, they come out and they admit the like, um,
we don't know how we're going to mind these asteroids
because that's a decade out at best. What we're gonna
do is we're gonna build the machines that can identify asteroids,
detect asteroids, travel to asteroids, and by the time we
get to that point, hopefully we figured out what the
(13:43):
best way of mining these asteroids would be. Now, from
what I've understood so far in my study of this
comprehensive study of asteroid mining. Uh, they're hoping that they
can do a lot of work with robots, which makes
perfect sense. You want to have an you want to
have these robotic devices to mine and asteroid because, uh,
(14:06):
mining mining on its own is dangerous, right, and then
you add in the the dangers of space travel, which
are numerous and certainly deadly. You do not want to
put human lives at risk if you don't have to.
So a robotic force makes a lot of sense. I
(14:27):
mean it. It certainly takes away from great documentaries like Armageddon,
where you know, because I doubt that the robots would
all get together and sing leaving on a jet plane.
But on the other hand, it means that those lives
would be relatively safe. Yeah. You think about this and
in the way that you might actually tackle the problem yourself,
(14:49):
and you realize that there are several significant challenges. Let's
say money as no object. Even getting there challenge is
a challenge. Landing on the asteroids safely is going to
be a challenge. Mining the asteroids resources another challenge, and
then getting back right loading them into your vehicle, which
would have to be designed so that not only could
(15:10):
it travel to the asteroid, but it could bring a
payload back from the asteroid to Earth. Now, granted, when
you're not dealing with gravity out in space, that it's
a little easier to do in the sense that you
don't have to worry about escaping gravity in order to uh,
you know, the payload is not gonna affect you in
that sense. But there are other issues as well, like
how will the mining activity change the behavior of the asteroid. So,
(15:33):
if the asteroid, for example, is an orbit around Earth,
if you start mining the asteroid, is that going to
alter the orbit of the asteroid? Is it going to
possibly either push it to a point where it's going
away from Earth, which means that you're going to have
to take down to consideration, when you're flying back, you're
gonna have to make sure you have enough fuel to
make it back to Earth um or that you know
(15:54):
you've got enough whatever you need enough power there to
get back, or if it brings it closer to Earth
than you have, the consideration of could this potentially create
an impact arc where the asteroid could hit Earth And
in some cases, you know, maybe the asteroids of a
size that it wouldn't necessarily hold together and perhaps it
(16:16):
wouldn't be as big an impact. But anytime you're talking
about an impact at that speed, I mean forces mass
times acceleration, right, So even if your mass isn't very big,
if your acceleration is really high, that's that's a lot
of force. So even a relatively small asteroid, if it's
not going to burn up, could be pretty the disastrous
(16:37):
thing that hit the Earth, especially depending on where, I mean,
even in the ocean. Then you're talking about tsunamis things
like that. So yeah, there there's that element as well.
And when you're mining it, how do you collect what
you're mining? That's that's an interesting problem too, because if
you're if you're talking about an area where there's no gravity,
and let's say you're breaking apart the surface of the
(16:58):
asteroid in order to get at some resources underneath, then
you have to have some way of catching that stuff
as it's floating away. So there's talk about perhaps the
would be some sort of canopy system so that you
would have essentially like a net that would catch stuff
as it flew off the asteroids, so that you didn't
lose the resources you're trying to mind, Uh, Frank, you
(17:20):
have a lot. And then there's also the case of
you know, what is the specific method of mining. Are
you using lasers to try and weakend and break apart material,
are you using other forms of heat? Are you using chemicals? Um?
Are you using physical force? You know that there are
a lot of considerations to make, and frankly, no one
(17:42):
has come up with the right approach yet because we
still haven't tried it. You know, it may very well
be that the first dozen times we try to mine
asteroids we realize there's got to be a better way
because this method is not efficient enough. If the process
takes more money, time and effort, then you would uh,
(18:05):
then you would have if you tried to get those
resources some other way. Then clearly that's not the right answer.
That's all you're doing is storing money away. So there
are a lot of questions to answer at this point.
But let's let's talk a little bit about planetary resources. Now.
We've mentioned it a couple of times, and we talked
about how people like James Cameron and Eric Schmidt and
Larry Page are interested in supporting this company, and you
(18:28):
might think, well, why why would we worry about why
would we want to support a company that has admitted
that the earliest they expect to be able to actually
mind an asteroid would be ten years from now. And
part of it is that actually is what I've seen,
all right, Well, uh, I was reading an article from
Forbes and and in the article they did an interview
(18:50):
with some executives from Planetary Resources, and they talked about
why company this company is an interesting company and why
it may be able. And it's already making money now
right now, it's making money through investment, but it's also
going to It's got revenue generation plans for each step
(19:10):
in the journey to having a mining asteroid operation or
astro remining operation. I'm having some issues with some word
order anyway, order word. The first stage is talking about
creating a space faring telescope called the ARKID one hundred,
(19:35):
and they're expecting to be able to do this within
the next two years. And this is UH telescopes with
remote sensing technology. And the idea is to launch around
six or so of these telescopes into low Earth orbit
and each one would be part of a second It
would be a secondary payload. So in other words, you
(19:55):
would not send a spacecraft up loaded down with these telescopes,
and that's it. Um. Instead, what would happen is, let's
say some communications company wants to launch a new communication
satellite and enters into a contract with a private company
that's going to launch the satellite. Then Planetary Resources could say, hey,
you've got this much cargo space left over in the vehicle,
(20:18):
can we put one of our telescopes in there with
your communication satellite and have it deployed in that same mission.
And thus it will save money in that it's not
having a dedicated flight just for the telescopes. That's the idea. Anyway,
Chris and I have to go digging on some more
asteroids in just a moment, but first we're gonna take
a quick break to thank our sponsor. So these telescopes
(20:48):
would be able to look out into space with the
idea that they're they're looking for asteroids, so it's asteroid
location identification, uh, that sort of thing. This could be
useful for lots of other purposes though, and so the
thought behind Planetary Resources is that they could even rent
out time on these telescopes for other facilities so that
(21:13):
they could do research on, you know whatever, some astronomical
approach and so these telescopes, which are you know, when
you're floating in space, you've got some you can get
some really nice pictures of stuff because you don't have
to worry about atmospheric interference and um. And so you
might be able to make quite a bit of money
essentially leasing out these telescopes. Also, I like the idea
(21:35):
that one of the other benefits to this approach is
the possibility of being able to identify potentially problematic asteroids
much earlier than otherwise we might be able to, because
I mean that is that's a legitimate concern as well.
