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Speaker 1: When Spaniards first encountered platinum in Columbia, they named it platina,

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Speaker 1: which means little silver. What they wanted was the silver

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Speaker 1: and the platinum was a sort of unwanted impurity. But today,

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Speaker 1: on the American Precious Metals Exchange, on September twenty third

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Speaker 1: and twenty twenty four, the price for an ounce of

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Speaker 1: platinum was about nine hundred and seventy eight US dollars,

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Speaker 1: while silver was going for only about thirty one dollars.

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Speaker 1: We have found lots of uses for platinum and other

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Speaker 1: platinum group metals like palladium and rodium. The chemical industry

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Speaker 1: uses platinum group metals in the production of nitric oxide,

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Speaker 1: which we use to make fertilizers. The metals are also

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Speaker 1: important in the automotive industry. For example, we use them

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Speaker 1: in catalytic converters to try to clean up automobile exhausts,

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Speaker 1: and they're also used in jewelry. Part of why these

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Speaker 1: metals are so expensive is because they're super rare. For example,

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Speaker 1: platinum we mostly get from South Africa and Russia, and

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Speaker 1: the fact that we get a lot of it from

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Speaker 1: Russia hits home a point when you only get something

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Speaker 1: really important from a few places, there's a risk of

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Speaker 1: the supply chain getting disrupted. For example, right now, we

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Speaker 1: don't really want to buy from Russia because they've invaded Ukraine.

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Speaker 1: The United States Geological Society has a Critical Minerals List,

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Speaker 1: which is a list of stuff the US really needs

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Speaker 1: that is either like rare or might be hard to get.

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Speaker 1: And three of the six platinum group metals are included

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Speaker 1: in the lists top three. So where can we get

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Speaker 1: more of these valuable metals? Well? Out in space? Vast

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Speaker 1: quantities of resources that are becoming rare or hard to

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Speaker 1: get here on Earth are found in pretty vast quantities

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Speaker 1: in the asteroids. There are asteroids that contain these platinum

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Speaker 1: group metals at higher concentrations than we know of that

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Speaker 1: can be found on Earth right now. And maybe you've

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Speaker 1: even heard that the first trillionaire will be the first

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Speaker 1: person who who can successfully mine asteroid resources and then

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Speaker 1: sell them back here on Earth. But is there really

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Speaker 1: that much money to be made in asteroid resources? And

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Speaker 1: how expensive would it be to go out and get

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Speaker 1: these resources in the first place, Do we have the

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Speaker 1: technology that we need to do it? And if you

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Speaker 1: can do it, who owns those asteroids. Is it legal

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Speaker 1: to extract those resources and sell them on the open market?

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Speaker 1: And what other resources are out there? And could we

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Speaker 1: use those resources to build the first settlements in space.

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Speaker 1: On today's episode, Love, Fear, Greed, and Asteroids, we talked

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Speaker 1: to astronomer and space resources expert doctor Martin Elvis. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle basist and I never

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Speaker 2: want to go to space.

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Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Kelly. I'm a paris potologist and space settlement nerd,

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Speaker 1: and you know I also don't ever want to go

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Speaker 1: to space. I'm sure it would make me puke and

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Speaker 1: I'm worried I would die.

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Speaker 2: But you know, space might be filled with glittering jewels,

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Speaker 2: which makes me wonder. Kelly, here's a question for you.

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Speaker 2: What is the most expensive thing that you own?

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Speaker 1: WHOA okay, so other than the farm that I live on,

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Speaker 1: in my cars? And then I guess my laptop because

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Speaker 1: I am a snooty person who really loves my MacBook Pro.

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Speaker 1: I think those are my most expensive possessions.

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Speaker 2: What about you me too, I'm not like a fancy

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Speaker 2: jewelry person. I don't have like an emerald or some

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Speaker 2: fancy gold chain or anything. I think my laptop is

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Speaker 2: my most expensive purchase other than of course house and car.

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Speaker 2: So I don't really worry about like getting burgled very

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Speaker 2: much have anything expensive in there? You know, there's a

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Speaker 2: bunch of old New Yorkers. You know what else is

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Speaker 2: somebody going to steal from me?

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Speaker 1: So we have a tractor, but I feel like that's

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Speaker 1: just another form of car. But the tractor costs more

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Speaker 1: than my laptop. But yeah, I don't like fancy stuff

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Speaker 1: for the most part, because I know that i'd break

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Speaker 1: it or my kids would, so why bother?

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Speaker 2: Yes, exactly right. I don't trust myself with fancy stuff.

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Speaker 2: But of course there's lots of fancy stuff on Earth

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Speaker 2: and out in space. Right, It's filled with all sorts

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Speaker 2: of shiny stuff that people could make money on.

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Speaker 1: Well, okay, so is it? So there is a lot

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Speaker 1: of shiny stuff out there that people could make money on.

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Speaker 1: But maybe you've watched Star Wars. Of course you've watched

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Speaker 1: Star Wars, and you know when like Han Solo and

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Speaker 1: everyone's going through the asteroid field and there's like asteroids everywhere.

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Speaker 1: They're dodging back and forth. Actually, those asteroids are way

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Speaker 1: more spread out, like you could stand on one and

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Speaker 1: maybe not see another one. And when you are standing

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Speaker 1: on one, it's probably not a solid rock. In a

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Speaker 1: lot of cases, it's like a rubble pile. We had

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Speaker 1: Phil Plate talking about this the other day, how you

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Speaker 1: might sink inside of one.

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Speaker 2: They probably don't have huge space worms inside of them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I know as a biologist, I would be interested

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Speaker 1: in the space worms, but probably not so.

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Speaker 2: Star Wars not a documentary.

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Speaker 1: You're saying that, and the Martian not docum memories, and

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Speaker 1: the Expanse and the Expanse none of those are documentaries,

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Speaker 1: but they're all wonderful, and we'll be interviewing the Expanse

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Speaker 1: guys for an upcoming episode, which I'm excited about, very excited.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I think that you imagine mining for space resources,

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Speaker 1: and maybe you don't have a grasp on like how

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Speaker 1: far away those resources are and how rare they are,

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Speaker 1: and how spread out, and how little we understand like

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Speaker 1: the location of these resources and the quantity of these

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Speaker 1: resources out in the Solar System. It gets complicated, But

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Speaker 1: we've got an expert today.

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Speaker 2: Don't do your space pessimism thing. Kelly, I just want

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Speaker 2: to think about huge nuggets of platinum floating in space

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Speaker 2: that I could just grab onto and then I'm the

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Speaker 2: first tillionaire or quadrillionaire. Don't rain on that parade.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I won't rain on that parade, and I will

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Speaker 1: say that every once in a while, I'll note that

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Speaker 1: I have been told that I'm relentlessly depressing. Today's guest

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Speaker 1: is the person who told me that I'm relentlessly depressing.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, I look forward to Martin's optimism. But first,

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Speaker 1: we wanted to get a handle on what people think

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Speaker 1: are the most valuable resources out there. So I asked

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Speaker 1: my social network what are the most valuable resources in space?

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Speaker 1: And here are some of the answers that they gave us.

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Speaker 2: Probably asteroids that we could mine, but maybe also sunlight.

