#526 | Space Mining | The Future or Science Fiction?
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Hello, hello, hello and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English. I'm Alastair Budge and today we are going to be talking about space mining. It's the idea that we can mine valuable minerals, not

not from Earth, but from space. So in this episode, we'll talk about why some people are so excited about it, how and why it could work, some of its major challenges, and ask ourselves whether it will ever go from the realm of science fiction to reality.

But before we get right into all of that good stuff, let me quickly remind you that you can become a member of Leonardo English and follow along with the interactive transcript and subtitles over on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com.

Membership of Leonardo English gives you access to more than double the number of episodes, plus all of our learning materials, including instant translations in 12 languages, study packs, and much, much more. So if you are ready to take the next step on your English learning journey, the place to go is LeonardoEnglish.com. Okay then, let's get started and talk about space mining.

The 19th century was an exciting time in terms of space observation. The first asteroid, Ceres, was spotted in 1801 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. Half a century later, his countryman, Annibale de Gasparis, was working in his observatory in Naples. He saw an asteroid that he named 16 Psyche, after the Greek goddess of the soul.

Now, this was just one of nine different asteroids that he discovered. To him, it probably looked like a giant rock, an important scientific discovery, but not much more than that. However, modern astronomers believe 16 Psyche to be immeasurably more valuable than was first thought.

To be precise, this asteroid is thought to contain precious metals worth 10 quintillion dollars. A quintillion might sound like a made-up number, something that a child might say, like a gazillion or a bazillion, which I should add are not real numbers. But a quintillion is not made up. It is just so big that you've probably never heard of it. 10 quintillion is 10

followed by 19 zeros. Or, to put it another way, it is 10,000 trillion, 100 times the value of the entire global economy. And it is right up there, in space, floating around with nobody guarding it. And not just 16 Psyche.

There are millions of asteroids, some large, some small, many of which are believed to contain enough precious minerals to supply humanity for literally millions of years. So what if there were a way to go up there and simply take them? This is the story of space mining, or asteroid mining to be precise.

To some, it seems like science fiction, a fixation on looking to space where we have more than enough problems to deal with back on Earth. But to others, it is something that can and will become reality, and a way to solve many of the problems we have on Earth by taking what already exists in space.

So, let's start with some definitions. Asteroids are objects that orbit the Sun, much like planets, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and so on. They are essentially remnants of the early solar system, chunks of rock and metal that never formed into planets. The difference between an asteroid and a planet mainly comes down to size.

Planets are much bigger, therefore have a larger gravitational pull, and are circular in shape because of gravity. Asteroids are smaller, typically ranging from a few hundred meters or so through to the largest known asteroid, which is almost a thousand kilometers in diameter, around the same width as France from its most northern to most southern point. It's pretty big, but it's much smaller than a planet.

And, because they are much smaller, they have a much lower gravitational pull, so they're not typically round, but more like a rock. Most known asteroids are in the asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter. But not all. There are others that come closer to Earth. Some come too close, like the one that is thought to have hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Fortunately, we humans are better than dinosaurs at spotting potential threats in the sky. So, in the event of an asteroid looking like it was on a collision path with Earth, we would know about it pretty quickly and be more capable than a Diplodocus of changing its trajectory. So, we know where asteroids are, and because they orbit the Sun, it's fairly easy to model their position at any point in time.

And while 19th century astronomers might not have known much about the consistency of an asteroid, or what it is actually made out of, we now do. Some asteroids are thought to contain incredibly high levels of precious metals. When the solar system was formed,

Heavy elements like gold, platinum, nickel and iron were distributed throughout the massive cloud of gas and dust that eventually became the Sun and the planets. These elements were created during supernova explosions and collisions of neutron stars, cosmic events that forged the universe's heaviest and most valuable materials. When the solar system began to take shape,

gravity caused much of the heavy material to sink towards the cores of the newly forming planets. On Earth, for example, most of the gold and platinum we know of is thought to be buried deep within the planet's core, out of reach for humans. But not all of this material ended up inside planets. Some of it remained as loose chunks of rock and metal scattered throughout the solar system.

what we now call asteroids. These asteroids are essentially the leftover building blocks of planets, and many contain high concentrations of metals that didn't make it into planetary cores. But what makes these asteroids so appealing isn't just their high metal content, it's that the metals are often much more accessible than on Earth. Unlike Earth, where heavy metals have sunk to the core,

Asteroids haven't undergone the same process of differentiation. This means that their metals are distributed throughout their structure, making them easier to extract. As I'm sure you'll know, mining almost anything on Earth, and especially mining precious metals, is a dirty, intensive and expensive activity, often carried out by people, sometimes even children, working in pretty awful conditions.