There are there are plenty of astronomers out there who
say we need to be able to identify asteroids that
(21:56):
could potentially become a problem um, and then be able
to come up with a solution to that problem. And
we talked about that in our our podcast about as
could an asteroid destroy the art and what could we
do to stop that? As it turns out, blowing it
up is the wrong answer, by the way, spoiler alert, UM,
that's a great episode. You should listen to it. There's
(22:17):
lots of other points we make in it besides don't
blow it up. Um. One of the interesting things too
about these telescopes is we're not talking about something the
size of say that the Hubble telescope. These are actually
very small and could be held in your hand, um,
and the company expects to that it could cost less
than uh ten million dollars, which you know, that's a
(22:40):
pretty small amount really when you start talking about space exploration.
So it is an easy way for them to, if
you'll pardon the pun, get off the ground with the
effort and then their next phase, so that our Kid one,
phase one, phase two is our KID two hundred series.
Now this is of course something you know, even though
our Kid one is in the prototype stage or or
(23:01):
the research and planning stage, our Kid two hundred would
be the next the next generation, and uh these would
be equipped with additional stuff on it to help the
telescope maintain a higher orbit. So the one series would
be in a low Earth orbit, so essentially falling towards
(23:22):
the Earth all the time. The two hundred would be
in a higher orbit and would be equipped to track
asteroids and also have proportional propulsion systems built into the
telescope itself so that uh you could change their orientation
and orbit path from the ground. So you might think, um,
(23:42):
I we spotted this one asteroid, but we're not in
an ideal position in order to really hone in on it.
So we're going to move the telescope so that we
can get a better look. That kind of thing. And
then again they would be leasing this out as well.
Then you have the three hundred series. That's that's the
that's the final phase of the plan, and the three
(24:02):
D series is this super cool series. In my opinion,
this wills not an official designation then, not officially, I
mean maybe internally. They have not communicated that to the press.
But the super cool phase involves the ARCID three hundreds,
which would be robotic, so they are no longer being
(24:25):
controlled from the ground necessarily. They would. It would be
a swarm of robotic devices that could work together in
a network and communicate with each other. So let's say
one spots and asteroid. Suddenly other ones can all hone
in on that same asteroid, and all three could be
gathering data simultaneously. One might be using spectography to figure
(24:48):
out what is that asteroid made of. Others might be
taking pictures or plotting the course of the asteroid. So
you've got this sort of distributed computing model in space
with robotic space probes slowly moving towards the singularity. And
then these would be essentially the same sort of robots
(25:09):
that would ultimately mine asteroids. They would work together to
mind an asteroid. And how they would do that, well,
we don't know, because, like I said, we haven't really
determined what the best approaches, and even Planetary Resources says
we have no idea how we're going to mind the
asteroids yet. We know that we're gonna work on that problem,
but we've got these other benchmarks we have to meet
(25:32):
first before that can even become a consideration. So we're
going to focus on achieving these goals, with the ongoing
goal being let's figure out what the best approaches to
mind these things. Once we have tracked it UH launched
a a an intercept path with these these robotic entities,
(25:52):
and then then we'll fix it out. You know, we'll
burn that bridge when we come to it. Well, one
of the UH, one of the goal as though that
they're working on, is is actually eliminating one of the
problems that Jonathan and I were talking about a few
moments ago, because rather than bringing things back to Earth, necessarily.
They're talking about the idea of creating, well, basically an
(26:14):
interplanetary gas station. They want to to create a station where, uh,
once you launch from Earth, you could stop to refuel
and get more supplies, and the supplies would be replenished
from asteroid mining. So you know, you could stop platinum,
some water, some platinum, pick up a a big drink,
(26:39):
maybe maybe a peak, and log stuckies in space. That's
gonna make no sense to anyone who doesn't live in
the Southeast. Yeah, you know, but that's all right, I'm
okay with that. So United States, I should add, yeah,
good point. Um. So yeah, I mean that's that's sort
of the the uh the next step after that the yeah,
(27:02):
I think uh. I think every glamorous. Every time the
robots deliver more material to this interstellar gas station, I
think there should be an alert on Earth, like whatever
computer is designed to indicate that there's been a new delivery.
I think that the the verbal alert should be good
news everyone, because I can't believe we've gone this far
(27:23):
talking about planetary resources and asteroid mining and we haven't
referenced Futurama yet, so, which is an awesome show, but
let's also talk about the legality of mining asteroids, because
this is this is the funny part. This is kind
of complicate because we're talking about stuff that no one's
managed to do yet. So really we don't have a
whole lot of laws about it because well, it really
(27:46):
wasn't pertinent. You know, there's no reason to make a
law because who was gonna do it? Yeah, I mean
it's it's we talk about these kinds of things all
the time, about uh going undersea and salvaging a wreck. Um, yeah,
a ship that that sunk, you know, six years ago,
and depending on whether or not it's in international waters,
it may fall into that wonderful category of finders keepers
(28:11):
or or or you know. Do you have the right
to build a base in Antarctica? Yes, um, you do,
Yes I do. I've got got a certificate on my wall. Hey,
because I have the right to do that. I haven't
done it yet. I tried one in the Arctic, but
then this thing crashed, and uh, I haven't heard from
them in a while, So maybe I should check on that.
There's a great carpenter up there too. I'm gonna check
(28:33):
and see how how John the carpenter over there is doing. Um. Well,
that's a lot of references. So so the question is
if there is an asteroid in space, um, and three
or four countries want to go mind it, who'se asteroid
is it to mine? So here's here's where we stand.
Back in nineteen sixty seven, believe it or not, there
(28:55):
was a document that was put into law called the
Outer a Treaty. Now, I'm sure any aliens that exist
out there would object to not being included in the
utter Space Treaty. Yeah, and Kodos don't blame me anyway,
joking aside, there was this, there's really is an Outer
(29:16):
Space Treaty that was signed in nine and Article too
specifically states outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies,
is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty,
by means or of use or occupation, or by any
other means. Essentially saying you cannot fly up into space
(29:36):
and say I claim this asteroid for Spain. You can't do.
Why you could, but it wouldn't have any legality to it.
I remember, even if you have a flag at the
izard vans, even if you have a flag, it does
not help. Yea, it doesn't work the way it did
in Duck Dodgers in the twenty four and a half century.
Like I said, this plan is not big enough for
the two of us, So off you go. Um, yeah,
(30:00):
I've seen that cartoon probably I don't know, a hundred
times at least. Well, I've been mining this here asteroid
for the last twenty of seven minutes and I just
discovered there's ads and them the our hills. Let's listen
to one. According to this, no government agency could claim
(30:26):
ownership of a celestial body. Uh. It does not cover
private industry, because that just really wasn't in anyone's mind
back in nineteen sixty seven. This was during the space
race between the United States and the USSR the Soviet Union,
and both were trying to get to the Moon. And
the thing was they didn't want anybody to say, you know,
the Moon is our. We got there first, so it's ours.