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Speaker 3: Okay, the most important resource from outer space, as far

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Speaker 3: as I'm concerned, are ideas about the universe, understanding of

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Speaker 3: where we are, appreciation of Earth as a resource and

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Speaker 3: what it provides for us. All of the things that

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Speaker 3: come from outer space, sort of intellectually rather than necessarily physically.

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Speaker 4: I'm going to guess minerals, so I'm biased towards life

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Speaker 4: the whole biophilia thing and so on. So I would

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Speaker 4: think that some of the most valuable resources in space

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Speaker 4: are actually not in space because they're birth found things

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Speaker 4: like food and organic life. That being said, I guess

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Speaker 4: the other valuable things in space would be water and oxygen,

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Speaker 4: and I suppose sense there could be some theoretically valuable

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Speaker 4: raw materials such as metal. And to get more abstract

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Speaker 4: with it, one of the most valuable resources in space

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Speaker 4: is possibility. Maybe there is unknown life or as yet

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Speaker 4: unknown life out there, and maybe there are materials to

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Speaker 4: do amazing new things with.

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Speaker 1: It might just reflect the fact that these were like

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Speaker 1: my friend group that got asked these questions, but I

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Speaker 1: really loved that a common answer was possibility and the

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Speaker 1: things that we could learn along the way, and not

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Speaker 1: necessarily platinum or something. But I think realistically platinum is

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Speaker 1: what we're going out there for. But I loved the optimism.

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Speaker 2: It's nice to think that we're not just a new

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Speaker 2: version of conquistadors, you know, out there to plunder and

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Speaker 2: enrich ourselves. That you know, we're wanting to enrich ourselves

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Speaker 2: in other ways intellectually scientifically, I want.

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Speaker 1: To believe that too, and I say, thank goodness that

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Speaker 1: there are not indigenous people living on those asteroids that

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Speaker 1: we want to be mining.

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Speaker 2: There could be indigenous microbes, there could be what about microbes,

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Speaker 2: that's true. I wanted to say microbes are people too,

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Speaker 2: but I know that they're not.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, it does as a biologist, if there is

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Speaker 1: another instance of life out there, like you know, the

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Speaker 1: cases of evolution, there's an an equals too for us

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Speaker 1: to discover. That would be way more exciting to me

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Speaker 1: than platinum. But we'll just have to wait and see.

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Speaker 2: But platinum is so shiny.

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Speaker 1: It is so shiny, and it makes pretty jewelry. But

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Speaker 1: I'm guessing neither of us own platinum jewelry.

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Speaker 2: I own zero platinum, that's correct, Yes, I can confirm that.

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Speaker 1: So platinum is used in catalytic converters to clean up

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Speaker 1: automobile exhaust, so we might have some platinum in our cars.

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Speaker 2: I have two electric cars, zero mission vehicles.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I've got hybrids.

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Speaker 2: But there might be platinum in some of the electronics.

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Speaker 1: Actually, m hum, Okay, well you win the hippie contest

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Speaker 1: we just had there. You have more points than I do.

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Speaker 2: All right, more Berkeley points from me that's right.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's go ahead and jump in and

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Speaker 1: chat with our experts whose last name is Elvis, which

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Speaker 1: is great.

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Speaker 2: Is he gonna tell us all about what it's like

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Speaker 2: to build a heartbreak hotel in space?

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Speaker 1: You know, if I were a better podcast host, I

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Speaker 1: would have looked up more Elvis song names. But I'm

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Speaker 1: so glad that we're a team and you've got us covered.

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Speaker 2: I got you back there, Kelly, got your back, Thanks, Daniel.

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Speaker 3: All right.

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Speaker 1: On today's show, we have doctor Martin Elvis. First thing

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Speaker 1: to know is that he has an awesome last name,

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Speaker 1: and second is that he's an astronomer at the Smithsonian

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Speaker 1: Astrophysical Observatory. His work on quasars got him concerned about

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Speaker 1: the cost of space telescopes. This got him interested in

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Speaker 1: asteroid mining as a way to cut the costs of

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Speaker 1: this research. I personally appreciate Martin's work because I think

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Speaker 1: he's done an incredible job of drumming up loads of

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Speaker 1: excitement for mining space resources while still making clearer that

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of technological, political, and economic hurdles and

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Speaker 1: reasons why space mining might be tough. Asteroid ninety two

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Speaker 1: eighty three, Martin Elvis is named after him. That's pretty awesome.

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Speaker 1: That's a new life goal of mine. And he wrote

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Speaker 1: an excellent book called Asteroids, How Love, Fear, and Greed

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Speaker 1: will determine our future in space. Welcome to the show, Martin, Hi,

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Speaker 1: good to be here. Good to have you. How's your

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Speaker 1: nay going?

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Speaker 5: That's not very interesting, Actually it's all bureaucracy so far,

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Speaker 5: but this will help.

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Speaker 1: We had Phil Plate on the show to talk about

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Speaker 1: how asteroids might crash into the Earth and cause problems.

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Speaker 1: So you are going to give us a more upbeat

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Speaker 1: perspective on asteroids today.

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Speaker 5: I suspect, yeah, that's one of the things. But there's

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Speaker 5: other things to love about asteroids too, So okay, well let's.

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Speaker 1: Jump right into that. So your book lays out three

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Speaker 1: motivations for working on resources in space, Love, fear, and greed.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with love and fear. How do these motivations

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Speaker 1: work in space?

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Speaker 5: Heere is what you're totally phil Platt about, because that's

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Speaker 5: killing off the dinosaurs and could it happen to us?

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Speaker 5: And the answer is yes, and eventually it will. If

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Speaker 5: we don't do something about it right now, there could

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Speaker 5: be a thousand delays dinosaur killer type asteroids out there.

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Speaker 5: We found nine hundred and something of them, but it

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Speaker 5: only takes one, so we better find all of them, right,

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Speaker 5: and there are plans to do that. So that's a

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Speaker 5: really good thing. And then what do you do if

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Speaker 5: you find one? You have to move it, change its

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Speaker 5: orbit enough to stop it hitting the Earth. And that's

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Speaker 5: why NASA did the dart test, hitting the moon of

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Speaker 5: another asteroid and watching you change its orbit that way,

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Speaker 5: the first time humanity has ever changed the Solar system,

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Speaker 5: at least deliberately.

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Speaker 1: That went well, amazingly.

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Speaker 5: Well, yes, nice, let's hope we're not fooled by that,

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Speaker 5: and say, okay, we don't need a really big rocket

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Speaker 5: to hit this thing. It just a regular sized one.

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Speaker 5: And then the next one that's actually going to kill

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Speaker 5: us all doesn't respond as effectively as we'd like, then

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Speaker 5: you're all going to die.

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Speaker 1: Oh good, good, So I reckon.

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Speaker 5: We need to practice just a few more times to

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Speaker 5: make sure that wasn't an outlier.

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Speaker 2: We don't want any of these asteroids to enter the

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Speaker 2: atmosphere and become hunks and hunks of love.

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Speaker 3: Do we?

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Speaker 5: Is that some kind of Elvis joke? Kind?

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Speaker 2: That was my best Elvis joke. But you raise a

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Speaker 2: real issue there, which is that we don't know what

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Speaker 2: these asteroids are made out of, so we don't know

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Speaker 2: how they'll respond to a push. Right, some of them

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Speaker 2: might be piles of rubble, other ones might be mostly ice.

