Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. You know, the universe is out there, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore it. And as we explore it,
Speaker 1: of course we're going to ravage it for resources when appropriate,
Speaker 1: when we need it, because we're gonna need stuff out there.
Speaker 1: We're gonna need to build things, We're gonna need to
Speaker 1: drink things, to eat, things, live on things. So it's
Speaker 1: a form, you know, we need to get out there
Speaker 1: and really start to get some real estate out there.
Speaker 1: As far as we know, there are no extraterrestrials. There's
Speaker 1: no one to dispute our claim, so it's all ours.
Speaker 1: You think, you think? Yeah, I mean, actually we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about something that has been in the
Speaker 1: news quite a bit, asteroid mining. And just recently NASA
Speaker 1: announced that starting next month, the six astronauts are headed
Speaker 1: to the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation, the underwater habitat
Speaker 1: off the Florida coast that will serve as a simulator
Speaker 1: for the long duration mission to an asteroid. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing. Stuff. Just to give a quick rundown
Speaker 1: of our history exploring asteroids, I should point out that
Speaker 1: the first spacecraft to take close up images of asteroids
Speaker 1: was NASA's Galileo in ninety one. Is also discovered the
Speaker 1: first moon orban an asteroid in n In two thousand one.
Speaker 1: After NASA's Near spacecraft intensely studied the near Earth asteroid
Speaker 1: Eros for more than a year from orbit, mission, astroders
Speaker 1: decided to trying to land a spacecraft on it, although
Speaker 1: it wasn't designed for landing, near successfully touchdown, setting the
Speaker 1: record of the first craft to successfully land an asteroid.
Speaker 1: Two thousand six, Japan'shyabusa became the first spacecraft to land
Speaker 1: on and take off from an asteroid. And then NASA's
Speaker 1: Don mentioned launched in two thousand seven, began exploring Vesta
Speaker 1: the asteroid in two thousand eleven, and that brings us
Speaker 1: pretty much up to modern times. Yeah, and Japan saw
Speaker 1: high of USA also took sample from the asteroid to
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about, also managed to salute
Speaker 1: it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Now,
Speaker 1: what is an asteroid? Right? An asteroid is a small, airless,
Speaker 1: rocky world revolving around the Sun. They're too small to
Speaker 1: be called planets. Some of them are also called planetoids
Speaker 1: or minor planets, and in total, all of them combined,
Speaker 1: their mass is less than that of Earth's moon. It's true,
Speaker 1: it's true. And they are found between Mars and Jupiter.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that when Jupiter was a new world,
Speaker 1: we have the formation, so there's just about four point
Speaker 1: six billion years ago, Jupiter prevented any planetary bodies from
Speaker 1: forming between that gap of Mars and Jupiter, and that
Speaker 1: created this asteroid belt, the bit of debris of the
Speaker 1: leftover material. It's kind of like when you're making a
Speaker 1: cake or something, or making some bread, They're always going
Speaker 1: to be a little leftovers, right, Yeah, and we all
Speaker 1: know that sometimes the leftovers are actually more delicious than
Speaker 1: the finished baked good itself, which means your finger wants
Speaker 1: to dock those leftovers and bring it to your mouth
Speaker 1: to taste it, and they tatically. That is what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah, there's some there's some wonderful stuff and
Speaker 1: these leftovers that could certainly be of use to us.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's platinum, yes, which I have the data
Speaker 1: here on how much that would work. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: only worthy. And when we don't have the exact math
Speaker 1: on it, you're talking about trillions of dollars from the
Speaker 1: plotential to mind, trillions of dollars of platinum from these asteroids.
Speaker 1: Then you have gold, which we all love, of course,
Speaker 1: and is also useful in the circuitry and other methods
Speaker 1: that beyond mere jewelry. And then they're rare earth minerals.
Speaker 1: There's water, which doesn't sound all that amazing at first
Speaker 1: because you're thinking, well, we have water here, but if
Speaker 1: we are planning to eventually move out into space and
Speaker 1: to explore the cosmos, we're gonna need more water, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna need water from sources that are closer at
Speaker 1: hand than the home world, so we can conceivably harvest
Speaker 1: it from these rocky planetoids. And then we could also
Speaker 1: use the hydrogen an oxygen from that water to produce
Speaker 1: fuel for our space crafts. Right right, So basically, you
Speaker 1: would have all these materials available to you in space,
Speaker 1: right even have to hike them from Earth to yeah,
Speaker 1: because especially if you're bringing from the planet surface, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the cost of traveling. You need a heavy
Speaker 1: lift vehicle for that and then you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: transport it the rest of the way to wherever you are.