(30:48):
You know, we're gonna build military bases all over the
Moon and you can't do anything about it. Ha han
nanni booboo. So that was an issue. It was a concern.
It was a legitimate concern. I mean, who knew where
the limits could go. I mean, back in nineteen sixty seven.
We didn't know if we were going to just do
a quick visit to the Moon or if we were
going to have a lunar colony. I mean, you know,
(31:09):
at the time, we had no way of knowing we
would only send a handful of missions to the Moon
and that would be it. Well, we were in there.
We were in a time of of scientific excitement, I
would say, I mean, they're they're right. People all over
the world were excited about the idea of going out
in a space and going and landing on the Moon.
And we were also in the middle of a the
Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union,
(31:32):
where people were concerned about the ideas of weaponizing space.
Um still are and exactly and so uh, you know
that this was a very real thing that the Outer
Space Tree was was signed. Um. But now it's pertinent
to asteroid mining as well. Yeah. So in general, lawyers,
who are really the only people we can consult on
(31:54):
matters of this nature, have said that they think in general,
most lawyers anyway, so they think that really appropriation means
that you cannot lay claim to an entire celestial body
asteroids included, like in other words, you could not land
on an asteroid and say it was yours. However, you
there is nothing in that treaty that would prevent you
from landing on the celestial body and mining the heck
(32:16):
out of it. So if you landed on an asteroid
and just started a mining operation, there's nothing in that
treaty to say that that is illegal. However, you also
could not, um you couldn't interfere with someone else's mining operation.
That would be a problem. So if someone has already
set up a mining operation on an asteroid, you could
not try and land your mining asteroid right next to
(32:37):
it and take over. That would be a problem. What
you could do is land on the other side of
the asteroid and start mining it from there. There's nothing
stopping you from doing that, at least nothing in law
right now. So you could have multiple companies mining the
same asteroid from different points and it become kind of like,
(32:58):
well like the Old West, when think of the gold
rush in the Old West, and you have to think
of all these different competing groups that we're trying to
get pretty scarce resources, at least seemingly scarce resources. Uh,
And you know there were a lot of um, there
were a lot of a lot of little disagreements that
popped up as a as a result of that. You
(33:19):
might have heard of some of them, because the Wild
West was kind of built on that among other things. Besides,
you know, it wasn't just the gold rush, but that
played a really large part. Well, we could see an
equivalent asteroid rush. If someone, let's say, Planetary Resources, identifies
an asteroid that is particularly rich with something like platinum,
something that is really scarce on Earth, there could be
(33:42):
a real rush to try and mind that as much
as possible because it could be extremely profitable. Uh So,
you might have multiple companies all hitting that asteroid at
the same time. As long as you're not interfering with
the other people, it's all fair game according to the treaty.
And then once you start interfere in there and there's problems. Now,
I would suspect that once we get closer to the
(34:03):
reality of mining and asteroid we will see more laws
put into place that clarify this because and again, it's
really hard to make a law about something that we
just can't do yet, and we we can start thinking
about it, however, and I think that's the important thing
is to start considering the various scenarios that could come
out if asteroid mining becomes a reality, and anticipating that
(34:28):
so that we can make laws that makes sense and
protect the parties involved without giving preferential treatment to anyone. Um.
It will also be interesting to see what happens if
let's say that you find an asteroid that is positively
latent with an element that is incredibly rare on Earth,
like platinum? Uh, what does that do to the price
(34:49):
of platinum? Would that actually impact the price? Would it
affect profitability? Yeah, deep impact on the price of platinum.
But would it would it possibly affect the price? Would it?
Would that affect the profitability of the venture? In other words,
could you actually be making less money mining because you
have just made a scarce resource less scarce? Now, the
(35:11):
planetary resources people said, look, we're going to be uh,
we're going to be affected by the whole uh uh
scarcity issue and the whole supply versus demand issue, just
like anyone would be. However, we're seeing this less as
a scarcity solution as it is an access solution because
(35:33):
we need access to these materials. So, in other words,
are our business should be profitable because we're giving companies
access to materials they otherwise would not have. It's not that,
you know, we're talking about scarcity versus versus uh, whether
it's it's plentiful, it's just really you need this, We've
got it, we'll get it to you. So it's kind
(35:55):
of which is kind of just really just looking at
the same issue from a slightly different perspect now, whether
or not that will hold true, or whether we'll see
mining companies, you know, be initially incredibly successful and then
end up falling into pieces because the stuff that they
supply is so relatively plentiful that there's no longer demand
(36:17):
for it that remains to be seen. I honestly don't
think that that's something they're gonna have to worry about
for probably two decades, you know, that first decade, just
getting to the point where they can mind an asteroid
in the second decade, worrying about how that's gonna fall
out as far as supply versus demand, because it's just
fall out. Huh, it's just not going to be uh.
I don't think it's gonna be an issue, at least
(36:37):
not in the short term. But it's fascinating to think
about nonetheless, and my favorite thing is just thinking about
mining asteroids for water. I mean, that could be a
huge benefit and and something that's truly necessary if we
want to do a lot of interplanetary travel and and
set up a colony somewhere else, because otherwise, the idea
(36:57):
of having to send regular, uh regular missions filled with
water so that whoever is living wherever can continue to survive,
that's that's hard. Yeah, well, it's it's expensive to uh,
you know, basically launched water into space. It's heavy. And
also I can imagine that there's an ethical problem too,
(37:21):
because you have so many people on the planet right
now who do not have access to clean drinking water.
That to suggest shooting clean drinking water into space for
someone else, there's an ethical question that you there's not
easy to answer. I agree. Now, if there's a way
of bringing that water from asteroids back to Earth so
(37:41):
that there's more clean water, then that's that's not so bad. However,
really clean water again, just like just like the other issues,
it's not really a scarcity problem. It's an access problem. Right.
So we've got enough clean water right now to to
help out everybody, but not everyone has access to it,
So that's a perfect example of I was talking about
before about scarcity versus access. But there there's more to
(38:04):
it than just drinking water for astronauts because they they're
talking about the possibility of breaking water down into its
exygen and hydrogen. Oxygen and hydrogen for fuel. You can
use that in fuel cells. Also oxygen you can use
I don't know if you know this, but you can
use it for breathing. But yeah, it's not just helium.
Are you serious? Yeah, that's I've been doing it for years.
(38:26):
I highly recommend it. I have to try. I tried
cutting it off after a while, but that did not
go well. Yeah, I heard it. You were kind of
blue after that? Yeah, no, I was. I was, you know,
I was. There's there's just a time in my life
where I was just feeling a little suffocated, you know.