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Speaker 2: What do we know about what's inside these asteroids.

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Speaker 5: That's right inside is really tricky. We know what the

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Speaker 5: surfaces like, what is made of for about a thousand

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Speaker 5: or two thousand of them, something like that, but there's

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Speaker 5: like many, many times that out there that we'd love

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Speaker 5: to know what they are. And then what you can

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Speaker 5: do is take a spectrum look at the colors of

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Speaker 5: an asteroids reflected sunlight, so it reflects sunlight like everything.

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Speaker 5: And if it turns out that it's got a dip

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Speaker 5: in its colors that one's missing basically way in the

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Speaker 5: infrared beyond what we can see, then you know it's

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Speaker 5: got water on the surface, or at least water is

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Speaker 5: bound into clays.

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Speaker 2: So it's a wet thing because it's absorbing light of

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Speaker 2: a certain frequency.

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Speaker 5: Water at absorbs a particular kind of frequency of light

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Speaker 5: or wavelength of the light. But we can't do that

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Speaker 5: very easily because that's a very difficult wavelength to look

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Speaker 5: at from the ground, so we really need a telescope

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Speaker 5: in orbit to do that, and I think some observations

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Speaker 5: with the James web Space telescope are trying to do

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Speaker 5: that for a few objects, but that's much too valuable

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Speaker 5: piece of equipment to spend a huge amount of time

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Speaker 5: and doing asteroids. Most astronomers think of them as vermin

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Speaker 5: of the skies, right, just a little bit of rock

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Speaker 5: get in the way.

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Speaker 2: What about the theoretical side. You've told us about what

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Speaker 2: we could do to see these asteroids bounce light off

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Speaker 2: of them, But what about our models of solar system

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Speaker 2: and development? Do they tell us that asteroids should be

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Speaker 2: made of the same stuff that the Earth is made

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Speaker 2: out of? Or different stuff?

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Speaker 5: Ballpark? The whole solar systems made out of the same stuff, right,

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Speaker 5: But in the case of small things like the Earth

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Speaker 5: or asteroids, most of the hydrogen has disappeared. That's only

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Speaker 5: left attached to the big planets that have a strong

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Speaker 5: enough gravity to do that. So apart from hydrogen and

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Speaker 5: some helium too, then we're more or less the same. Now,

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Speaker 5: all geologists and planetary scientists got really annoyed with there

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Speaker 5: no they're not. There's fascinating differences, yeah, yeah, true, but

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Speaker 5: overall everything has the same composition. The differences come from

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Speaker 5: processes like when you make an asteroid or any big

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Speaker 5: enough body, it starts to melt and get hot because

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Speaker 5: of the radioactive decay on the elements, and that's enough

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Speaker 5: to liquefy modest sized planets, including the Earth at first,

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Speaker 5: and even the normally the precursors of the asteroids called planetesimals.

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Speaker 5: They were like a thousand miles across, and that was

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Speaker 5: big enough that they kept enough heat in that they

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Speaker 5: melted and differentiated. That is, the heavy stuff fell to

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Speaker 5: the center and the light stuff stayed on the top,

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Speaker 5: and so you get the same kind of structure you

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Speaker 5: have on Earth, where you have metal core made of

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Speaker 5: solid iron and whatever dissolves in iron, which turns out

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Speaker 5: to be very interesting because those are the platinum group metals,

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Speaker 5: very expensive things because they're rare, and they're rare because

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Speaker 5: most of the platinum on Earth is six thousand kilometers

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Speaker 5: beneath your feet in the core of the Earth.

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Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's not very helpful. Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Around the metal core is a pile of silicate rock,

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Speaker 5: which is kind of not interesting to me that I'm

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Speaker 5: sure the details are really fascinating. And then sometimes at

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Speaker 5: least around that is a sort of crust which isn't

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Speaker 5: quite the same as it's a bit that never got

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Speaker 5: hot enough, so it's still got the original composition of

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Speaker 5: the Solar System. And that's where there's lots of water

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Speaker 5: because water is very common in space. It turns out

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Speaker 5: not what you'd think, but it is because hydrogen oxygen

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Speaker 5: are two of the most common elements, and that's the

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Speaker 5: simplest thing molecule they can make, and it happens in

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Speaker 5: all sorts of star forming regions. Dark clouds are full

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Speaker 5: of water.

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Speaker 1: That's lucky for us.

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Speaker 2: I think that's something a lot of people don't appreciate

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Speaker 2: how much water there is in the Solar System, you know.

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Speaker 2: They imagine we'll have to bring water with us from

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Speaker 2: Earth or something. But like the ice giants are basically

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Speaker 2: huge balls of water, right.

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Speaker 5: There are icy moons that are pretty solidly water.

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Speaker 2: What about Neptune and Urinus.

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Speaker 5: Well, when they call them ice, we're not talking about

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Speaker 5: water ice.

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Speaker 2: Oh, Astronomers have a different meaning of the word ice,

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Speaker 2: don't they, As we.

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Speaker 5: Do with metals. The astronomer's periodic table says hydrogen helium metals,

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Speaker 5: So you know, we like to gloss over fiddly detailed

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Speaker 5: for convenience of some time.

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Speaker 1: One of the things to me that was most surprising

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Speaker 1: in your book was that you argue that one of

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Speaker 1: the first resources that's going to be the most valuable

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Speaker 1: in space is water, which I think we take for

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Speaker 1: granted because we live on like a super wet planet.

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Speaker 1: Can you go into a little bit more about why

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Speaker 1: water will be so valuable in space.

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Speaker 5: If you're living on the International Space Station right now,

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Speaker 5: you don't use a lot of water. Actually, you reuse

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Speaker 5: a lot of water, as you were pointing out in a.

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Speaker 1: Recent talk yesterday's coffee.

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Speaker 5: Yesterday's coffee.

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Speaker 3: Mmm.

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Speaker 5: But I can't see after the first few tourist types

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Speaker 5: go up there, or researchers or industrial people, they're not

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Speaker 5: going to put up with the kind of conditions that

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Speaker 5: these right stuff kind of astronauts do. I mean they

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Speaker 5: have that sort of a macho thing about it. I

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Speaker 5: think that yeah, we can put up with this. That's

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Speaker 5: not going to fly for most people. So they're going

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Speaker 5: to need showers toilets that really work. Eventually, they're going

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Speaker 5: to have to grow crops in orbit because it's ridiculously

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Speaker 5: expensive to take a salond from the ground and bring

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Speaker 5: it to the space station, and it wouldn't be all

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Speaker 5: that fresh either, right, So there's going to be a

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Speaker 5: bigger demand for water in orbit if there are all

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Speaker 5: these other people going to orbit, and that depends on

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Speaker 5: how well tourism really takes off, which I think is

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Speaker 5: likely to be getting a lot cheaper quite quickly once

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Speaker 5: the initial exploration has been done, trials have been done.

