Asteroid Gold Rush

drink things, to eat, things, live on things. So it's a form, you know, we need to get out there and really start to get some real estate out there. As far as we know, there are no extraterrestrials. There's no one to dispute our claim, so it's all ours. You think, you think? Yeah, I mean, actually we are going to talk about something that has been in the

news quite a bit, asteroid mining. And just recently NASA announced that starting next month, the six astronauts are headed to the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation, the underwater habitat off the Florida coast that will serve as a simulator for the long duration mission to an asteroid. Yeah, this is pretty amazing. Stuff. Just to give a quick rundown of our history exploring asteroids, I should point out that the first spacecraft to take close up images of asteroids

was NASA's Galileo in ninety one. Is also discovered the first moon orban an asteroid in n In two thousand one. After NASA's Near spacecraft intensely studied the near Earth asteroid Eros for more than a year from orbit, mission, astroders decided to trying to land a spacecraft on it, although it wasn't designed for landing, near successfully touchdown, setting the record of the first craft to successfully land an asteroid. Two thousand six, Japan'shyabusa became the first spacecraft to land

on and take off from an asteroid. And then NASA's Don mentioned launched in two thousand seven, began exploring Vesta the asteroid in two thousand eleven, and that brings us pretty much up to modern times. Yeah, and Japan saw high of USA also took sample from the asteroid to which we're going to talk about, also managed to salute it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Now, what is an asteroid? Right? An asteroid is a small, airless, rocky world revolving around the Sun. They're too small to

be called planets. Some of them are also called planetoids or minor planets, and in total, all of them combined, their mass is less than that of Earth's moon. It's true, it's true. And they are found between Mars and Jupiter.

And the idea is that when Jupiter was a new world, we have the formation, so there's just about four point six billion years ago, Jupiter prevented any planetary bodies from forming between that gap of Mars and Jupiter, and that created this asteroid belt, the bit of debris of the

leftover material. It's kind of like when you're making a cake or something, or making some bread, They're always going to be a little leftovers, right, Yeah, and we all know that sometimes the leftovers are actually more delicious than the finished baked good itself, which means your finger wants to dock those leftovers and bring it to your mouth to taste it, and they tatically. That is what we're

talking about. Yeah, there's some there's some wonderful stuff and these leftovers that could certainly be of use to us. For instance, there's platinum, yes, which I have the data here on how much that would work. Oh yeah, it's only worthy. And when we don't have the exact math on it, you're talking about trillions of dollars from the plotential to mind, trillions of dollars of platinum from these asteroids.

Then you have gold, which we all love, of course, and is also useful in the circuitry and other methods that beyond mere jewelry. And then they're rare earth minerals.

There's water, which doesn't sound all that amazing at first because you're thinking, well, we have water here, but if we are planning to eventually move out into space and to explore the cosmos, we're gonna need more water, and we're gonna need water from sources that are closer at hand than the home world, so we can conceivably harvest it from these rocky planetoids. And then we could also use the hydrogen an oxygen from that water to produce

fuel for our space crafts. Right right, So basically, you would have all these materials available to you in space, right even have to hike them from Earth to yeah, because especially if you're bringing from the planet surface, you're talking about the cost of traveling. You need a heavy lift vehicle for that and then you're gonna have to transport it the rest of the way to wherever you are.

It's a classic example of the supply chain. Far better to obtain goods and water and foods or whatever along the way than to ship it all the way to you. I read somewhere that one leader of water is basically worth in space. So you know that availability of that specific water there. Okay. So there are a lot of people who are trying to round up these asteroids or thinking about, I should say, and one of the big players is a company called Planetary Resources. Co founders of

Planetary Resources are Peter Diamondus might diming this. He created the really successful ex Prize Foundation that gives awards to accomplishments in technology, particularly space, and Eric Anderson ex Prize board member and chairman of the board of Space Flight Federation. And then several x NASA engineers and astronauts, some planetary scientists, and then just like a little gaggle of billionaires, UM filmmaker James Cameron, Google executive Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, so

on and so forth. Ross pro Jr. On one hand, we have people with more money than they know what to do with. People with a lot of money, who are dreamers. I mean, certainly James Cameron is a great example of somebody with lots of money and in some very heartfelt ideas about where we are in the world

and where we could go from here. So so there's that, and then you have the X Prize individuals and the X Prize mindset of let's stir up commercial interest in space, let's get this going, let's get people interesting, let's get these projects moving, because that is the future of space travel. It's like the X Men of asteroid mining. I guess you could say, right, um, in a way, I mean what you have is you've got the vision, you've got

the money, and you've got to know how. That's why we wanted to mention all these different names and the people who are involved in their just to give you guys an impa of how very serious this actually is. That this will be happening, probably very soon, and they have a game plan three phases. The first phase is Acrid one hundred, that's the spacecraft series, Accord one hundred series, and they're planning to launch this in twenty four months.