So anyway, enough of that. Weird, we're being silly. Well,
(38:47):
it's it's a fun topic to talk about and definitely
but it has spawned a lot of jokes and references.
But I'm interested to see how how far they can
take it to see them actually succeed in it. Just
yea to watch, and it's going to be expensive though,
and honestly, we do have to come up with something
(39:08):
along the lines of asteroid mining if we want to
really make interplanetary travel a reality, because uh, it's just
not feasible to to do everything from Earth and and
rely upon that. Now, granted, we may also get to
a point where we land on another celestial body that
has its own natural resources that we can exploit. So planet, yes,
(39:32):
so Mars may not be that planet. There might not
be a whole lot on Mars that we could use,
but there might be a moon, a moon somewhere that
would be you know, that might have some resources that
we could exploit. Um, so there's always that possibility as well.
But that's definitely something that we have to develop in
order for interplanetary travel to become a reality. So it
(39:54):
is in the future if we want this to happen.
And uh, I am really curious to see I would
love to be able to revisit this in ten years
and see how planetary resources went. That wraps up another
classic episode of tech stuff those scamps. I hope you
guys enjoyed that episode, and if you have any questions
(40:15):
or suggestions for future episodes, send me an email. The
addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com or
pop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast
dot com. There you're gonna find links to all of
our old episodes as well as to our social media presence,
and also a link to our merchandise store. So go
check those out see if there's anything there that really
(40:38):
tickles your fancy. But leave that out of your any
emails you send me. I don't I don't need to
hear that your fancy got tickled. I'll talk to you
again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the I heart rate, vio app, Apple Podcasts,
(41:01):
orherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and I love
all things tech. And at this time for another classic
episode of tech Stuff. The episode you are about to
(00:25):
hear originally published on June four, two thousand twelve. It
is called text Stuff Minds Some Asteroids. And I remember
when we recorded this because it was kind of funny.
It was right around the same time that Stuff you
should Know, was recording an episode about asteroid mining, and
we didn't know that they were doing it, and they
didn't know we were doing it. So there was a
(00:47):
bit of a rush, a gold rush if you will,
on asteroid mining podcasts. That all came out of How
Stuff Works at around the same time, but it was
completely uncoordinated, because that's how we roll here at podcast World.
I hope you guys enjoy this classic episode. I'll be
back in just a moment to to um. So that
(01:09):
was that was a hint. Actually it would be more
like running Coward. We're talking today about asteroids. We did
an episode about you know, figuring out how to deflect
an asteroid if it were coming towards the Earth in
a in a threatening manner, like it said, it's a
nice play. You got here be a shame with someone
(01:30):
I don't know, flattened it. Um, So, apart from dealing
with asteroids trying to extort your planet for for various resources,
we wanted to talk about extorting asteroids for resources. I'm
a little frightened right now. I'm a little goofy right now.
Bonus points if you get the reference to the video
game in which you do mind asteroids. Yes, so we're
(01:51):
talking about asteroid mining and why would we do it, what,
how would we do it, and what's going on with
that whole idea anyway out? Before we get started, I
should mention we do on how stuff works. Dot Com
have an article about how asteroid mining will work. The
will there is important because as of this moment we
are not mining asteroids. We have um ideas about how
(02:14):
we would do this, and there is in fact a
company that exists right now that plans on mining asteroids,
but that even that plan is about a decade out
from fruition, assuming everything goes well. Yeah, just just for
the record, I want to say that I'm I'm coming
up with my own company to pan for asteroids. I'm
(02:36):
not certain exactly how we'll do it, but I'm gonna
make an effort. I claim that there are a lot
of them on the ground of the Georgia Renaissance Festival,
which is you know, most people would just call it gravel,
but I maintain it's actually asteroids, and that they are
they're they're intruding upon my property because I claim them.
Because well, we'll get into the complications of the legal
(03:00):
system and mining for asteroids and a little bit because well,
we're treading new ground in space. Well, that's that's true. Actually,
some of the people involved with this company are are
very interested in space anyway. I mean, they have been
sort of citizens supporters of the space effort, you might say,
(03:20):
people like Larry Page and Eric Schmidt yes, Googlers yes, yes.
And James Cameron Yes, who has has made a movie
or two involving space exploration. Um documentaries, I should say, right,
he's done some documentaries about ocean stuff as well space stuff. Yes.
(03:43):
Game over man. So so we're gonna talk a bit
about let's talk a bit about in general, about mining
asteroids and why you would want to. Here's why if
we ever want to get to a point where we're
getting off this rock to move to some other rock. Uh,
one of the big problems that faces us is where
do we get our raw materials in order to make
(04:06):
the kind of infrastructure we will require in order to say,
survive somewhere else. It's not like you can go and
take it all with you, not easily anyway, because well
and right now there really is no way because the
last cargo carrying UH ships that we use, the Space Shuttle,
are retired. So now we have to build specific vehicles
(04:29):
to launch stuff out there into space because the vehicles
we would have used are no longer in service. But um,
and there's no at least in the United States, there's
no plan to replace them anytime soon, so at least
not by the government. Privately could be a different issue.
In fact, privately is really where all this is is
(04:51):
falling upon. But if we were to try and create
a colony, say upon the Moon's surface or on Mars,
we would need to be able to get materials to
that place in order to create the right environment for
to sustain life. Because I don't know if you realize this,
but they are both rather hostile environments when it comes
(05:12):
to human survivability not survive. Yeah, if you've if you've
seen the documentary Total Recall, you know that if you
were to take your mask off in Mars, your eyes
would pop out of your head and uh, you would
turn into Donald Schwarzenegger. Um little and in fact, okay,
for in reality, we could not survive in either place
(05:33):
without life support systems. Right, So how do we get
the stuff we need to the plants, including things like
water and oxygen? That's part of it. Actually we would
we would likely ship stuff in various kinds of of
of vessels. But when you absolutely positively need it there
in three months, it would be so much better if
(05:53):
we could get that material either from wherever it is
we land or nearby asteroids. And as it turns out,
a lot of asteroids have materials in them that would
be very useful in either life support features or in
building out an infrastructure itself. And uh, in fact, in
our article we talk about three basic categories of asteroids.
(06:17):
All right, there's the C type asteroid, which is the
vast majority of the types that we would find in
our Solar system. And by the way, we mainly think
that asteroids are sort of remnants of the formation of
the Solar system. Yeah, so in some cases leftovers. Sometimes
it's from uh perhaps a collision, an interstellar collision, but
(06:40):
mostly it's just leftovers from the Solar system itself forming.