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Speaker 5: If we get real space stations that replace the International

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Speaker 5: Space Station, which would be a lot cheaper to operate

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Speaker 5: and use, then it could become economical to first have

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Speaker 5: a space hotel, and that would be occupied by people

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Speaker 5: who think five star hotels are a bit of a calmdown,

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Speaker 5: so they would have to have some serious facilities on

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Speaker 5: board to make them comfortable. Then you're going to have

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Speaker 5: ordinary scientists doing research, not astronaut scientists, because at the

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Speaker 5: moment you have to learn Russian and then spend two

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Speaker 5: years training for every mission. No a scientist can actually

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Speaker 5: afford to be away from their work for two years

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Speaker 5: because you completely get out of touch with where the

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Speaker 5: field's got to I'm sure you appreciate that.

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Speaker 2: Can we go back to space hotels? Though? I feel

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Speaker 2: like I've been hearing projections that space hotels are ten

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Speaker 2: years away forever. When do you think we're going to

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Speaker 2: have the first like space hotel and people can actually

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Speaker 2: go and spend their honeymoon, you know, looking at the stars.

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Speaker 5: I was pretty keen on Axiom Space because they seem

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Speaker 5: to be clued into the whole NASSA network and they

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Speaker 5: knew what was going on. They seemed to have a

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Speaker 5: good plan. I apparently very in financial difficulties right now,

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Speaker 5: so that's unfortunate. They were planning for like twenty thirty

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Speaker 5: to launch a module, one piece of a space station

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Speaker 5: that would start off attached the International Space Station, but

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Speaker 5: then later detach once the International Space Station has reached

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Speaker 5: its end of life. And I read just now this

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Speaker 5: morning that there's a leak in one of the Russian

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Speaker 5: pieces of the space station that's been there since twenty

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Speaker 5: nineteen and presumably getting a little worse and getting people

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Speaker 5: really worried. Now if it breaks off, what does that mean? Hikes,

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Speaker 5: that's exaggerating. I don't know that that's going to happen,

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Speaker 5: but they're concerned. Let's see.

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Speaker 1: I think leaks happen on the International Space Station and

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Speaker 1: other space stations before that way more often than I

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Speaker 1: would be comfortable with if I were an astronaut. There

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Speaker 1: was a story a little while ago about a soyez

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Speaker 1: having a hole in it that appeared to have been drilled,

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Speaker 1: and it was not clear if well the soyers was

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Speaker 1: being made. Somebody accidentally drilled a hole and then patched

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Speaker 1: it in a crappy way, like didn't do enough, and

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Speaker 1: then when it got to space the patch came off.

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Speaker 1: Or then the Russians were saying that one of the

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Speaker 1: astronauts wanted to go back to Earth really quickly and

402
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Speaker 1: was angry, and so they drilled a hole to try

403
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Speaker 1: to like force an emergency landing. International politics on the ISS.

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Speaker 1: It's exciting stuff.

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Speaker 5: That's just the case of somebody going crazy, right.

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Speaker 1: That's right space madness.

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Speaker 2: But the point is everything is harder in space. I

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Speaker 2: think running a hotel down here on Earth is a

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Speaker 2: pretty small margin business. Twenty thirty seems very optimistic for

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Speaker 2: having a space hotel. Are we talking decades and decades

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Speaker 2: into the future.

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Speaker 5: I don't think so. I mean, if everything works with well,

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Speaker 5: even without starship, the SpaceX starship, which it should bring

414
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Speaker 5: the cost of doing things and getting to low Earth

415
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Speaker 5: orbit down by tenfold, we still have just with Folcan

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Speaker 5: nine and presumably with Blue Origins coming up their new

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Speaker 5: Glen rocket, that should enable access to space at a

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Speaker 5: much better price than people are currently paying. What the

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Speaker 5: guy's name, Jared something who just went up and did

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Speaker 5: a space.

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Speaker 1: Walk, I don't remember his name, but yeah, they're.

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Speaker 5: Paying tens of millions of dollars, maybe fifty million dollars

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Speaker 5: per person. That's kind of too much for a real market.

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Speaker 5: I mean, there's a billionaire market. That's great, but then

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Speaker 5: there's no reason to test to cost that much. I

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Speaker 5: think they're paying a premium for being first, and it

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Speaker 5: should come down to just a few million handfuls of

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Speaker 5: millions soon. So you know, I just opened that piggybank

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Speaker 5: and awhere you go.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm still not going.

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Speaker 5: You've read all about the dangerous holes that get drilled

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Speaker 5: in the side of.

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Speaker 1: These things, you know that would be on my mind too,

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Speaker 1: But also I don't have the money.

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Speaker 5: But there is a much bigger market for one million

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Speaker 5: dollars than for ten million. Dollars and so right, so.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. I can imagine some people saving,

438
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:40,720
Speaker 1: you know, their whole life for like that amazing trip,

439
00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:43,239
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it would be incredible holes in the

440
00:21:43,520 --> 00:21:47,240
Speaker 1: habitats aside. But so you had mentioned that, like tourists

441
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:49,520
Speaker 1: are probably not going to want to drink water that

442
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:52,040
Speaker 1: was recycled from urine, and so they're going to want

443
00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:56,240
Speaker 1: clean water. Why would you get it from asteroids or

444
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:58,560
Speaker 1: somewhere else in space rather than shipping it from Earth?

445
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:01,440
Speaker 5: Even with starship, it's going to cost you a million

446
00:22:01,480 --> 00:22:03,760
Speaker 5: dollars a ton just pure water, and then you have

447
00:22:03,800 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 5: to put in a container of some kind, so it

448
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:08,520
Speaker 5: probably goes up to two million dollars a ton, So

449
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:12,760
Speaker 5: it's still expensive even then, and if you need many tons,

450
00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 5: maybe it's cheaper to bring it from an asteroid, but

451
00:22:16,480 --> 00:22:18,919
Speaker 5: that depends a lot on whether we can bring the

452
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:22,400
Speaker 5: cost of mining an asteroid down to something less than that.

453
00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:25,760
Speaker 5: So it's a business case. It's not a physics problem, right.

454
00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:28,920
Speaker 5: The physics tells you that the energy terms, it's much

455
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:31,520
Speaker 5: better to get it from an asteroid because you're both

456
00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:34,280
Speaker 5: already out in space away from the gravity well of

457
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:37,480
Speaker 5: the Earth. As opposed to trying to climb out of

458
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:41,280
Speaker 5: that every time. So energy wise, yeah, it's absolutely much

459
00:22:41,280 --> 00:22:43,880
Speaker 5: better to go to the asteroid or the moon. There

460
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:46,560
Speaker 5: are asteroids that are easier to reach and get back

461
00:22:46,600 --> 00:22:47,320
Speaker 5: from than the moon.

462
00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:49,320
Speaker 2: But I want to point out, and we'll come back

463
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:51,440
Speaker 2: to this later, I think that this is a scenario

464
00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 2: where you find the resource in space and you use

465
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:56,840
Speaker 2: the resource in space. It's not like you're mining it

466
00:22:56,880 --> 00:22:58,560
Speaker 2: in the asteroids and then you're bringing it down to

467
00:22:58,640 --> 00:23:02,239
Speaker 2: Earth or something. Craasies like that in situ, right, But

468
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:04,640
Speaker 2: this touches on sort of the bigger picture here. Kelly

469
00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,920
Speaker 2: talked about love and fear, and you're really talking about

470
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:09,080
Speaker 2: business like greed.

