Some thoughts on Planetary Resources and Peter Diamandis’ abundance thesis over at Zero Hedge. I need to give it some thought, but I think there is a definitional issue here of what constitutes a “resource.” It’s somewhat related to the question of whether gravity existed before Newton invented it, though a little less philosophical. I’m on a couple deadlines right now, but have at it in comments.
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This is something even more elusive than the gravity question. A resource only is such after you can get it and use it. Otherwise it’s just a potential resource. We often do not perceive resources. This is so common there isn’t an adjective strong enough to describe this blindness.
People are looking at the cost of getting asteroid minerals while not looking at the life this enables. It’s not all going to be robots. Once they put a big rock in orbit around the moon, miners are going to live on that rock. Workers already in space will be hired from other companies (stealing these employees will be a lot cheaper than putting a new one in orbit.) Eventually they will bring their families and convenience stores.
It’s not so much about the rocks as it is the expanding of the economic sphere.
Heat surely is a limiting factor if energy use keeps rising, but we’ll start emigrating in about 420 years at current growth rates (search “clinical immortality” in the space review). The question is, “Will we hit another limit soon?” Carbon? No, plant trees and bury them. Energy? No, nuclear is a backstop that we won’t need to use. There’s uranium in granite at 3PPM. Each family needs a half an ounce of uranium per year which only requires 5 tons of granite. Food? No, hydroponics in buildings is a backstop. Water? No, it’s easy to recycle or desalinate. Space? No, everyone currently alive in the world could fit in an area the size of Austin built out with 50-story buildings.
The assumption being made is that humans will cling to the Earth for ever. I recommend everyone reads Issac Asimov’s short story, “The Last Shuttle”, about the last humans to leave the Earth for the space settlements, basically turning the planet in a gaint wilderness area.
I am sure in the real world provisions could be made to allow the Deep Ecologists to stay behind and commune with nature. But that is the ultimate solution to the thermal problem, move civilization off world and just turn the Earth into a wilderness recreation area with limited access.
Thanks for the info on the Red Dragon over at Space Review. Did they mention how much mass they could put on the surface for $150m?
Those who worry about scarcity are looking at the markets, not the resources. If you take the Earth’s land area, crustal elemental abundances, current market values, and world population you get some interesting numbers. (Yes, I just blew an hour on a big spreadsheet and lots, and lots of searches.)
The market value of the resources are about $32 million dollars per capita per vertical meter of earth. If we said $32,000 is the average raw material worth of the average person (a vast overstatement), then we’re currently utilizing the top 1 millimeter of the planet.
If we were really into strip mining and processing on a massive scale and cut through the top 20 meters of the continents, every single person on Earth would get:
680 Boeing 747’s.
One nuclear powered Nimitz class aircraft carrier.
Four titanium hulled Soviet Alfa class nuclear submarines.
A yard filled with about 1000 tons of barium sulfate (for X-ray milkshakes), 250 tons of vanadium, 200 tons of chromium, 100 tons each of zinc and copper, 8 tons of thorium, 250 pounds of silver, and 12 pounds of gold.
I don’t think we could safely navigate 6 billion aircraft carriers.
So the problem is that we only use a very small amounts of these materials, compared to the total available, and those are going to be provided by the lowest cost producers, and production is historically limited by technology and manpower.
The business case for mining asteroids isn’t that we’re running out of resources, it’s that the ores up there are very highly concentrated, and thus vastly easier than extracting trace amounts by processing massive quantities of low-grade ore.
In a 1970’s essay that I remember reading but can’t find at the moment, Arthur C. Clark gave essentially the same analysis as George Turner does above. To say that the earth is ‘running out of resources’, given the pin scratch that all human activity to this time represents in comparison to the volumn of the earth’s crust, is absurd. Then Clark got the green relegion and forgot his own analysis.
The real issue is the cost of recovery and part of that is political, extraneous costs. It will be cheaper to take apart an asteriod than stripmine a mountain and have to restore it. And if, in doing so, the cost of platinum drops, then the cost of everything platinum is used for will also drop and more uses will become economically viable, increasing the demand.
Dean,
The book was Arthur C. Clarke’s “Profiles of the Future” from 1962 and I think it was Chapter 9, Aladdin’s Lamp you are referring to.
The only thing i read from that article is worship of limits. Whether real, theoretical or completely imaginary.
That means instead of focusing on smaller solutions with more immediate effects, grandiose solutions with long timelines are pursued instead.
I get it. Visionaries, grandiose plans, bad. Recycling your poop into a steak substitute, good. Less is more, way to go.
And we should never even aspire to live anywhere else but earth, that is painfully obvious, of course.
Mr. Kennedy – You said the important thing; “restore it”.
I don’t think anyone disputes that all materials are available in virtually unlimited quantities, in low-grade deposits. But: Mr. Dinkin’s half an ounce of uranium per year using 5 tons of granite translates to thirty billion tons per year of mining waste, for the whole planet to be so served. Not to mention the (approximately) 3 billion ounces, or 83,000 tons, of radioactive waste.
Mr. Christian,
5 tons of granite is only twice the concrete that is used per person per year in the US. Current sources of uranium require only two and a half ounces of ore be mined per family. The link I listed above shows uranium supply in Canada at 200,000 PPM. By the way, the tailings would only be two tons per person in the super far future I’m using as a straw man since the average US family size is 2.6.
The best platinum ore only has 10 PPM so you can certainly be unhappy about mining waste today.
It certainly seems that after the Fukushima incident that nuclear is being relegated to last resort status. But that is my point–we have at least one last resort.