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911 Metallurgist explains why asteroid mining is needed: many metals that underpin our modern economy are quickly being depleted.
Without any new technological advances, metals like zinc and gold are expected to run out in 100 years.
16 Comments
qwertzman
so we need 175 asteroids per year, and then we have the equivalent of 500000$ per man_on_earth
but huh, we don’t need so much cobalt and platinum and … 😮
nevertheless I think it’s wonderful, because we then don’t have to destruct out planet and use the workforce for something else 🙂
Roger Paul McEvilly
What a load of rubbish.
The earth’s metal resources re known to be like the shape of a pyramid, we have only mined less than 0.00001% of the metals in the earth at very top of the resource pyramid where the grades are the highest, the rest are left in the ground because it is not CURRENTLY economic to extract them, not because they will “run out”. (See the Us geological survey’s resource pyramid paper and discussion).
An example: with each decrease in grade by ~10%, the amount of any metal resource increases by ~10-50x, so there is about 10-50x more copper at 0.5% than 0.6%. We can never “run out” of copper, we simply don’t mine it at present at less than about 0.7-0.8% by grade. Once this is used up there is around 100 years worth at 0.6%, 100-1,000 years worth at 0.5% and so on. Same goes for ALL metals. We will never run out of any of them, the earth’s crust is simply too big.
Matt
Good lord how simplistic. The quality of most of these articles is just atrocious and frankly insulting to a site supposedly catering mining professionals.
Help with numbers
How should I read it.. $300,000,000 Billion.. 300 million billion dollars?
Mark Harder
Yes, you could express the number that way, but it is conventional to express large numbers as multiples of the next-lower power of 1000. In this case 300,000,000 billion is 300,000 trillion, or $300 Quadrillion. I have never seen economic figures on the magnitude of 1 Quadrillion dollars, let alone in the hundreds of quadrillions of dollars. Since we think of national debts and GDPs and so forth being on the order of trillions, the figure $300,000 Trillion is easier for me to use for comparison with present reality. Of course, someday we may be routinely tossing around quadrillion dollar debts and so forth, so maybe we should get into practice now. Just keep repeating, “A quadrillion here, a quadrillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Zachary King
In 30 years, we (the world) will still be extracting 450 metric “tonnes” (tons?) of platinum per year, according to the chart/graph. This article is full of poop. It’s all just propaganda. I don’t see why we can’t survive with what we already have. I’d rather the United States invest in recycling old “junk yard” materials, like old computers, televisions, etc., rather than investing in something that is 99% doomed to fall short of its goal, aka asteroid mining.
Thestarv
ya its not like platinum is being consumed at an alarming rate, I may be used in many applications but its pretty much the ultimate recyclable.
Just as an FYI
You have a typo under the section for planetary resources:
asses -> assess.
FYI.
rick lee
tin cans are not made of tin….
Eric
Really? Possibly these folks should have consulted with a mining engineer and an economist prior to going public with this scheme.
Anon2547864
As far as I know they don’t have plans to go public.. They are hoping to have a revenue stream after phase 2 by selling telescopes to independent research firms..
Gurn Blansden
Mr. McCrea has again shown us all that he knows nothing of the mining business to post a silly article like this. Popular Mechanics is perhaps where he should look for work.
The decline in the Pt graph likely indicates known and proven reserves. When demand rises, geologists go looking for more and will find it, drill it, prove it and mine it. End of story. This has been the basic premise of the mining industry for centuries. It takes the perspective of a film director or computer geek to think we have to leave the planet to find the stuff.
mnate
I have level 99 mining, and I’ve never heard of this “space mining sh*t”.
Ramone
Where can we get a high res version of that infographic?
Dave
It looks like Mr Mcrae and mining.com have stepped up from republishing 5 year old stories about ‘golden poo pills’ to simply advertising for particular companies.
Cambridge House
Chris Lewicki, CEO of Planetary Resources, will be speaking at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Jan 21st at 5:00 pm!
Cheers, Cambridge House