471
00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 5: Well, this is sorry, How did I get onto that?

472
00:23:11,800 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 5: It's just my natural averice.

473
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:17,760
Speaker 1: You're in the US, so it's fascinating.

474
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:22,040
Speaker 2: If capitalism is really going to drive our exploration into space,

475
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 2: you see that as the future of this field.

476
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:30,119
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, the trouble is I wrote this for a

477
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 5: conference called Building a Space for Civilization. I wrote this

478
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:36,520
Speaker 5: chapter where I said, you know, we talk about going

479
00:23:36,560 --> 00:23:39,120
Speaker 5: to the stars and thinking that we'll take our better

480
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:42,520
Speaker 5: solves there, but immediately when we start talking about how

481
00:23:42,560 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 5: we're going to do it. It's the same old stuff

482
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:46,960
Speaker 5: we do anyway, and we're really just going to reproduce

483
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:50,840
Speaker 5: our civilization in space. You know, it'll look a bit different.

484
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:54,000
Speaker 5: But the things that are driving us so like profit,

485
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 5: it's how we get started, for sure. Is there any

486
00:23:57,560 --> 00:23:59,919
Speaker 5: way to not do that later on and get an

487
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,800
Speaker 5: or perhaps nobler way of doing things, maybe that we

488
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:06,679
Speaker 5: don't need anything like that. And it's fine, but I

489
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,240
Speaker 5: get a bit depressed because in some ways, because in

490
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:13,280
Speaker 5: the longer term, if we keep on growing our economy

491
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 5: the way we have for the past two hundred years

492
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:18,439
Speaker 5: since the industrial revolution started, then in four hundred years

493
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 5: we'll have finished with all the resources of solar system

494
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 5: that are accessible. Because it's exponential growth and that runs away,

495
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:30,360
Speaker 5: right you go one, two, four, eight, sixteen thirty two,

496
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:32,200
Speaker 5: and very soon you're into big numbers.

497
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 1: I thought. Our population so like the number of babies

498
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 1: that every woman is having globally is projected to fall

499
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: below replacement rates, so every you know, man and woman

500
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 1: on average will have less than two kids. Is that

501
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:47,919
Speaker 1: going to help with the resource use? It seems like

502
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: it should go down at some point.

503
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 5: You would think so. And also there's some kind of

504
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 5: belief that some numbers to suggest that energy use and

505
00:24:56,359 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 5: material use per dollar of GDP is going down. So

506
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:04,359
Speaker 5: we're getting better at making things that don't actually need

507
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:07,399
Speaker 5: huge amounts of iron and concrete and so on, And

508
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:12,159
Speaker 5: that's like information and related stuff mostly. I assume on

509
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 5: the land there is a bigger physical underpinning to that.

510
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 5: And will we reach a saturation point in that? I

511
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,919
Speaker 5: don't know. Yeah, I guess I was getting annoyed in

512
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:23,920
Speaker 5: a way with Jeff Bezos because he's saying he has

513
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:27,000
Speaker 5: a vision of a future where there's a trillion people

514
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 5: living and working in space. You know. First of all,

515
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 5: I guess he said a trillion because it's the only

516
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:39,080
Speaker 5: number that still impresses him. He's really wanting that trillion here.

517
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:40,120
Speaker 1: He might get there.

518
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,479
Speaker 5: He might, He might, and so might mister Musk if

519
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:45,159
Speaker 5: he doesn't mess up further.

520
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 2: Who knows, But what's your objection to the number of

521
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:48,479
Speaker 2: a trillion?

522
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 5: If you imagine a trillion people living in working in space,

523
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 5: they can't be all on planets because there aren't enough

524
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 5: room on planets, So you have to be living in

525
00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 5: these artificial space cities that are rotating cylinders, so you

526
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 5: stand on the inside of the wall of it. I mean,

527
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:04,439
Speaker 5: if you feel one g gravity like Earth. But I

528
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 5: looked at I happen to have Handy just over there

529
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 5: on my shelf. As nineteen seventy seven study of these things,

530
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 5: And it turns out, although the illustrations show pictures of

531
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 5: greenery stretching away and then Renaissance cathedral here and a

532
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 5: French bistro there, it's actually going to be kind of crowded.

533
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 5: It's more like the Bronx. The amount of space you

534
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 5: get is really small per person. You get a two

535
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 5: bedroom apartment per person and a little bit of outdoor

536
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:33,560
Speaker 5: space per person, but for a million people it adds

537
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 5: up to like five central parks. I think it is wow,

538
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 5: not small, but there's nothing like a wilderness area that

539
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 5: you can really get lost in for a few days

540
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 5: that won't be available.

541
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and we'll get back to

542
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:48,880
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss my chance to rant about

543
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:51,639
Speaker 1: rotating space stations, So when we get back from the break,

544
00:26:51,960 --> 00:27:10,679
Speaker 1: I'll take my moment, okay, and we're back. One of

545
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 1: the other things that I wonder about when I look

546
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 1: at those rotating space stations so first of all, the

547
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: xterior is always glass, which I think is just not

548
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: going to work with space radiation that you're going to

549
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,159
Speaker 1: get baked inside of there. But then also like you

550
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 1: look along the bike tire shaped habitat and there's no

551
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,960
Speaker 1: airlocks separating each of the different things, right, and so

552
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: if base is filled with junk, if something crashes one

553
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 1: of your windows, everyone's getting sucked into the abyss.

554
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, you've got to divide it into air tight sections.

555
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:40,120
Speaker 1: Yes.

556
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,120
Speaker 5: And as a bio person, you'll be pleased to realize

557
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 5: that when your food growing areas also very much have

558
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 5: to be sealed off and kept pristine because if you

559
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 5: get potato blight or the equivalent in one of them

560
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 5: and it spreads, you all die. Yeah, So it's going

561
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 5: to be at least I would say ten or a

562
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:57,400
Speaker 5: dozen sections.

563
00:27:58,119 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

564
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 5: On the plus side, that will make it hargh of

565
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 5: any years there would be dictator to take over the

566
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:06,359
Speaker 5: whole place, because each sector would have to be self sufficient,

567
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 5: so they couldn't say I will turn off your oxygen

568
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:11,400
Speaker 5: supply if you don't do everything I say.

569
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 1: Charles Kuqul would be very happy with this design.

570
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,240
Speaker 5: That's how it came up because he was talking about

571
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 5: his freedom engineering and his modular designed stuff. It's just

572
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 5: like the Titanic, only slightly improved, separate sections hermetically sealed.

573
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 5: And then it's difficult and each one would have to

574
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 5: have escape ponds that could get to the next one

575
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 5: of these space cities, and.

576
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 2: These space cities presumably were building them in space, and

577
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 2: so we're going to need resources, which I hope takes

578
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 2: us back to the question of asteroid mining. What's in

579
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 2: the asteroids and can we use those asteroids to like

580
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 2: build these fantastical space.

