Mining & Industry in Space

[Hawkshaw_245]

I'm fascinated with the prospect of commercial use of space. Heres some info I've found about mining asteroids and the Moon, as well as industrial processes conducted in space.

In summary, PERMANENT is for developing outer space on a very large scale, rapidly, by using materials already in space -- asteroids near Earth and/or lunar material -- instead of expensively blasting up from Earth all the materials used in space.After all, the Europeans who settled America didn't bring their bricks and cement from Europe...
Using factories based in space, and feedstocks from asteroids near Earth and/or the Moon, products would include:
large structures for mounting and linking multiple satellites and giant antennas ("orbital antenna farms") for enhanced wireless communications on Earth which no present-day or currently planned satellite communications provider could compete with -- not even Teledesic and Iridium
basic space station and habitat building blocks (why blast it all up from Earth?)
industrial facilities for export of services and goods to Earth economies (see the "Products and services " section)
solar power plants to beam clean electrical energy to consumers on Earth by safe radio beam
fuel propellants (the gas stations in space) to support all kinds of next generation satellite in-space services, products and infrastructure ? and including Teledesic-like constellations
"domestic in-space" products such as large corporate space settlements

Permanent.com

Asteroids and their makeup...

"Iron meteorites", also called "irons", are usually just one big blob of iron-nickel (Fe-Ni) metal, as if it came from a industrial refinery without shaping. The alloy ranges from 5% to 62% nickel from meteorite to meteorite, with an average of 10% nickel. Cobalt averages about 0.5%, and other metals such as the platinum group metals, gallium, and germanium are dissolved in the Fe-Ni metal. (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.) While most "irons" are pure or nearly pure metal, the technical definition of an "iron" includes metal meteorites with up to 30% mineral inclusions such as sulfides, metal oxides and silicates. The irons represent the cores of former planetoids.

"Stony irons" consist of mixtures of Fe-Ni metal of between 30% and 70% along with mixtures of various silicates and other minerals. The Fe-Ni metal can be present as chunks, pebbles and granules. Stony irons resemble the outer cores or mantles of planetoids or else a mix of materials due to a collision.

"Achondrites" are silicate rich meteorites apparently formed by crustal igneous (i.e., molten or volcanic) activity in their parent bodies, and consist of a broad range of minerals. Achondrites are the result of gravitational differentiation in relatively large bodies by melting and gravitational separation of mineral phases, and most resemble the Earth's crust. Different types of achondrites average between 0 and 4% free Fe-Ni granules.

"Chondrites" probably came from parent bodies that were too small to undergo a large degree of gravitational differentiation, or are collision ejecta from less than catastrophic collisions of slightly differentiated bodies. Chondrites are named after the tiny pellets of rock called "chondrules" embedded in them, a result of a kind of chemical fractionation unique to small bodies. If you were walking around in a field and saw a chondrite, it would be much more recognizable as being of non-terrestrial origin than the above achondrites.

Processing minerals, once extracted

Separating Elements and Minerals by Simple Methods

Instead of covering lunar mineral processing in the lunar section, it is better to cover it in an industrial section because it can be applied to processing asteroidal minerals as well.
On the other hand, because asteroidal material has uniquenesses, i.e., free nickel iron metal and precious metals, which cannot apply to lunar materials, the simple processing of asteroidal materials with simple crushers, magnets and ovens was discussed in the section on asteroidal material. However, advanced processing of asteroidal minerals for other things besides free metals and volatiles was not discussed there, since it overlaps with lunar materials processing.
§ 4.2.1 Magnetic separation of free nickel-iron metal
§ 4.2.2 Thermal extraction of volatiles
§ 4.2.3 Separating minerals by electrostatic beneficiation
§ 4.2.4 Separating minerals by vibration or floatation
§ 4.2.5 Separating minerals by electrophoresis

If anyone has additional URLs for this type of information, please post. I think this an awesome subject.

 

[Dave]

I don't have any URLs. I did study a little Geochemistry though and I knew all that. I think the only way to explore space will be to go to the moon, build a base there, mine it, and build the exploration craft there. That seems to be exactly the plan NASA now have in mind in order to get to Mars.

I do see some problems with processing minerals on the moon though. You are correct that Iron meteorites are very pure, but when processing minerals on Earth, the processes do involve large amounts of Energy and large amounts of Water. Energy and Water are going to be in short supply on the Moon, even enough just to warm and quench the thirst of the colonists.

Apparently though, both Jupiter's satellites Europa and Ganymede have Oxygen atmospheres. Take Hydrogen from the Gas Giant, and Oxygen from the satellites, combine them, and you get both heat and water. The Asteroid Belt is rich in those Iron meteorites.

Larry Niven first wrote about Belters in 1966; asteroid miners, flitting from asteroid to asteroid, slicing them up for the mineral wealth they contain, with scattered hotels in bubbleworlds, to serve every Belter's occasional need for an Earthlike environment.

 

[chrispenycate]

They're concentrating on the ones that get to Earth (ie. make it through the atmosphere, not entirely burnt out). We know there are large quantities of water ice and other volatiles out there, but not how much.
The trouble is that for efficient industrial extraction, we either need good sized lumps, or lots of them close together, this latter not being likely in near Earth orbit.
So if you want to do your manufacturing close to Earth, either you need to steer mountain sized lumps into Earth orbit (not impossible; probably use hydrogen bombs as propulsion) However, the Murphy possibilities of joggling that much mass (perhaps only a dinosaur crippler, rather than a dinosaur killer, but inconvenient for civilisation all the same)
The alternative is to do the refining out where the materiel is plentiful, and, carefully calculating orbits, send lumps small enough that they're guaranteed to burn out in the atmosphere if not intercepted. However, for this we need permanent bases in the asteroid belt, with long term life support, and we're some way from doing that yet (and further still from robot systems that can do the work without human supervision - Oh, it'll come, but not for a while)
When the moon base is up and running, a linear accelerator. à la "the moon's a harsh mistress" (and Heinlein got it wrong; you don't need steel, any conductor will do) can put lot's of aluminium and silicates into lunar orbit, but there's a shortage, at least in the surface rocks, of the heavier metals, so we really need the asteroid materials. Or the orbital tower, but for that we need a huge counterweight in geostationary orbit; and we're back to the dinosaur maimer scenario.
But everything is dependand on available energy sources; a low mass fusion plant gives a different answer from solar collectors, a ground based, high mass plant yet another.