Speaker 1: It's a classic example of the supply chain. Far better
Speaker 1: to obtain goods and water and foods or whatever along
Speaker 1: the way than to ship it all the way to you.
Speaker 1: I read somewhere that one leader of water is basically
Speaker 1: worth in space. So you know that availability of that
Speaker 1: specific water there. Okay. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are trying to round up these asteroids or
Speaker 1: thinking about, I should say, and one of the big
Speaker 1: players is a company called Planetary Resources. Co founders of
Speaker 1: Planetary Resources are Peter Diamondus might diming this. He created
Speaker 1: the really successful ex Prize Foundation that gives awards to
Speaker 1: accomplishments in technology, particularly space, and Eric Anderson ex Prize
Speaker 1: board member and chairman of the board of Space Flight Federation.
Speaker 1: And then several x NASA engineers and astronauts, some planetary scientists,
Speaker 1: and then just like a little gaggle of billionaires, UM
Speaker 1: filmmaker James Cameron, Google executive Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. Ross pro Jr. On one hand,
Speaker 1: we have people with more money than they know what
Speaker 1: to do with. People with a lot of money, who
Speaker 1: are dreamers. I mean, certainly James Cameron is a great
Speaker 1: example of somebody with lots of money and in some
Speaker 1: very heartfelt ideas about where we are in the world
Speaker 1: and where we could go from here. So so there's that,
Speaker 1: and then you have the X Prize individuals and the
Speaker 1: X Prize mindset of let's stir up commercial interest in space,
Speaker 1: let's get this going, let's get people interesting, let's get
Speaker 1: these projects moving, because that is the future of space travel.
Speaker 1: It's like the X Men of asteroid mining. I guess
Speaker 1: you could say, right, um, in a way, I mean
Speaker 1: what you have is you've got the vision, you've got
Speaker 1: the money, and you've got to know how. That's why
Speaker 1: we wanted to mention all these different names and the
Speaker 1: people who are involved in their just to give you
Speaker 1: guys an impa of how very serious this actually is.
Speaker 1: That this will be happening, probably very soon, and they
Speaker 1: have a game plan three phases. The first phase is
Speaker 1: Acrid one hundred, that's the spacecraft series, Accord one hundred series,
Speaker 1: and they're planning to launch this in twenty four months.
Speaker 1: This is how a series of crafts would be. Basically
Speaker 1: a space telescope based system aimed at identifying possible targets
Speaker 1: for exploration. So Phase one Accord one hundred is all
Speaker 1: about let's because some telescopes up there so that we
Speaker 1: can figure out where we want to target, where we
Speaker 1: want to go. Yeah, they're cutting metal on that right now,
Speaker 1: so that's happening. And then the next phase is the
Speaker 1: two hundred series, and that is about propulsion. That's about
Speaker 1: getting these crafts, these various spacecrafts to those asteroids that
Speaker 1: we picked out in phase one. And then finally there
Speaker 1: comes the three hundred series. And in the three hundred
Speaker 1: series we consist of swarms of robotic spacecraft that complete
Speaker 1: the prospecting and begin to extract the water or platinum
Speaker 1: or gold or what have you from these asteroids and
Speaker 1: bringing them back home. So Phase one find them, phase
Speaker 1: to travel to them, Phase three prospect and bring it
Speaker 1: back right. These are a series of calculated, smaller missions
Speaker 1: which are going to build up to that ideal, which
Speaker 1: is that swarm of robotic craft and pitching a ride
Speaker 1: on all of this. They're not developing a spacecraft. The
Speaker 1: idea from the get go is let's hit your ride
Speaker 1: on NASA spacecraft or whatever is available. We're not having
Speaker 1: to develop as much technology on our own. We're bringing
Speaker 1: in technology from this company, from this company, and we're
Speaker 1: building something. We're building something, getting it out there and
Speaker 1: completing these phases. And they're not going to mine it
Speaker 1: right away. They want to tap it for volatiles, materials
Speaker 1: with low bowling points such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, and
Speaker 1: so on, which again critical supplies and space. And then again,
Speaker 1: as you say, the last step then is to get
Speaker 1: those precious minerals from the asteroids and bring them to Earth.
Speaker 1: One way would be to launch equipment to a distant
Speaker 1: asteroid already explored previously by a souped up based telescope.