581
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 5: Yes, indeed, because precursors of the asteroids were these planetesimals,

582
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,040
Speaker 5: But then they weren't formed on random orbits, so they

583
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 5: tended to collide with each other and break up. And

584
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 5: so the cause the iron cores had got exposed. And

585
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 5: there's a mission on its way to sixteen Psyche called Psyche,

586
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 5: which is terrible idea confusion all around. You mean the

587
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 5: asteroid or you mean the mission or anyway Psyche is

588
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 5: about to see if sixteen Psyche, which is the formal

589
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 5: name of the asteroid, is made of solid metal, is

590
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 5: it really the core of a planet or planetesimal, a

591
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 5: little planet and if it is, then that there's huge

592
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 5: amounts of iron there, and iron in orbit could be

593
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 5: used for construction. For instance, you could build space cities,

594
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 5: or you could build giant telescopes. Oh Am, I letting

595
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 5: my astronomy show.

596
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: So all of the use cases for the resources that

597
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: you've noted have been in space. Is there any resource

598
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: that would be worth bringing back to Earth to sell?

599
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: Is the only reason to go out and use the

600
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: space resources?

601
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 5: To use them well talked about? Right? One of them

602
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 5: is not from asteroids, but only from the Moon. The

603
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 5: one from asteroids is the platinum group metals, because I

604
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 5: mentioned they dissolved in liquid iron early on and got

605
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 5: sank to the core. So sixteen psyche should be rich

606
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 5: in platinum and palladium and other very expensive, rare precious metals.

607
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 5: So you could mine those and bring them back to

608
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 5: Earth and in principle make a profit. You could sell

609
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 5: them for a lot of money anyway, Right, And I

610
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 5: did ask some banking people, and they thought that the

611
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 5: market was elastic if I got it the right way round.

612
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 5: That is, if you sell more, the price stays constant

613
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 5: as opposed to declining. You've saturated the market or whatever.

614
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 1: It's called okay.

615
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 2: But again, these metals are also present here on Earth,

616
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 2: and presumably we've got much more of them in the

617
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 2: Earth than we do in the asteroids. Is the reason

618
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 2: they might be accessible economically in asteroids, just because asteroids

619
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 2: are smaller, so it's easier to get to them. You

620
00:30:44,520 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 2: have to dig as far into them as you do

621
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 2: into the Earth.

622
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 5: No, I think in total the asteroids will have more

623
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 5: accessible platinum than the whole of the crust of the

624
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 5: Earth because we can't get to the core and mine

625
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 5: our own platinum from the molten core of the Earth.

626
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:03,240
Speaker 5: But most of the platinum, which I didn't really get

627
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 5: into it comes from collisions with asteroids in the early

628
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 5: Solar System. They used to plunge in, go right through

629
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 5: the crust, but then get recycled into the crust through

630
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 5: convection and stuff, or as geology things that happen.

631
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 2: I don't know this, but it really is about access,

632
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 2: it's about where they are on the object.

633
00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 5: There's also the strategic thing that there are two places

634
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 5: which produce ninety something percent of the platinum in the world,

635
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 5: and that's Southern Africa and Russia. Neither is a particularly

636
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 5: stable place, so you might worry that the supply would

637
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 5: disappear or be highly curtailed at some point, But they're

638
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:42,000
Speaker 5: worth fifty million dollars a ton roughly, so you don't

639
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 5: have to bring back ten tons, and you've got a

640
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 5: serious amount of money. But of course you have to

641
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 5: be able to bring that amount back for less than

642
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 5: you going to get paid for it. So whether that's

643
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 5: true is another business case. And I don't know that.

644
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 1: Could you walk us through, like where are these asteroids?

645
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:00,080
Speaker 1: What kind of technology would we need to extract this stuff?

646
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: Like what would it look like to actually try to

647
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: do this?

648
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, so absolutely always the asteroids you first go to

649
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 5: are the ones that are energetically easiest to reach. That

650
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 5: means your rocket has to be less powerful than it

651
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 5: would otherwise, and that most of those are in what

652
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 5: orbits that come near to the Earth, and they're cleverly

653
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 5: named near Earth objects. They're not always near the Earth,

654
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 5: but they do come near the Earth at some point.

655
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 5: They're only ten or twenty thousand of those that are

656
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:31,240
Speaker 5: reasonable size, like because a football stadium or something like that,

657
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 5: which you could mine, And then only a few percent

658
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 5: of those are actually going to be made of iron

659
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 5: and have platinum in them, and of those only a

660
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 5: quarter will be rich in platinum. And that's based just

661
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 5: on the numbers we get from picking up iron meteorites

662
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 5: on Earth and which are just little fragments of asteroids,

663
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 5: so we have some idea how often we get that.

664
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 5: So some small fraction, like one or two percent of

665
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 5: all asteroids are going to be rich in platinum, and

666
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 5: that comes down to two hundred or so candidates, and

667
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 5: you would go to the biggest one because that obviously

668
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:10,680
Speaker 5: gives you the most payoff and start mining it. Extracting

669
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 5: platinum from these asteroids, although they're rich in platinum, that's

670
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 5: still grams per tone, so a fraction of an ounce

671
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 5: per ton, a small fraction of an ounce per ton,

672
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 5: So it actually takes quite a bit of clever chemistry

673
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 5: to extract that platinum and the other metals there, like palladium.

674
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 2: And even before you extract it from the ore, how

675
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 2: do you get the ore? I mean, you have to

676
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 2: deliver some mining equipment to this asteroid.

677
00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 5: Presumably you've done all your prospecting remotely with telescopes, and

678
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 5: then by going nearby and getting samples of the surface

679
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:47,000
Speaker 5: or maybe hit it with a laser, let it evaporate

680
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 5: and see what it's made of that way, or of course,

681
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 5: my favorite method is X ray fluorescence, which is because

682
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 5: I'm an extra astronomer, so I naturally think of that.

683
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 5: And the Sun's X ray from the Sun hit the

684
00:33:56,920 --> 00:34:00,120
Speaker 5: surface and that excites the atoms to emit and part

685
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 5: killar energies of X ray wavelengths, and and you can

686
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 5: tell what it's made of from that, and it's particularly

687
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:11,719
Speaker 5: good for heavy elements like iron and platinum and on. Anyway, however,

688
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,720
Speaker 5: you done it. You've done that that kind of prospecting work.

689
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 5: Now you have to send out quite a few tons

690
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 5: I would think of mining equipment. Right, So the Osiris

691
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 5: REX spacecraft weighed two tons when it got to Benu,

692
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 5: the little asteroid Benu, which is about the size of

693
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 5: asteroid you'd be mining. You think, well, two tons, that's

694
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 5: about the same as an F one fifty pickup. So

695
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 5: that's pretty hefty, you know, seriously. But then you're backing

696
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 5: that F one fifty up to the rose bowl and saying, okay,

697
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,840
Speaker 5: I'm going to start digging and taking away the stadium

698
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 5: and get extracting the valuable bits from it. It's like Yeah,

699
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 5: let's say that's optimistic or a minimum. So you have

700
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:54,239
Speaker 5: to get at least two tons, probably ten tons at

701
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 5: least before you can get serious about mining.

702
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 2: But the mechanics of mining, like the technology the robots

703
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 2: that we have here on Earth, apply at all. Or

704
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 2: is it completely different problem to get the ore off

705
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 2: the surface and into your processing pipeline.