So it's sort of like you know when you take
apart piece of electronic equipment or car's engine and you
reassemble it, and then there's the there's pieces. I think
of it as any time I buy anything from Ikea,
and I think, oh, there's some pieces here that should
(07:01):
have been used in the formation of this cabinet, and
yet here they are in my hand, and I don't
see any place to put them in. Three years later,
all my dishes break. The two are the two I
maintain are not connected. No one tell my wife anyway.
So the Yeah, the the asteroids. You would expect to
find many of the same elements within asteroids as you
(07:24):
would find within the various planets and other bodies in
our Solar System, And as it turns out, that is
exactly the case. So in the C type of asteroid,
which comprises about of the asteroids in our Solar system.
They have uh a lot of the same elements that
you would find in our in the Sun, apart from
(07:48):
hydrogen and helium and other volatile elements, because they would
have boiled off into space, which is really too bad
because helium mining for helium would be great because, as
it turns out, we're running out on Earth, and you know,
the main culprit of why we're running out of helium
on Earth, that's right, it's crazy to think about. But
those party balloons that we enjoy oh so very much
(08:11):
are actually a problem in scientific research because helium is
very useful for doing things like using it as a
cooling agent. You know, the large Hadron collider uses liquid
helium to get the superconductors as cold as possible to
reduce electrical resistance. But meanwhile, little Timmy, who's speaking a
long the has been brilliant in his balloon all day long,
(08:34):
has just to set scientific research back for decades. Thanks Timmy,
happy freaking birthday. You can switch to hydrogen. I can't
see a problem with that. And looking for balloons get
too near the birthday, can right? Yeah, so hydrogen combustible,
don't put it near the birthday. Candles um, unless you
know you don't like timmy anyway. Moving on, so let's
(08:56):
see type of asteroid. Then we've also got the S
type of asteroid. This is about sev of the asteroids
we would find in our Solar system, and they contain magnesium, nickel,
and iron. These are very useful elements. Uh. The M
type asteroid not an M type planet, as we learned
in Star Trek, which by the way, no scientific basis there.
(09:19):
They just decided to call it M type planet to
mean any sort of earth like planet that human being
could survive upon. You No M is for my planet.
So the M type asteroids have uh, nickel and iron.
And so once we see these asteroids out there, and
(09:39):
we you know, most of them exist between Mars and
Jupiter and a belt, an asteroid belt. You may remember
famous explorations of asteroid belts, like in the documentary UH
Empires Strikes Back, which was had a very expirited exploration
of an asteroid belt. What, yes, they have giant animals
on them? They do not. That is that's me being
(10:02):
silly again. But no, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,
that's where the majority of the asteroids in our Solar
System reside, but sometimes they break free from that belt
and they float around in space. Occasionally they come near
the Earth. Near being a relative term. We're talking in
thousands and thousands and thousands of miles, but that's still
relatively close when you think space is enormous. So, uh,
(10:25):
we would probably be targeting the asteroids that break free
first because maybe the easiest to get to getting to
the asteroids beyond Mars would take so much time that
perhaps by the time they would get back with whatever
resources you are trying to mind, you might not have
anything to build anymore. So, uh, the asteroids that break free,
(10:46):
we can actually determine what type of asteroid they are
based upon the way they reflect light. And that's because
different materials reflect light in different ways, and you will
get a different spectrum if you were to uh to
measure that light and based upon the the composition of
(11:06):
the light that you are looking at. Based upon that,
you can determine what kind of elements are in that
asteroid and you could figure out, oh, well, this is
a perfect candidate for us to go in mind, and
there are other elements that could also be on on
an asteroid, including oxygen. Uh, platinum, gold, both of both
gold and platinum are very useful in electronics, and uh,
(11:29):
perhaps even water. So you might be able to find
frozen water on an asteroid, which could be obviously very
important to human survival. So if you find a few
asteroids with frozen water on it and you mind them,
you get the water off of that, you bring it
to whatever space colony you have, then you can have
not just water, but also oxygen. And I understand too
(11:52):
that it's possible that rarer Earth metals might be on
some of these asters and golden platinum kind of fall
into that category, but but others as well. There's and
and these are very important, like I said, in electronics.
You know, platinum, as it turns out, is very useful
in electronics, but is also very rare on Earth. So
again one of those things where we would be able
(12:13):
to to exploit a an asteroid without having to do
the same thing on the surface of the planet. You know,
clearly mining on Earth can be a very disruptive process.
It can be ecologically disastrous depending on how you're mining
and what it is you're mining. Um, So if we
were able to offload that literally to an asteroid, then
(12:37):
that would be beneficial, not just from a resources standpoint,
but an ecological standpoint, because I mean, really, who cares
if your asteroid is falling apart, right, I mean, there's
there's no one there. Um. So using telescopes we look
at these asteroids, we determine what is what those asteroids
are made of based on the light that's coming back,
(12:59):
and then that would allow us to say which ones
are good candidates for mining. Now, how would we actually
mind the asteroids? Okay, Um, that's a good question, I'll admit. Uh.
Turns out, um, no one has the answer right now
because because we're just not there yet. Even the company
that we were talking about, which is called Planetary Resources.
(13:22):
Planetary Resources, they come out and they admit the like, um,
we don't know how we're going to mind these asteroids
because that's a decade out at best. What we're gonna
do is we're gonna build the machines that can identify asteroids,
detect asteroids, travel to asteroids, and by the time we
get to that point, hopefully we figured out what the
(13:43):
best way of mining these asteroids would be. Now, from
what I've understood so far in my study of this
comprehensive study of asteroid mining. Uh, they're hoping that they
can do a lot of work with robots, which makes
perfect sense. You want to have an you want to
have these robotic devices to mine and asteroid because, uh,
(14:06):
mining mining on its own is dangerous, right, and then
you add in the the dangers of space travel, which
are numerous and certainly deadly. You do not want to
put human lives at risk if you don't have to.
So a robotic force makes a lot of sense. I
(14:27):
mean it. It certainly takes away from great documentaries like Armageddon,
where you know, because I doubt that the robots would
all get together and sing leaving on a jet plane.