Cobalt, for example, is a vital part of electric batteries, and 70% of all cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And conditions in the Congolese cobalt mines have been likened to modern-day slavery. Cobalt and Congo are just one example.

Getting anything out of the Earth's crust is an intensive polluting process. So wouldn't it be better, the argument goes, for us just to take it from an asteroid? There would be no pollution, no child labour, and no destruction of forests to make way for the mines. In theory,

It all sounds very positive. A lifetime supply of precious metals floating around in the sky, fortunes to be made for anyone who can find a way to go out there and get them. Of course, it's more complicated than that. First, let's talk about the practicality of getting to an asteroid. They are a long way away. In late 2023, NASA did actually send a mission to the asteroid Psyche, the one I mentioned at the start of the episode.

Its scheduled arrival date is 2029, so it will take six years for it to get there. It's travelling at something like 50,000 km/h, incredibly fast by Earth standards. The problem is that it needs to travel almost 500 million kilometres to get there. And it isn't on a space mining mission, but rather a fact-gathering one.

No spacecraft has ever been to Psyche before, so the plan is to go and observe it. Given the cost of getting to an asteroid, any mission needs to be fairly sure that it will find what it's looking for. And given that not all asteroids are created equal, some are rocky, others are icy, and others contain high levels of precious metals, you need to send a fact-finding mission first before committing to a mining mission.

Now, let's talk about costs. A large proportion of the cost of any space mission is getting out of the Earth's atmosphere and then returning safely. Sending something to space is expensive, but it is considerably cheaper than it used to be.

During the first 30 years or so of space launches, it would typically cost in the region of $25,000 per kilo to send something to space. But some projects were upwards of $100,000 per kilo. Companies such as SpaceX have been hyper-focused on reducing the cost of going to space, so that it now costs around $1,500 per kilo.

But, with reusable rockets and increasing efficiencies in every part of the launch process, there are some estimates that this could be brought down to around $10 per kilo, less than it would cost to send a 1 kilo parcel within the UK. So yes, going to space and therefore getting to an asteroid is very expensive.

But while a few decades ago it would have been so expensive that it simply wouldn't have been economically viable, now it very well might be. So, let's assume that costs have gone down to such an extent that the first asteroid mining mission is ready for liftoff. How would it work? Well, there are several fundamental differences between Earth and space that mean an asteroid mine certainly wouldn't bear much resemblance to any mine on Earth.

Obviously, there is the problem of how to get all the equipment there. So, it simply wouldn't be possible to boost large trucks and heavy equipment into space. And anyhow, this kind of equipment would probably be of little use on an asteroid. There is no gravity on an asteroid, so everything would need to be tied down to the asteroid.

Most probably, there would be some kind of great canopy, a tent-like structure, that was put over the area that was being mined. Otherwise, all of the dust and precious metals would simply blow away into space. And in terms of the mining process, there are several different ideas about how this could work.

Perhaps it would be lasers that would vaporize material, robotic arms that grind and collect it, or even specialized bacteria, as they do in terrestrial biomining, that break down rock and release valuable metals like nickel or cobalt.

Another significant challenge is that asteroids typically rotate, often unpredictably and at varying speeds. This constant movement makes it very difficult to safely land equipment, maintain stability or accurately mine materials. To address this, the mining team would need to find some way of stabilizing the asteroid, keeping it in position.

Maybe this would be using thrusters to slow or stop its rotation. Maybe it would be by using large nets or tethers to anchor it, or by synchronizing mining tools to match the asteroid's rotation. And then there is the question of who would work on the mine.

This is not a question of whether there would be thousands of astronauts with hammers and shovels physically digging the surface themselves and lugging large sacks back at the end of the day, but rather whether the mine would be 100% automated, controlled from back on Earth, or from a space mission closer to Earth, or whether there would be human astronauts monitoring the situation from the site, just in case anything went wrong. And there is also the legal question

One of the very first episodes we ever made, more than five years ago now, was about the question of who owns space. Five years on, that question still remains largely unanswered. The first principle of the 1967 Space Treaty is, and I'm quoting directly,

"The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind." And it is shortly followed by: "Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." In other words, nobody owns space.

But there is a grey area over what this means in terms of asteroid mining. If a company successfully mines an asteroid, who owns the minerals they mine? Is it a bit like fishing, where any boat can fish in international waters, and they are free to use and sell what they catch? Or is it not?

In 2015, Barack Obama signed something called the Space Act, which gives US citizens the right to "engage in the commercial exploration and exploitation of space resources, including water and minerals." In other words, US citizens can do it, according to US law at least. How does this law play with international law?