This is how a series of crafts would be. Basically a space telescope based system aimed at identifying possible targets for exploration. So Phase one Accord one hundred is all about let's because some telescopes up there so that we can figure out where we want to target, where we want to go. Yeah, they're cutting metal on that right now, so that's happening. And then the next phase is the

two hundred series, and that is about propulsion. That's about getting these crafts, these various spacecrafts to those asteroids that we picked out in phase one. And then finally there comes the three hundred series. And in the three hundred series we consist of swarms of robotic spacecraft that complete the prospecting and begin to extract the water or platinum or gold or what have you from these asteroids and

bringing them back home. So Phase one find them, phase to travel to them, Phase three prospect and bring it back right. These are a series of calculated, smaller missions which are going to build up to that ideal, which is that swarm of robotic craft and pitching a ride on all of this. They're not developing a spacecraft. The idea from the get go is let's hit your ride on NASA spacecraft or whatever is available. We're not having

to develop as much technology on our own. We're bringing in technology from this company, from this company, and we're building something. We're building something, getting it out there and completing these phases. And they're not going to mine it right away. They want to tap it for volatiles, materials with low bowling points such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, and

so on, which again critical supplies and space. And then again, as you say, the last step then is to get those precious minerals from the asteroids and bring them to Earth. One way would be to launch equipment to a distant asteroid already explored previously by a souped up based telescope. Another might be to use a small spacecraft to bring a smallish asteroid near the Earth, and a rock could be brought into orbit around the Moon where it could

then be mined, or it could be both. A small operation could start work while the asteroid is being towed to Earth, getting a few years head start. It sounds like a great plan there, because why I waste that time that it's in transit and it could be harvesting in along the way. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get back to all this,

So hanging there for one second and we're back. A lot of really great information on this came from a blog called bat Astronomy by Discover magazine, So if you guys want to check out a little bit more about this, I believe there are several articles on this. But one of the really interesting things that came out of bat Astronomy is why exactly they're doing this? Because I thought, well, obviously they're looking for some money here, right, that is

the first thing. But here's the deal. This could be big money, right Trillian's, but this is not money that they'll probably see these investors, as we'll see in their lifetime. Is very possible because this is going to take a while, and this really is much more about sustainable space exploration, which I think is the coolest part about this. Yeah, I mean there's some critics have pointed out that there is a certain level of ego trip to this as well. Oh, absolutely,

it's very much involved. This is like Richard Branson. You can take your suborbitall fight and put it in your pipe and smoke it, because we are going to go mine and asteroid, you know, in terms of like the Branson does have the ice cube shaped like his own head, and that's yeah, they're going to have to top that. But one of the things I thought was amazing about this is that they already have positive cash flow, or

so they claim. They're just working on getting Phase one up and going, but they already have relationship with NASA, they have money coming in. It is a functional company at this point. Well, I mean the idea is that it could be a win win for NASA too, because they could then have access to materials and information. They could sell some things back to NASA. It's really cool stuff. The way that it's being planned out, obviously, it's very like baby steps, and it's very careful in the way.

I mean, they realize this is a very difficult thing to do. You just don't last an asteroid. Well, but their argument is it's difficult, but it's not impossible. And if you look at these pros and the cons are kind of summed up in this as well. You have these three steps. Step one finding asteroids very doable. We've done it. It can be done, no doubt about it. Step two, travel to an asteroid. It can be done. We already mentioned we've done it before. That's that's definitely doable.