But on the other hand, it means that those lives
would be relatively safe. Yeah. You think about this and
in the way that you might actually tackle the problem yourself,
(14:49):
and you realize that there are several significant challenges. Let's
say money as no object. Even getting there challenge is
a challenge. Landing on the asteroids safely is going to
be a challenge. Mining the asteroids resources another challenge, and
then getting back right loading them into your vehicle, which
would have to be designed so that not only could
(15:10):
it travel to the asteroid, but it could bring a
payload back from the asteroid to Earth. Now, granted, when
you're not dealing with gravity out in space, that it's
a little easier to do in the sense that you
don't have to worry about escaping gravity in order to uh,
you know, the payload is not gonna affect you in
that sense. But there are other issues as well, like
how will the mining activity change the behavior of the asteroid. So,
(15:33):
if the asteroid, for example, is an orbit around Earth,
if you start mining the asteroid, is that going to
alter the orbit of the asteroid? Is it going to
possibly either push it to a point where it's going
away from Earth, which means that you're going to have
to take down to consideration, when you're flying back, you're
gonna have to make sure you have enough fuel to
make it back to Earth um or that you know
(15:54):
you've got enough whatever you need enough power there to
get back, or if it brings it closer to Earth
than you have, the consideration of could this potentially create
an impact arc where the asteroid could hit Earth And
in some cases, you know, maybe the asteroids of a
size that it wouldn't necessarily hold together and perhaps it
(16:16):
wouldn't be as big an impact. But anytime you're talking
about an impact at that speed, I mean forces mass
times acceleration, right, So even if your mass isn't very big,
if your acceleration is really high, that's that's a lot
of force. So even a relatively small asteroid, if it's
not going to burn up, could be pretty the disastrous
(16:37):
thing that hit the Earth, especially depending on where, I mean,
even in the ocean. Then you're talking about tsunamis things
like that. So yeah, there there's that element as well.
And when you're mining it, how do you collect what
you're mining? That's that's an interesting problem too, because if
you're if you're talking about an area where there's no gravity,
and let's say you're breaking apart the surface of the
(16:58):
asteroid in order to get at some resources underneath, then
you have to have some way of catching that stuff
as it's floating away. So there's talk about perhaps the
would be some sort of canopy system so that you
would have essentially like a net that would catch stuff
as it flew off the asteroids, so that you didn't
lose the resources you're trying to mind, Uh, Frank, you
(17:20):
have a lot. And then there's also the case of
you know, what is the specific method of mining. Are
you using lasers to try and weakend and break apart material,
are you using other forms of heat? Are you using chemicals? Um?
Are you using physical force? You know that there are
a lot of considerations to make, and frankly, no one
(17:42):
has come up with the right approach yet because we
still haven't tried it. You know, it may very well
be that the first dozen times we try to mine
asteroids we realize there's got to be a better way
because this method is not efficient enough. If the process
takes more money, time and effort, then you would uh,
(18:05):
then you would have if you tried to get those
resources some other way. Then clearly that's not the right answer.
That's all you're doing is storing money away. So there
are a lot of questions to answer at this point.
But let's let's talk a little bit about planetary resources. Now.
We've mentioned it a couple of times, and we talked
about how people like James Cameron and Eric Schmidt and
Larry Page are interested in supporting this company, and you
(18:28):
might think, well, why why would we worry about why
would we want to support a company that has admitted
that the earliest they expect to be able to actually
mind an asteroid would be ten years from now. And
part of it is that actually is what I've seen,
all right, Well, uh, I was reading an article from
Forbes and and in the article they did an interview
(18:50):
with some executives from Planetary Resources, and they talked about
why company this company is an interesting company and why
it may be able. And it's already making money now
right now, it's making money through investment, but it's also
going to It's got revenue generation plans for each step
(19:10):
in the journey to having a mining asteroid operation or
astro remining operation. I'm having some issues with some word
order anyway, order word. The first stage is talking about
creating a space faring telescope called the ARKID one hundred,
(19:35):
and they're expecting to be able to do this within
the next two years. And this is UH telescopes with
remote sensing technology. And the idea is to launch around
six or so of these telescopes into low Earth orbit
and each one would be part of a second It
would be a secondary payload. So in other words, you
(19:55):
would not send a spacecraft up loaded down with these telescopes,
and that's it. Um. Instead, what would happen is, let's
say some communications company wants to launch a new communication
satellite and enters into a contract with a private company
that's going to launch the satellite. Then Planetary Resources could say, hey,
you've got this much cargo space left over in the vehicle,
(20:18):
can we put one of our telescopes in there with
your communication satellite and have it deployed in that same mission.
And thus it will save money in that it's not
having a dedicated flight just for the telescopes. That's the idea. Anyway,
Chris and I have to go digging on some more
asteroids in just a moment, but first we're gonna take
a quick break to thank our sponsor. So these telescopes
(20:48):
would be able to look out into space with the
idea that they're they're looking for asteroids, so it's asteroid
location identification, uh, that sort of thing. This could be
useful for lots of other purposes though, and so the
thought behind Planetary Resources is that they could even rent
out time on these telescopes for other facilities so that
(21:13):
they could do research on, you know whatever, some astronomical
approach and so these telescopes, which are you know, when
you're floating in space, you've got some you can get
some really nice pictures of stuff because you don't have
to worry about atmospheric interference and um. And so you
might be able to make quite a bit of money
essentially leasing out these telescopes. Also, I like the idea
(21:35):
that one of the other benefits to this approach is
the possibility of being able to identify potentially problematic asteroids
much earlier than otherwise we might be able to, because
I mean that is that's a legitimate concern as well.
There are there are plenty of astronomers out there who
say we need to be able to identify asteroids that
(21:56):
could potentially become a problem um, and then be able
to come up with a solution to that problem. And
we talked about that in our our podcast about as
could an asteroid destroy the art and what could we
do to stop that? As it turns out, blowing it
up is the wrong answer, by the way, spoiler alert, UM,
that's a great episode. You should listen to it. There's
(22:17):
lots of other points we make in it besides don't
blow it up. Um. One of the interesting things too
about these telescopes is we're not talking about something the
size of say that the Hubble telescope. These are actually
very small and could be held in your hand, um,
and the company expects to that it could cost less
than uh ten million dollars, which you know, that's a
(22:40):
pretty small amount really when you start talking about space exploration.
So it is an easy way for them to, if
you'll pardon the pun, get off the ground with the
effort and then their next phase, so that our Kid one,
phase one, phase two is our KID two hundred series.
Now this is of course something you know, even though
our Kid one is in the prototype stage or or
(23:01):
the research and planning stage, our Kid two hundred would
be the next the next generation, and uh these would
be equipped with additional stuff on it to help the
telescope maintain a higher orbit. So the one series would
be in a low Earth orbit, so essentially falling towards
(23:22):
the Earth all the time. The two hundred would be
in a higher orbit and would be equipped to track
asteroids and also have proportional propulsion systems built into the
telescope itself so that uh you could change their orientation
and orbit path from the ground. So you might think, um,
(23:42):
I we spotted this one asteroid, but we're not in
an ideal position in order to really hone in on it.
So we're going to move the telescope so that we
can get a better look. That kind of thing. And
then again they would be leasing this out as well.
