DavidWillard wrote:
What if early surveys of the Martian satellites and nearby asteroid belt reveal worthwhile mining interests of rare earths and somewhat pure veins of solid metals? Densities of ore never unheard of before?
Recent complaints were made by the US about China possibly limiting export of the 19 top rare earth elements, which China has the lions' share of the market for green technology use.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11581288
There's some motivation for a market that is constrained, but committed to reducing CO2 production. Those who have to buy those metals from a captured market will either have to acquire new cheaper sources, or pay the prevailing rising price of the market. Worse yet, some countries might game and capitalize ruthlessly on a hard to acquire source like this.
So play the game, and spend extra billions in the near future, or explore and maintain a steady price with the possibility of reducing the cost of acquisition to provide growth?
Rare Earth's are not that rare. They are a byproduct of Phosphate mining as well as Aluminum refining. The reason why the Chinese dominate the market is that they are the low cost producer of Rare Earths. All of their rare earths come from a single huge mine near Mongolia with essentially no worker safety or control over the environmental effects of the extraction of Rare Earths. Once other producers get in the game (with mines with better safety and environmental management), the prices will probably increase 50-100%, but the "known reserves" will probably increase 10 times. This price increase can easily be absorbed by the semiconductor industry, given that it has coped with a 1000% price increase in semiconductor grade Silicon in the past with little ill effect.
The only materials worth the cost and expense of asteroid mining as Platinum Group Metals (PGM) and maybe Hafnium.
I have a friend who knew a mining engineer who analyzed meteorites for the purposes of determining the feasibility of mining asteroids. He said the best asteroids are Carbonaceous types that have metal phases in them. These phases can be separated by grinding and sifting (meaning no chemistry has to be done on the asteroid) and the resultant phases sent back to Earth.
The difficult part is prospecting. Since the phases are mostly inside the asteroid, identifying the ideal asteroid cannot be done with spectroscopy using telescopes on Earth. A prospecting probe has to be sent out to the target asteroid to prospect. 10 or more such probes may have to be sent before the motherlode asteroid is identified. This is costly and time consuming.
Perhaps the probes can be made small (micro-satellite sized) such that a bunch of them can be sent up with a single rocket launch, then each of them independently target to a unique asteroid. Each micro-satellite probe would need its only propulsion system. However, since they are small, this may not be a problem and the probes can be mass produced.
The motherlode asteroid can probably be grinded and sifted, with the recovered PGM phases packaged and sent back to Earth by a fully-automated system. No people needed to be sent into space. If a maintenance/mining crew has to be sent, add another billion or so to the price tag.
An asteroid prospecting and mining venture would be a multi-billion dollar venture and would take probably 10 years before final payoff. Of course the payoff could be worth a $100 billion or more.
Its a highly speculative venture that is unlikely to happen in the next 2 decades.