It hasn't been an issue so far because nobody has done it, but if asteroid mining turns from the theoretical to the practical, it is a question that will need to be addressed. Now, let's assume that it is addressed and that companies are able to build cost-effective ways of getting mining equipment to space and successfully mining an asteroid. What happens next?

Well, there is also the question of where the minerals go. One option is to bring them back to Earth and use them here. We need the minerals found on asteroids, especially the platinum group metals. We need them here on Earth for everything from batteries to solar panels to electric cars. So there is a clear demand: whoever can bring them back cost-effectively will become spectacularly wealthy.

But the other option is to leave them in space, for use in space. The more activity there is in space, the more stuff is needed. And this currently all needs to be brought from Earth and then sent to space, which is expensive. No matter how plentiful and cheap something might be on Earth, in space it suddenly becomes very expensive. One obvious example is water.

A kilo of water might be practically free on Earth, but taking a kilo of water to space costs the same as taking a kilo of anything else to space. And in space, water is incredibly important and in short supply. Water is needed to keep astronauts hydrated, as well as for cooling and regulating the temperature of a spacecraft and as a radiation shield.

But perhaps even more important than this are the component parts of water: hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen can be separated from the water and can be used for breathing on a spacecraft. Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are the primary propellants of many modern rockets. So if water can be found on an asteroid, for example, it becomes incredibly valuable.

There are no petrol stations in space. All fuel needs to be brought up from Earth.

But if a source of water in the form of ice or water-rich material could be found, and this could be processed in space into rocket fuel and left in space where it is most useful and valuable, then this would be like a petrol station in space. It would bring down the cost of space launches because they wouldn't have to take so much fuel up from Earth.

and it would allow for longer and faster journeys within space. And perhaps veering even more into the realms of the ultra-futuristic, in a universe in which there were settlements on other planets, Mars for example, it makes much more sense to manufacture what is needed in space rather than on Earth.

If you need to build a settlement, it could be a lot more cost-effective to take the raw materials from a nearby asteroid than shooting them up from a rocket on Earth. So, one option is to leave the mined materials in space. But what would happen if these rare minerals were brought back down to Earth? You heard at the start that just one asteroid contains precious metals worth 100 times the entire global economy.

Enough for every person on Earth to receive around $1.25 billion. So what would be the impact of that? Well, everyone on Earth wouldn't receive $1.25 billion. This 10 quintillion dollar number is the estimated total value of all the precious metals in that asteroid at current market prices.

If it were all brought back to Earth at once, it would flood the market, and the price would come crashing down because we would have more iron, platinum and cobalt than we knew what to do with. But that isn't going to happen.

Because of the timelines of getting there, the cost of a mission, and the fact that a spacecraft is limited to how much it can carry back, it would take hundreds, if not thousands of years for even a fraction of the precious metals on an asteroid this size to be mined and then brought back to Earth.

Still, there are some commentators who have pointed out that even with a relatively small haul of precious metals, asteroid mining could be very detrimental to lower-income countries that have so far relied on natural resource extraction.

Mines back on Earth would be closed, millions of people would be out of a job, and there would need to be some sort of mechanism for these countries to be compensated by the countries or companies that enjoyed the spoils of asteroid mining. There are also environmental concerns, but these are mainly the concerns about space pollution, of debris from the mines floating around in space. In terms of environmental concerns,

It seems pretty clear-cut. Yes, sending a rocket into space and then bringing it back into the atmosphere releases a lot of CO2. But these are the only significant emissions that would be caused by space mining. According to one study, mining a kilo of platinum from an asteroid would result in around 60 kilograms of CO2.

And this is against 40,000 kilograms of CO2 to get every kilo of platinum out of the Earth's crust like we do today. In other words, yes, you might think of a rocket blasting off into space and think, well, that must be very environmentally unfriendly. But it is approximately 700 times better for the environment than the way we currently do it. So if it all sounds so good in theory, why is it not already happening?

It comes down to money. Building all of the technology, actually figuring out how to do it, and then doing test after test after test will require hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, and with no certain return. Several companies have started this process, but none have made the progress they had initially promised.

Most investors aren't very good at being patient, especially when there is no guarantee of any return. And despite the huge potential prize, there is a lack of funding for asteroid mining companies. Still, as you listen to this episode, assuming that it isn't the year 2029 yet, a NASA spacecraft is on its way to an asteroid that was first spotted in 1852, 16 Psyche.

It will return with news. News that might just change the world. Okay then, that is it for today's episode on space mining. I hope it's been an interesting one and that it might have given you a new perspective on the night's sky. As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode. Did you know much about asteroid mining before? Do you think it is something we will see in your lifetime?

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