Then you have the three hundred series. That's that's the
that's the final phase of the plan, and the three
(24:02):
D series is this super cool series. In my opinion,
this wills not an official designation then, not officially, I
mean maybe internally. They have not communicated that to the press.
But the super cool phase involves the ARCID three hundreds,
which would be robotic, so they are no longer being
(24:25):
controlled from the ground necessarily. They would. It would be
a swarm of robotic devices that could work together in
a network and communicate with each other. So let's say
one spots and asteroid. Suddenly other ones can all hone
in on that same asteroid, and all three could be
gathering data simultaneously. One might be using spectography to figure
(24:48):
out what is that asteroid made of. Others might be
taking pictures or plotting the course of the asteroid. So
you've got this sort of distributed computing model in space
with robotic space probes slowly moving towards the singularity. And
then these would be essentially the same sort of robots
(25:09):
that would ultimately mine asteroids. They would work together to
mind an asteroid. And how they would do that, well,
we don't know, because, like I said, we haven't really
determined what the best approaches, and even Planetary Resources says
we have no idea how we're going to mind the
asteroids yet. We know that we're gonna work on that problem,
but we've got these other benchmarks we have to meet
(25:32):
first before that can even become a consideration. So we're
going to focus on achieving these goals, with the ongoing
goal being let's figure out what the best approaches to
mind these things. Once we have tracked it UH launched
a a an intercept path with these these robotic entities,
(25:52):
and then then we'll fix it out. You know, we'll
burn that bridge when we come to it. Well, one
of the UH, one of the goal as though that
they're working on, is is actually eliminating one of the
problems that Jonathan and I were talking about a few
moments ago, because rather than bringing things back to Earth, necessarily.
They're talking about the idea of creating, well, basically an
(26:14):
interplanetary gas station. They want to to create a station where, uh,
once you launch from Earth, you could stop to refuel
and get more supplies, and the supplies would be replenished
from asteroid mining. So you know, you could stop platinum,
some water, some platinum, pick up a a big drink,
(26:39):
maybe maybe a peak, and log stuckies in space. That's
gonna make no sense to anyone who doesn't live in
the Southeast. Yeah, you know, but that's all right, I'm
okay with that. So United States, I should add, yeah,
good point. Um. So yeah, I mean that's that's sort
of the the uh the next step after that the yeah,
(27:02):
I think uh. I think every glamorous. Every time the
robots deliver more material to this interstellar gas station, I
think there should be an alert on Earth, like whatever
computer is designed to indicate that there's been a new delivery.
I think that the the verbal alert should be good
news everyone, because I can't believe we've gone this far
(27:23):
talking about planetary resources and asteroid mining and we haven't
referenced Futurama yet, so, which is an awesome show, but
let's also talk about the legality of mining asteroids, because
this is this is the funny part. This is kind
of complicate because we're talking about stuff that no one's
managed to do yet. So really we don't have a
whole lot of laws about it because well, it really
(27:46):
wasn't pertinent. You know, there's no reason to make a
law because who was gonna do it? Yeah, I mean
it's it's we talk about these kinds of things all
the time, about uh going undersea and salvaging a wreck. Um, yeah,
a ship that that sunk, you know, six years ago,
and depending on whether or not it's in international waters,
it may fall into that wonderful category of finders keepers
(28:11):
or or or you know. Do you have the right
to build a base in Antarctica? Yes, um, you do,
Yes I do. I've got got a certificate on my wall. Hey,
because I have the right to do that. I haven't
done it yet. I tried one in the Arctic, but
then this thing crashed, and uh, I haven't heard from
them in a while, So maybe I should check on that.
There's a great carpenter up there too. I'm gonna check
(28:33):
and see how how John the carpenter over there is doing. Um. Well,
that's a lot of references. So so the question is
if there is an asteroid in space, um, and three
or four countries want to go mind it, who'se asteroid
is it to mine? So here's here's where we stand.
Back in nineteen sixty seven, believe it or not, there
(28:55):
was a document that was put into law called the
Outer a Treaty. Now, I'm sure any aliens that exist
out there would object to not being included in the
utter Space Treaty. Yeah, and Kodos don't blame me anyway,
joking aside, there was this, there's really is an Outer
(29:16):
Space Treaty that was signed in nine and Article too
specifically states outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies,
is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty,
by means or of use or occupation, or by any
other means. Essentially saying you cannot fly up into space
(29:36):
and say I claim this asteroid for Spain. You can't do.
Why you could, but it wouldn't have any legality to it.
I remember, even if you have a flag at the
izard vans, even if you have a flag, it does
not help. Yea, it doesn't work the way it did
in Duck Dodgers in the twenty four and a half century.
Like I said, this plan is not big enough for
the two of us, So off you go. Um, yeah,
(30:00):
I've seen that cartoon probably I don't know, a hundred
times at least. Well, I've been mining this here asteroid
for the last twenty of seven minutes and I just
discovered there's ads and them the our hills. Let's listen
to one. According to this, no government agency could claim
(30:26):
ownership of a celestial body. Uh. It does not cover
private industry, because that just really wasn't in anyone's mind
back in nineteen sixty seven. This was during the space
race between the United States and the USSR the Soviet Union,
and both were trying to get to the Moon. And
the thing was they didn't want anybody to say, you know,
the Moon is our. We got there first, so it's ours.
(30:48):
You know, we're gonna build military bases all over the
Moon and you can't do anything about it. Ha han
nanni booboo. So that was an issue. It was a concern.
It was a legitimate concern. I mean, who knew where
the limits could go. I mean, back in nineteen sixty seven.
We didn't know if we were going to just do
a quick visit to the Moon or if we were
going to have a lunar colony. I mean, you know,
(31:09):
at the time, we had no way of knowing we
would only send a handful of missions to the Moon
and that would be it. Well, we were in there.
We were in a time of of scientific excitement, I
would say, I mean, they're they're right. People all over
the world were excited about the idea of going out
in a space and going and landing on the Moon.
And we were also in the middle of a the
Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union,
(31:32):
where people were concerned about the ideas of weaponizing space.
Um still are and exactly and so uh, you know
that this was a very real thing that the Outer
Space Tree was was signed. Um. But now it's pertinent
to asteroid mining as well. Yeah. So in general, lawyers,
who are really the only people we can consult on
(31:54):
matters of this nature, have said that they think in general,
most lawyers anyway, so they think that really appropriation means
that you cannot lay claim to an entire celestial body
asteroids included, like in other words, you could not land
on an asteroid and say it was yours. However, you
there is nothing in that treaty that would prevent you
from landing on the celestial body and mining the heck
(32:16):
out of it. So if you landed on an asteroid
and just started a mining operation, there's nothing in that
treaty to say that that is illegal. However, you also
could not, um you couldn't interfere with someone else's mining operation.
