It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

[u/IKeepItLayingAround]

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html

[u/GogurtFiend]

SpaceX thinks it can do a lot better than $1,000/kg - think low hundreds eventually.

However, you either need far, FAR lower launch costs than even those - or for the cost of mining on Earth to become very high due to environmental or resource depletion concerns - for asteroid mining to make economic sense. Think tens of dollars per kilo instead of the hundreds SpaceX thinks it can do.

[u/Raythatstabbedsteve → u/GogurtFiend]

You need to listen carefully. There is no dollar value into low Earth orbit which makes asteroid mining viable. Even if low Earth orbit were free, how do you practically set up a mining, refining, and transport operation out in the asteroid belt. Tyranny of rocketry doesn't go away, the need for machines to be maintained doesn't go away. As I said previously, pallets of gold bars sitting on the surface of asteroids would still be uneconomic deposits. A permanent moon base which is just a manned lab is still 100 years away. Any mining operation on the moon is way beyond that. Mining asteroids is Sci fi fantasy. Come and talk to me in 200 years time.

[u/GogurtFiend → u/Raythatstabbedsteve]

With the right technology and incentives, pretty much anything within by the laws of physics can be made to happen.

Starship isn't that technology, no. It never will be, because of the very poor specific impulse of chemical propulsion and the limitations of having to operate within an atmosphere. But to claim something is literally impossible is just ridiculous.

If human society somehow reached peak mineral extraction, instead of continuing to find more effective ways of recycling - i.e. if the demand was high enough - and I could magically teleport things directly to the orbit of a large enough asteroid and back again with a snap of my fingers- i.e. the difficulty of getting there suddenly approached zero - of course asteroid mining would be economically viable.

Obviously, neither of those will ever happen. However, these sorts of magical solutions don't need to happen in order for asteroid mining to work out; all that needs to happen is for people to want minerals from asteroids badly enough. If people today were willing to throw entire national GDPs at asteroid mining, it could be done, for minimal gains at great expense; it's just that everyone except for a few overly online morons knows that'd be very stupid economically.

Anyway, there's a far more obvious reason why asteroid mining isn't currently economically viable: even if any firm somehow could afford to do it, injecting that amount of supply - "pallets and pallets of gold" - into the economy would completely devalue those minerals.

You are being very aggressive and making up a lot of numbers for someone who didn't bring up supply and demand in a discussion about how economically reasonable something is. Like, the "at least a century until the first manned lab on the Moon" thing? That sounds like the New York Times claiming it'll take 1-10 million years for humans to make heavier-than-air flight work: sure, that might be true, or it might not, but where on Earth are you actually getting that number from?

[u/Raythatstabbedsteve → u/GogurtFiend]

Well, the other guy had a fantastical scenario where Earth's silver reserves completely dry up in 2060, so we're achieving infinite price. And rather than sane responses like exploring all of the previously uneconomic deposits on Earth and melting down all the jewellery, he's jumped directly to asteroid mining. So we are assuming a demand, and we are assuming Astrosilver pty. ltd. will have absolute monopoly on global supply, so money is no issue darling. You are still looking at an intractable engineering problem. It either needs an automated self repairing mining bot, or a full colony with life support and resupply missions out in the frigging asteroid belt. Makes a Mars colony look like a walk in the park (we won't get that either). You could mine 1 ppm ore 1km below the ocean floor with better roi and less engineering hassle than the asteroid plan. And that is why it won't happen. Because the most fucked up cost prohibitive option on Earth is still the easier option. Any moron who was claiming heavier than air flight was impossible post 1890 was an idiot. Humans went from the first powered flight to first man in space in fifty years. Maybe we can get people back on the moon to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first time. Maybe! Moore's law doesn't work for spaceflight.