706
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 5: We'll know a lot more about that after Psyche has

707
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 5: done its job. Because is it one solid lump of

708
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:18,839
Speaker 5: iron like it melted, it's set, solidified and never broke

709
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 5: up again. Or is it a pile of rubble, which

710
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 5: like many rocky asteroids are made of just piles of rubble,

711
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 5: in which case you can actually scoop it up pretty easily.

712
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:30,799
Speaker 5: So it's going to make a huge difference whether it's

713
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 5: solid iron or not. If you're after the iron, it's great.

714
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 5: You can just chop it into pieces and here's a

715
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:38,359
Speaker 5: chunk and you take it home.

716
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 2: Sorry, how do you chop solid iron into pieces in

717
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:47,799
Speaker 2: space with a saw? I mean they do that in

718
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 2: my garage all the time.

719
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,320
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course you do. But you have to worry

720
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:54,439
Speaker 5: that different problems come up. I mean you have to

721
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 5: have to use special vacuum grease to keep it and

722
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,399
Speaker 5: you'd have to have some way of cooling yet because

723
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 5: it's going to get hot, and there's probably a bunch

724
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:05,360
Speaker 5: of other issues coming up. But I don't think you

725
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:08,359
Speaker 5: can actually tell now what the best way of doing

726
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,879
Speaker 5: it is. You're going to have to learn about these asteroids,

727
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 5: do some little tests, and there's going to be a

728
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 5: lot of learning on this.

729
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 2: And that makes me wonder about the balance between, you know,

730
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,759
Speaker 2: government research funding and capitalism business funding. I think a

731
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 2: lot of times in our history we've had the government

732
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 2: fund research for a long time when it was very

733
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 2: long term before it would have any payoff, and then

734
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 2: at some point it becomes commercial and industry rushes in

735
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 2: and of course there's a lot more resources. Do you

736
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,520
Speaker 2: think we're at that point where like business is ready

737
00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:42,319
Speaker 2: to invest in these technologies to develop these tools even

738
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 2: when we don't know, like what the basic mechanism will

739
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 2: be for extracting this stuff from the asteroid, or do

740
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 2: we need a little bit more government funded exploration to

741
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:51,320
Speaker 2: answer these questions.

742
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 5: I would think we're the kind of the beginning of

743
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 5: the wedge where commercial interests so if you start doing

744
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:00,720
Speaker 5: things we've had our first round of asteroid mind companies

745
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,239
Speaker 5: that were all very famous for a short while and

746
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 5: then they're fifteen minutes was up and they didn't get anywhere.

747
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 5: There's a new crop coming up. Now. They should always

748
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 5: be doing this. This is what capitalist systems do. You

749
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 5: keep trying until someday you'll hit the right moment of

750
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 5: which to do this. Before that, everybody fails and then

751
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:22,920
Speaker 5: suddenly it's a great success. And if you wait longer,

752
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:24,880
Speaker 5: then you've missed the boat, right, So you have to

753
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:28,359
Speaker 5: keep trying. But I'd say this, first of all, we're

754
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 5: going to know a lot more about the whole asteroid

755
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 5: population in ten years time, and that's not an arbitrary time.

756
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 5: The telescope now just starting up in Chile, which is

757
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 5: the Verira Rubin Observatory, and is doing what they call

758
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 5: a large scale survey in space and time, which means

759
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 5: they take a photograph of the all the night sky

760
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 5: that ever comes up in South America. Every three nights.

761
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 5: They cover the whole sky, and they are particularly working

762
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:57,840
Speaker 5: to make sure that they can see asteroids which have

763
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 5: come up as look like stars, but they move, which

764
00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:03,759
Speaker 5: stars don't. So then now you know it's a little

765
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 5: rock in the Solar System going around somewhere, and by

766
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,359
Speaker 5: tracking how our fasts moving and exactly which way it's going,

767
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 5: you can get its orbit, and we will get the

768
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 5: colors of this thing, and you'll be able to tell

769
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:18,439
Speaker 5: for sure if it's just a boring, stony asteroid made

770
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 5: of silicate rock. And that's all the ones we know

771
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,360
Speaker 5: now that are near the Earth, eighty five percent of

772
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 5: just rock. And that's not very interesting toward capitalist anyway,

773
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:32,680
Speaker 5: we have rocks here are if you're a geologist, that's

774
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:34,320
Speaker 5: very different. Right.

775
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: So we've talked a little bit about how we don't

776
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: really know enough about the asteroids, and because we don't

777
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: know enough about the asteroids, we don't really know enough

778
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: about what kind of techniques we would need to extract

779
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're interested in. Let's take a break,

780
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:48,760
Speaker 1: and when we come back, let's talk about the legal

781
00:38:48,800 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 1: aspects of going out there and collecting the asteroids. So

782
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:11,959
Speaker 1: you mentioned that there was a round of asteroid mining

783
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: companies that kind of peaked and fell, So Planetary Resources

784
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 1: I think is probably one of them that you had

785
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:19,839
Speaker 1: in mind. And I was talking to Chris Lawicki, who

786
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: was one of the big guys at Planetary Resources, and

787
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:25,440
Speaker 1: he helped get some of the US laws on the

788
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 1: books to try to clarify what's allowed with these asteroids.

789
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 1: But my sense from talking to him was that a

790
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: lack of clarity about what's allowed in space was a

791
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:38,600
Speaker 1: big problem for planetary resources and getting investors. So what

792
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,359
Speaker 1: is the current status of Like, if you land on

793
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: one of those two hundred asteroids that have the levels

794
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: of platinum that would be worth getting, does that belong

795
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: to you? Are you allowed to collect it and mash

796
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: it up and sell it? What are you allowed to

797
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:51,280
Speaker 1: do in space?

798
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 5: Okay, the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven says

799
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 5: you cannot own any celestial body or part thereof right,

800
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 5: no one can, no country in particular, So that's still true.

801
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 5: But the Act of Congress that Chris Lackey helped move

802
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 5: along said that, yes, but if you pick something up

803
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 5: from a celestial body, including the Moon, and it becomes

804
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:16,920
Speaker 5: property at that point, So if you pick it up

805
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 5: and put it in the bag, it's now yours. Right

806
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:22,240
Speaker 5: And in fact, I don't know why this isn't actually

807
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 5: widely accepted, because those Apollo Moon rocks clearly belong to

808
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 5: the US government and nobody else, and they can do

809
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 5: what the hell they like with them. You want to argue, no, right, no,

810
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 5: sir no. And the same with the Japanese samples of

811
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,319
Speaker 5: the asteroids, the Chinese samples from the far side of

812
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 5: the moon, and the old Soviet samples that came back

813
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 5: from the lunar missions. So everyone's been acting as though

814
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 5: that was absolutely the case forever.

815
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:51,759
Speaker 1: But you're using the word samples, which does have a

816
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 1: legal definition and is different than collecting an entire giant

817
00:40:56,960 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 1: asteroid and selling it off. At that point, you're not

818
00:40:58,760 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: talking samples anymore.

819
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 5: Okay, I don't know the legal definition of sample. Do

820
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:02,920
Speaker 5: tell me.

821
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 1: I don't have it memorized, but it's something to let

822
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: you go and you collect it, and it's a quantity

823
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: that you need to like figure out, like what is

824
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: it made out of? What could you do with it?

825
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 1: So none of those things were collective for profit. They

826
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:15,919
Speaker 1: were collective for science to try to understand it better.