That would be a problem. So if someone has already
set up a mining operation on an asteroid, you could
not try and land your mining asteroid right next to
(32:37):
it and take over. That would be a problem. What
you could do is land on the other side of
the asteroid and start mining it from there. There's nothing
stopping you from doing that, at least nothing in law
right now. So you could have multiple companies mining the
same asteroid from different points and it become kind of like,
(32:58):
well like the Old West, when think of the gold
rush in the Old West, and you have to think
of all these different competing groups that we're trying to
get pretty scarce resources, at least seemingly scarce resources. Uh,
And you know there were a lot of um, there
were a lot of a lot of little disagreements that
popped up as a as a result of that. You
(33:19):
might have heard of some of them, because the Wild
West was kind of built on that among other things. Besides,
you know, it wasn't just the gold rush, but that
played a really large part. Well, we could see an
equivalent asteroid rush. If someone, let's say, Planetary Resources, identifies
an asteroid that is particularly rich with something like platinum,
something that is really scarce on Earth, there could be
(33:42):
a real rush to try and mind that as much
as possible because it could be extremely profitable. Uh So,
you might have multiple companies all hitting that asteroid at
the same time. As long as you're not interfering with
the other people, it's all fair game according to the treaty.
And then once you start interfere in there and there's problems. Now,
I would suspect that once we get closer to the
(34:03):
reality of mining and asteroid we will see more laws
put into place that clarify this because and again, it's
really hard to make a law about something that we
just can't do yet, and we we can start thinking
about it, however, and I think that's the important thing
is to start considering the various scenarios that could come
out if asteroid mining becomes a reality, and anticipating that
(34:28):
so that we can make laws that makes sense and
protect the parties involved without giving preferential treatment to anyone. Um.
It will also be interesting to see what happens if
let's say that you find an asteroid that is positively
latent with an element that is incredibly rare on Earth,
like platinum? Uh, what does that do to the price
(34:49):
of platinum? Would that actually impact the price? Would it
affect profitability? Yeah, deep impact on the price of platinum.
But would it would it possibly affect the price? Would it?
Would that affect the profitability of the venture? In other words,
could you actually be making less money mining because you
have just made a scarce resource less scarce? Now, the
(35:11):
planetary resources people said, look, we're going to be uh,
we're going to be affected by the whole uh uh
scarcity issue and the whole supply versus demand issue, just
like anyone would be. However, we're seeing this less as
a scarcity solution as it is an access solution because
(35:33):
we need access to these materials. So, in other words,
are our business should be profitable because we're giving companies
access to materials they otherwise would not have. It's not that,
you know, we're talking about scarcity versus versus uh, whether
it's it's plentiful, it's just really you need this, We've
got it, we'll get it to you. So it's kind
(35:55):
of which is kind of just really just looking at
the same issue from a slightly different perspect now, whether
or not that will hold true, or whether we'll see
mining companies, you know, be initially incredibly successful and then
end up falling into pieces because the stuff that they
supply is so relatively plentiful that there's no longer demand
(36:17):
for it that remains to be seen. I honestly don't
think that that's something they're gonna have to worry about
for probably two decades, you know, that first decade, just
getting to the point where they can mind an asteroid
in the second decade, worrying about how that's gonna fall
out as far as supply versus demand, because it's just
fall out. Huh, it's just not going to be uh.
I don't think it's gonna be an issue, at least
(36:37):
not in the short term. But it's fascinating to think
about nonetheless, and my favorite thing is just thinking about
mining asteroids for water. I mean, that could be a
huge benefit and and something that's truly necessary if we
want to do a lot of interplanetary travel and and
set up a colony somewhere else, because otherwise, the idea
(36:57):
of having to send regular, uh regular missions filled with
water so that whoever is living wherever can continue to survive,
that's that's hard. Yeah, well, it's it's expensive to uh,
you know, basically launched water into space. It's heavy. And
also I can imagine that there's an ethical problem too,
(37:21):
because you have so many people on the planet right
now who do not have access to clean drinking water.
That to suggest shooting clean drinking water into space for
someone else, there's an ethical question that you there's not
easy to answer. I agree. Now, if there's a way
of bringing that water from asteroids back to Earth so
(37:41):
that there's more clean water, then that's that's not so bad. However,
really clean water again, just like just like the other issues,
it's not really a scarcity problem. It's an access problem. Right.
So we've got enough clean water right now to to
help out everybody, but not everyone has access to it,
So that's a perfect example of I was talking about
before about scarcity versus access. But there there's more to
(38:04):
it than just drinking water for astronauts because they they're
talking about the possibility of breaking water down into its
exygen and hydrogen. Oxygen and hydrogen for fuel. You can
use that in fuel cells. Also oxygen you can use
I don't know if you know this, but you can
use it for breathing. But yeah, it's not just helium.
Are you serious? Yeah, that's I've been doing it for years.
(38:26):
I highly recommend it. I have to try. I tried
cutting it off after a while, but that did not
go well. Yeah, I heard it. You were kind of
blue after that? Yeah, no, I was. I was, you know,
I was. There's there's just a time in my life
where I was just feeling a little suffocated, you know.
So anyway, enough of that. Weird, we're being silly. Well,
(38:47):
it's it's a fun topic to talk about and definitely
but it has spawned a lot of jokes and references.
But I'm interested to see how how far they can
take it to see them actually succeed in it. Just
yea to watch, and it's going to be expensive though,
and honestly, we do have to come up with something
(39:08):
along the lines of asteroid mining if we want to
really make interplanetary travel a reality, because uh, it's just
not feasible to to do everything from Earth and and
rely upon that. Now, granted, we may also get to
a point where we land on another celestial body that
has its own natural resources that we can exploit. So planet, yes,
(39:32):
so Mars may not be that planet. There might not
be a whole lot on Mars that we could use,
but there might be a moon, a moon somewhere that
would be you know, that might have some resources that
we could exploit. Um, so there's always that possibility as well.
But that's definitely something that we have to develop in
order for interplanetary travel to become a reality. So it
(39:54):
is in the future if we want this to happen.
And uh, I am really curious to see I would
love to be able to revisit this in ten years
and see how planetary resources went. That wraps up another
classic episode of tech stuff those scamps. I hope you
guys enjoyed that episode, and if you have any questions
(40:15):
or suggestions for future episodes, send me an email. The
addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com or
pop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast
dot com. There you're gonna find links to all of
our old episodes as well as to our social media presence,
and also a link to our merchandise store. So go
check those out see if there's anything there that really
(40:38):
tickles your fancy. But leave that out of your any
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