Step three, swarms of robots mining asteroids not so much. That's a point. We're getting into a level of technology that we haven't perfected, we haven't tested, we haven't worked out all the kinks. That doesn't mean it's not doable. It's very doable, but that is more of a leap in technology. Now. By the time we get they get to sphase three, you could argue that, well, the technology will be there or the companies aligned with them will

have developed it. But some critics have pointed out that that is a potential flaw on the plan, and that there is a fairly large gap between the two series and the three right time, money and technology right, Those are some of the cons. Another con is that this is not for planetary resources per se, but similar operations like mining the Moon, where that the idea is not the mining the asteroid, but the Moon could deplete moons materials or moons materials. So that's not something that people

are totally excited about. But still it's a different animal here pros we should talk about this. The future of space exploration is not dead, at least from the perspective. Here in the US, where we've shuttered so much of our space exploration, the expense is not footed by the public but by private companies. So that's good. And then again NASA has access to materials and information. There's also this idea that we could learn so much more, not

just about space but specifically asteroids. I could give us insight into how to effectively divert an earth bound asteroid. Okay, so we've talked about this. It's not just the movie armagedon Ben Affleck saving the Earth. We don't need Ben Affleck anymore. It's very possible that by observing asteroids and by actually successfully mining them and spending time on them, that we could figure out a way to divert them

from becoming meteorites crashing into us. Because, as we know or suspect sixty five million years ago, this could have very well been the reason for dinosaurs becoming extempt but there were no dinosaur entrepreneurs with the habit and the know how to turn an incoming asteroid into profits. It's true, if only they had started studying filmmaking and possibly filming the Titanic. Yeah, I'm thinking of like specifically, I'm imagining of branson Osaurus a gat not that he's said he's involved.

I imagine that's the t rex I have to say, rather than like a diplodochist or something. But this really is a big concern. I mean, we talked about Armagon. That seems ridiculous that you know, the movie Armagon. But dozens of asteroids have been classified as potentially hazardous. But the scientists who tracked them some of them become pretty close to Earth. And I think it wasn't it in Siberia in the early two thousand there was one that crashed well, and if you go further back than that,

of course encountered the Tunguska event. Oh yeah, they're luckily it hit in the middle of nowhere, but the same kind of strike had it occurred in Europe would have been disastrous. Yeah. I think I've mentioned before when in fiction and movies and comic books, someone saves the world. Every day saves the world, and in reality, about the only thing that we have, the only effort that we can definitely say this may save the world one day in a very tangible manner are our near Earth object

protection efforts. The idea of let's figure out how to divert an incoming near Earth objects before it actually hits the planet. That's one of those situations where you can definitely point to that and say, yes, if we developed this technology and we get refined, we're tracking everything, and then we have the ability to actually alter the course of one that's headed towards us, that could save the planet in a very very real and very meaningful way.

But then, of course it's the problem of asteroid miners like hanging out mining and possibly getting chunked in the head with a bit of space chunk. Well, that's a whole another let's twine. So there you go asteroid mining, and we'll obviously have much more information about in the coming year, but is very exciting stuff. And what's going on with our robot over there? Oh yes, the robot. It's coming over here with some of the listener mail.

Before I get into the mail, I do want to point out we had a few people writing about our planetary scale episodes, and I think we kind of trip over our words there and messed up a little bit on the size of Earth versus the size of Venus. I just want to point out that Venus has a diameter that is about of Earth, so Earth is bigger than Venus. Yeah. I think that we definitely messed up when we switched those around. And that's what happens when

you start comparing things to peppercorns. And I think we were specifically talking about like black peppercorns, firsts red peppercorns. Learn your lesson there, pantry items, planetary sizes be warned. Here's a quick listener mail from our listener, Peter Peter Wright Sin says, Hey, Julian Robert, I heard your podcast on Lucid Dreams a couple of weeks ago, and I was completely mind blown. The fun wasn't actually intended, at

least to Lee. Reason being that in the beginning you named all the types of dreams than Eden studied, and briefly talked about a dream I have once in a while. I barely remember my dreams, but these are memorable. It's a dream type number six, and they're just gonna prefer out the second. This would be dream sensations in which there are no visions, no images, no events, not even

a word or a name. But during a long time of deep sleep, the mind is continually occupied with one person, one place, one remarkable event or even one abstract thought. So then Peter went on to ask for a little more detail on it, and we sent him some links. But I found that very interesting because that was one of the dream types where I didn't have any personal experience with dreams of that kind, and I was very curious if any of our listeners had so appreciate hearing

about it. If you have any thoughts you would like to share with us, If you've had interesting dreams and you have some thoughts on a Lucid Dreams episode, by all means write us. And if you have any thoughts about the future of asteroid mining and how that might play out, but let us know about that as well. You can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter. On Facebook we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

and on Twitter we're blow the Mind. And you can also drop us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com