Speaker 1: Another might be to use a small spacecraft to bring
Speaker 1: a smallish asteroid near the Earth, and a rock could
Speaker 1: be brought into orbit around the Moon where it could
Speaker 1: then be mined, or it could be both. A small
Speaker 1: operation could start work while the asteroid is being towed
Speaker 1: to Earth, getting a few years head start. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a great plan there, because why I waste that
Speaker 1: time that it's in transit and it could be harvesting
Speaker 1: in along the way. All Right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we're gonna get back to all this,
Speaker 1: So hanging there for one second and we're back. A
Speaker 1: lot of really great information on this came from a
Speaker 1: blog called bat Astronomy by Discover magazine, So if you
Speaker 1: guys want to check out a little bit more about this,
Speaker 1: I believe there are several articles on this. But one
Speaker 1: of the really interesting things that came out of bat
Speaker 1: Astronomy is why exactly they're doing this? Because I thought, well,
Speaker 1: obviously they're looking for some money here, right, that is
Speaker 1: the first thing. But here's the deal. This could be
Speaker 1: big money, right Trillian's, but this is not money that
Speaker 1: they'll probably see these investors, as we'll see in their lifetime.
Speaker 1: Is very possible because this is going to take a while,
Speaker 1: and this really is much more about sustainable space exploration,
Speaker 1: which I think is the coolest part about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's some critics have pointed out that there
Speaker 1: is a certain level of ego trip to this as well. Oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's very much involved. This is like Richard Branson. You
Speaker 1: can take your suborbitall fight and put it in your
Speaker 1: pipe and smoke it, because we are going to go
Speaker 1: mine and asteroid, you know, in terms of like the
Speaker 1: Branson does have the ice cube shaped like his own head,
Speaker 1: and that's yeah, they're going to have to top that.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I thought was amazing about
Speaker 1: this is that they already have positive cash flow, or
Speaker 1: so they claim. They're just working on getting Phase one
Speaker 1: up and going, but they already have relationship with NASA,
Speaker 1: they have money coming in. It is a functional company
Speaker 1: at this point. Well, I mean the idea is that
Speaker 1: it could be a win win for NASA too, because
Speaker 1: they could then have access to materials and information. They
Speaker 1: could sell some things back to NASA. It's really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: The way that it's being planned out, obviously, it's very
Speaker 1: like baby steps, and it's very careful in the way.
Speaker 1: I mean, they realize this is a very difficult thing
Speaker 1: to do. You just don't last an asteroid. Well, but
Speaker 1: their argument is it's difficult, but it's not impossible. And
Speaker 1: if you look at these pros and the cons are
Speaker 1: kind of summed up in this as well. You have
Speaker 1: these three steps. Step one finding asteroids very doable. We've
Speaker 1: done it. It can be done, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Step two, travel to an asteroid. It can be done.
Speaker 1: We already mentioned we've done it before. That's that's definitely doable.
Speaker 1: Step three, swarms of robots mining asteroids not so much.
Speaker 1: That's a point. We're getting into a level of technology
Speaker 1: that we haven't perfected, we haven't tested, we haven't worked
Speaker 1: out all the kinks. That doesn't mean it's not doable.
Speaker 1: It's very doable, but that is more of a leap
Speaker 1: in technology. Now. By the time we get they get
Speaker 1: to sphase three, you could argue that, well, the technology
Speaker 1: will be there or the companies aligned with them will
Speaker 1: have developed it. But some critics have pointed out that
Speaker 1: that is a potential flaw on the plan, and that
Speaker 1: there is a fairly large gap between the two series
Speaker 1: and the three right time, money and technology right, Those
Speaker 1: are some of the cons. Another con is that this
Speaker 1: is not for planetary resources per se, but similar operations
Speaker 1: like mining the Moon, where that the idea is not
Speaker 1: the mining the asteroid, but the Moon could deplete moons
Speaker 1: materials or moons materials. So that's not something that people
Speaker 1: are totally excited about. But still it's a different animal
Speaker 1: here pros we should talk about this. The future of
Speaker 1: space exploration is not dead, at least from the perspective.
Speaker 1: Here in the US, where we've shuttered so much of
Speaker 1: our space exploration, the expense is not footed by the
Speaker 1: public but by private companies. So that's good. And then
Speaker 1: again NASA has access to materials and information. There's also
Speaker 1: this idea that we could learn so much more, not
Speaker 1: just about space but specifically asteroids. I could give us
Speaker 1: insight into how to effectively divert an earth bound asteroid. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've talked about this. It's not just the movie
Speaker 1: armagedon Ben Affleck saving the Earth. We don't need Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck anymore. It's very possible that by observing asteroids and
Speaker 1: by actually successfully mining them and spending time on them,
Speaker 1: that we could figure out a way to divert them
Speaker 1: from becoming meteorites crashing into us. Because, as we know
Speaker 1: or suspect sixty five million years ago, this could have
Speaker 1: very well been the reason for dinosaurs becoming extempt but
Speaker 1: there were no dinosaur entrepreneurs with the habit and the
Speaker 1: know how to turn an incoming asteroid into profits. It's true,
Speaker 1: if only they had started studying filmmaking and possibly filming
Speaker 1: the Titanic. Yeah, I'm thinking of like specifically, I'm imagining
Speaker 1: of branson Osaurus a gat not that he's said he's involved.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's the t rex I have to say,
Speaker 1: rather than like a diplodochist or something. But this really
Speaker 1: is a big concern. I mean, we talked about Armagon.
