In a manner of speaking. They've decided to speed up their mission to an asteroid which is a ginormous chunk of metal. Yeah, so NASA won't crash the economy, but Planetary Resources wants to crash the market for certain metals in order to spur technological growth. They'll no doubt use the data from NASA to bring metal from this and other asteroids to Earth, thereby crashing markets, and making it exceedingly cheap to use various metals.
I'm extremely sceptical of the of the idea that there will ever be large movement of space resources to the Earths surface, especially for stuff like iron that is relatively cheap to extract from our own planet. Even with a well developed space economy there are a lot of overheads involved in getting it here in a usable way. The true value of these asteroids will be in developing a robust space industry. It's going to be a long time until we develop the infrastructure to build stuff from scratch in space, but when we do it definitely won't be with materials lifted out of planetary gravity wells.
The beauty of mining asteroids is that you don't have to worry about any environmental damage. El Salvador has banned all metal mining, and other countries are said to be considering similar bans.
I'm wondering how they plan to deorbit millions of tons of heavy metals from Earth orbit to the surface successfully and economically.
Musk has been really vague on that detail. I suspect because he and the other folks at Planetary Resources haven't fully figured that out yet. I have some ideas of how they might be able to do it economically, but I don't know what they're planning at all.
I suppose you could plan to put the factories that use the metals into Earth orbit but that represents a staggering investment that would certainly nullify the benefits of getting cheap metals from the asteroids. For example say a factory facility, even stripped down, heavily automated and made of the lightest materials possible. I would say that conservatively it would mass at least 200,000 tons. The minimal launch costs that is remotely conceivable is about 100 dollars per pound. More like 1,000 dollars per pound. Even at the minimal possible launch costs of 100 dollars of pound the 200,000 ton factory would cost some 40 BILLION dollars to put into Earth orbit. And that's before it produces so much as an ounce of finished product.
Now you're displaying the kind of NASA-like thinking that Zubrin railed about in his memo to them after they announced how they'd go to Mars per George HW Bush's directive. Ignoring the launch costs, putting a factory in orbit that builds cars, for example, and then has to ship them to Earth, is stupid and impractical. As is, for that matter, sending a factory into space. Like Zubrin says, "Why spend the money to ship rocket fuel to Mars, when you can make the fuel you need for the return trip on Mars?" Why spend the money to ship a factory to an asteroid, when you can use the materials to make your own factory? Musk's plan is to send self-replicating robots to an asteroid, where they'd set about making copies of themselves, as well as producing refined metals, rocket fuel, and other things. Some of these items would be used for manned (and unmanned) explorations of the solar system, while some of the refined ore would be sent back to Earth, where factories on the ground would turn that into products. For an idea of just how quickly self-replicating robots could do something like this, I recommend this article. It's a bit old, having been written in the mid-90s, and deals with doing it on Earth, so there are some differences in how it would work on an asteroid, but not insurmountable ones, and there'd also be a few advantages to doing it on an asteroid over doing it on the Earth. The big question is: How do you get the metal from space to the Earth, without it costing a fortune, or killing people? To my knowledge, Musk hasn't said how he intends to do this, even though he has stated that he wants to get asteroidal metals to the Earth. As I see it, there's three ways he could do this, without breaking the bank. 1.) Space elevator. It'd be cheap to operate, and you wouldn't have to worry about the stuff burning up in the atmosphere, or killing people. Problem is, our technology isn't to the point where we can build such a thing. Maybe Musk is hoping for a breakthrough soon, or maybe he's not going to use this idea at all. 2.) Metal spheres. A sphere contains the largest possible amount of material, with the smallest amount of surface area of any object. Keep the spheres to a relatively small size, like a meter or so in diameter, and simply "drop" them over an uninhabited place like the Australian outback, where they'd be picked up after they hit. You'd lose a small amount of material as they went through the atmosphere, but not a lot, and they'd hit the ground with some force to do damage, but not enough that getting them out of the hole would be a major undertaking. 3.) Metal foam. This could be combined with the spheres idea, or it could take a different form, like a flying wing. The advantage of metal foam (and I've seen a study which indicates that metal cast in a weightless environment would naturally foam) is that it floats on water. This provides you with a much larger target area to drop your metal, as the oceans are vast, with an even lesser chance of hitting anyone or anything. Drop the stuff in the ocean, and send out an autonomous ship like SpaceX uses for its rockets to tow the stuff to a port. Remember, the goal of Planetary Resources isn't to turn a profit off of getting metals to Earth, it is to crash the metals market. They want to dump enough titanium, for example, that the price of the metal falls to nothing. Which means that it'll become the de-facto choice for just about anything made of metal. This will have the advantage of making cars lighter, and more fuel-efficient, it'll make it cheaper to ship finished goods around the country, as they'll also weigh less. Not to mention it'll reduce the damage we're doing to the environment by mining.
Exactly what it the point of "crashing the metals market"? Sounds quite insane to me and if Musks ideas crash and burn good riddance.
I literally just told you what the point was. It's right there, in the part you quoted. Why your dislike of Musk, @Dayton3? Right now, his company has had a more successful record and more launches than any of the other private space companies which have sprung up in recent years. He's just tested the first stage of the rocket he intends to use to send humans to Mars, while NASA's still trying to figure out the design for theirs, and the Russians aren't even trying. As of right now, if you hope to see humans on Mars (with a crew that's mostly American), then Musk is your best bet. Otherwise, it'll probably be the Chinese.
It seems to suggest he wants to destroy the Earthbound heavy metal mining industry for the "environment" (gosh I hate the whining about that). Has it occurred to anyone that you can't end the Earthbound heavy mining industry unless the asteroid mining becomes more profitable than that on Earth. But you specifically said he wasn't interested in profit. Which (if true) just shows that just because you've made a lot of money does NOT mean you know anything about economics. Of course we knew that with Donald Trump already.
Yeah, because who needs clean water, clean soil, or clean air? Sure you can. John D. Rockefeller did basically the same thing with the oil industry. Once Musk gets things in space and working, his operational costs will be minimal. No miners to pay, the stuff delivered via automated equipment, and the final processing is handled by the companies buying the metal. Musk has start-up costs and maintenance costs associated with the stuff on Earth, but that's it. Meanwhile, mining companies have to pay miners, deal with far more equipment issues, as well as environmental regulations, and other costs associated with doing business. Musk can afford to run his business in the red for years, while mining concern after mining concern goes under. Ayup. You know who else isn't interested in profits? Jeff Bezos. Most of the money made by Amazon goes back into the company, investing in new products and new technology. Occasionally, he'll have Amazon turn a profit, so he can pay out money to shareholders, but most of the time, the money goes right back into expanding the company. Or, funding his space program. Which, if SpaceX goes under, you can expect Blue Origin (Bezos rocket company) to snap up SpaceX's gear and personnel for a song. So, they'll have the same abilities as SpaceX, with even fewer costs. Bezos also has far larger ambitions than Musk does. Bezos wants to build orbiting colonies and move the entire human population off the Earth and into space. Which has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Given that we're talking about space exploration, yes it does. If we were talking about politics, it wouldn't have any bearing on the subject.
Point of clarification, I don't think Bezos has ever said he wants to move humanity off Earth. That's a bad idea, Earth is literally the perfect habitat for humans. What he has said is that he would ideally want to see all heavy industry off world. So still an incredibly difficult bar to reach, but not quite as difficult.
The pieces I've read all have said that he wants everyone off the planet. No direct quotes from him, so they may have misinterpreted what he said.