Speaker 1: That seems ridiculous that you know, the movie Armagon. But
Speaker 1: dozens of asteroids have been classified as potentially hazardous. But
Speaker 1: the scientists who tracked them some of them become pretty
Speaker 1: close to Earth. And I think it wasn't it in
Speaker 1: Siberia in the early two thousand there was one that
Speaker 1: crashed well, and if you go further back than that,
Speaker 1: of course encountered the Tunguska event. Oh yeah, they're luckily
Speaker 1: it hit in the middle of nowhere, but the same
Speaker 1: kind of strike had it occurred in Europe would have
Speaker 1: been disastrous. Yeah. I think I've mentioned before when in
Speaker 1: fiction and movies and comic books, someone saves the world.
Speaker 1: Every day saves the world, and in reality, about the
Speaker 1: only thing that we have, the only effort that we
Speaker 1: can definitely say this may save the world one day
Speaker 1: in a very tangible manner are our near Earth object
Speaker 1: protection efforts. The idea of let's figure out how to
Speaker 1: divert an incoming near Earth objects before it actually hits
Speaker 1: the planet. That's one of those situations where you can
Speaker 1: definitely point to that and say, yes, if we developed
Speaker 1: this technology and we get refined, we're tracking everything, and
Speaker 1: then we have the ability to actually alter the course
Speaker 1: of one that's headed towards us, that could save the
Speaker 1: planet in a very very real and very meaningful way.
Speaker 1: But then, of course it's the problem of asteroid miners
Speaker 1: like hanging out mining and possibly getting chunked in the
Speaker 1: head with a bit of space chunk. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: whole another let's twine. So there you go asteroid mining,
Speaker 1: and we'll obviously have much more information about in the
Speaker 1: coming year, but is very exciting stuff. And what's going
Speaker 1: on with our robot over there? Oh yes, the robot.
Speaker 1: It's coming over here with some of the listener mail.
Speaker 1: Before I get into the mail, I do want to
Speaker 1: point out we had a few people writing about our
Speaker 1: planetary scale episodes, and I think we kind of trip
Speaker 1: over our words there and messed up a little bit
Speaker 1: on the size of Earth versus the size of Venus.
Speaker 1: I just want to point out that Venus has a
Speaker 1: diameter that is about of Earth, so Earth is bigger
Speaker 1: than Venus. Yeah. I think that we definitely messed up
Speaker 1: when we switched those around. And that's what happens when
Speaker 1: you start comparing things to peppercorns. And I think we
Speaker 1: were specifically talking about like black peppercorns, firsts red peppercorns.
Speaker 1: Learn your lesson there, pantry items, planetary sizes be warned.
Speaker 1: Here's a quick listener mail from our listener, Peter Peter
Speaker 1: Wright Sin says, Hey, Julian Robert, I heard your podcast
Speaker 1: on Lucid Dreams a couple of weeks ago, and I
Speaker 1: was completely mind blown. The fun wasn't actually intended, at
Speaker 1: least to Lee. Reason being that in the beginning you
Speaker 1: named all the types of dreams than Eden studied, and
Speaker 1: briefly talked about a dream I have once in a while.
Speaker 1: I barely remember my dreams, but these are memorable. It's
Speaker 1: a dream type number six, and they're just gonna prefer
Speaker 1: out the second. This would be dream sensations in which
Speaker 1: there are no visions, no images, no events, not even
Speaker 1: a word or a name. But during a long time
Speaker 1: of deep sleep, the mind is continually occupied with one person,
Speaker 1: one place, one remarkable event or even one abstract thought.
Speaker 1: So then Peter went on to ask for a little
Speaker 1: more detail on it, and we sent him some links.
Speaker 1: But I found that very interesting because that was one
Speaker 1: of the dream types where I didn't have any personal
Speaker 1: experience with dreams of that kind, and I was very
Speaker 1: curious if any of our listeners had so appreciate hearing
Speaker 1: about it. If you have any thoughts you would like
Speaker 1: to share with us, If you've had interesting dreams and
Speaker 1: you have some thoughts on a Lucid Dreams episode, by
Speaker 1: all means write us. And if you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: about the future of asteroid mining and how that might
Speaker 1: play out, but let us know about that as well.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter. On Facebook we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter we're blow the Mind. And you can
Speaker 1: also drop us a line at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
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