827
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: Some of them did end up on the auction block

828
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: at so the bees setting something like precedent. But I

829
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:23,799
Speaker 1: still feel like it's a little bit unclear that if

830
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 1: you collected one of those giant asteroids and said this

831
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 1: is all mine.

832
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's a difference between tay. If you

833
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:32,479
Speaker 5: went to an asteroid and took big pieces away, right,

834
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 5: then maybe you can get away with that up to

835
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 5: some point. But some of the ideas I wrapped the

836
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 5: entire asteroid in a sealed bag and heat it up

837
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 5: and drive off the water and collect the water, and

838
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 5: then that whole asteroid is being put in a bag, right,

839
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 5: it's all yours. You might even mine it so it

840
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 5: doesn't exist anymore at all. And you could destroy to

841
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 5: celestial object, but you never claim to own it. You

842
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 5: only hold the product. So you can see the horrifying

843
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,240
Speaker 5: loops that space lawyers will be getting into.

844
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,280
Speaker 2: I mean there's an issue here of relativity. Also, because

845
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 2: you land on an object, you pick up a rock.

846
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 2: You could say, okay, I've picked the rock up off

847
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 2: the asteroid. You could also say I've picked the asteroid

848
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 2: up off the rock. I mean, physics doesn't really care

849
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 2: and the like. You could say, oh, now I picked

850
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,040
Speaker 2: up this whole asteroid and left the rock behind. I'm

851
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:21,440
Speaker 2: going to happily claim that. So yeah, I think the

852
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 2: lawyers are going to have a field there.

853
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:25,799
Speaker 5: It keepts even more complicated. There are no such things

854
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:29,239
Speaker 5: as mining rights therefore, because you can't only celest your

855
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 5: body in any way, say they market as mine for

856
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:37,279
Speaker 5: mining purposes. So without those rights, you're going to get

857
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 5: a lot of sketchy behavior going on, right because people

858
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:42,720
Speaker 5: will start spying on you to see where you're going,

859
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:46,640
Speaker 5: and then maybe they'll try to jump the claim and

860
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 5: get there first and start mining before you do, because

861
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 5: they didn't have to invest all their money in finding

862
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 5: a good asteroid. They just built a bigger rocket and

863
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 5: got there faster. There could then be rustling of asteroids.

864
00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 5: You've found the right asteroid, but somebody else rushes there

865
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 5: and put a little rocket motor on the inside of

866
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:08,359
Speaker 5: it and pushes it goes off into some orbit that

867
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 5: they know but you don't. You've lost your asteroid and

868
00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:15,040
Speaker 5: they've got it. And finally, this piracy, which is just

869
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:18,800
Speaker 5: just intercept your inning guts of platinum on the way back.

870
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 5: Of those four different things, the only one that's actually

871
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 5: illegal is piracy. That's definitely illegal. Under the Outer Space Treaty,

872
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 5: spying is actually encouraged. You're allowed to visit other people's

873
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 5: facilities in space, and you're not allowed to not say no.

874
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 5: In fact, really.

875
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,359
Speaker 2: All these are laws that we set up decades ago

876
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 2: when we didn't really anticipate what was going to happen.

877
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,399
Speaker 2: Do you foresee, like somebody's going to make a whole

878
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 2: new set of laws once things really kick an eye

879
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 2: gear and people want to protect their interests and we

880
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 2: sort of understand the dynamics of the space economics.

881
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 5: Well, yes we need those some laws like that. And

882
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:56,399
Speaker 5: then you've got this terrible thing of if you make

883
00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 5: a set of laws too soon, you may lock in

884
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 5: some stupidities that you didn't anticipate the realities of what

885
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:05,840
Speaker 5: doing this kind of mining is. Space mining is like

886
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 5: if you wait too long, there'll have been a free

887
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 5: for all, and people have established positions and they aren't

888
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 5: going to give those up lightly because it cost a

889
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,839
Speaker 5: lot to get them. So it's a very tricky job

890
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 5: to get the whole international regulation right.

891
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: Where are we now? Are we too soon? Is it

892
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: time or have we missed the right time frame? Where

893
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 1: are we?

894
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 5: Personally? I think we'd better hurry up and do something

895
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:31,439
Speaker 5: in the next few years, especially on the Moon. There's

896
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 5: going to be human bases on the Moon and competing

897
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 5: ones and they're going to have a lot of issues.

898
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 5: It's where that all these issues are first going to arise.

899
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 5: And right now, of course, NASA has the Artemis of

900
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:46,240
Speaker 5: Courds with thirty something other space agencies, and that's great

901
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 5: and they're all going to work together, etc. Except they

902
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:52,440
Speaker 5: don't include China or Russia. It may help set some standards,

903
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:55,320
Speaker 5: but it's not going to be definitive without those countries.

904
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 5: The other possibilities going to the United Nations Committee on

905
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 5: the Peaceful Uses of out US Space COPUOS.

906
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:04,320
Speaker 1: I never remember congratulations. I can never remember the acronym.

907
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 5: Oh, some of us have great talents in these areas.

908
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:09,800
Speaker 1: It's true.

909
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:14,319
Speaker 5: I even remember the alphabet. Okay, they're studying the issues, right,

910
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 5: but they tend to move slowly, and so maybe they'll

911
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 5: have a report on what the issues are in four

912
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 5: years and they'll then start considering what to do about it.

913
00:45:24,080 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 5: So that would be good because it's totally international. The

914
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 5: Chinese and I'm definitely on board with it, and that

915
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 5: is essential. But maybe it will be too late by

916
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 5: the time they actually come out with some rules. I

917
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 5: don't know. It's such a tricky one.

918
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: One of the things that I learned from reading your papers,

919
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 1: is how rare the good stuff is, or like how

920
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: concentrated it is. I looked at the Moon, I'm like, oh,

921
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:52,320
Speaker 1: it's all like this gray stuff kind of seems the same.

922
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:54,840
Speaker 1: But you know, like the water and the great places

923
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 1: to set up your solar panels, it's really concentrated. So

924
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:02,360
Speaker 1: what do you think the implications are there for geopolitics

925
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 1: moving forward?

926
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 5: I think you're going to get a lot of people

927
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 5: wanting to do land grabs and say, these peaks of

928
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 5: eternal light are mine?

929
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: What are those?

930
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:12,480
Speaker 5: Ah, what are the peaks of eternal light? Well, at

931
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 5: the poles of the moon, right, if you imagine a

932
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 5: single mountain at the south pole of the moon, for instance,

933
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 5: the sun will just circle the horizon all the time

934
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:24,439
Speaker 5: because there's essentially no seasons on the Moon. The Earth

935
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:26,880
Speaker 5: is tilted over twenty three and a half degrees, and

936
00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 5: that's so sometimes the sun is very low in the

937
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 5: sky all the time. That's winter, and sometimes it's very

938
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,720
Speaker 5: high and at summer. Great the moon instead is tilted

939
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 5: one and a half degrees, so there's a tiny effect.

940
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 5: But basically there are places on the south pole of

941
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 5: the Moon where the sun only sets for a day

942
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 5: or so instead of fourteen days on the rest of

943
00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 5: the moon, and then comes back up and stays for

944
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 5: a long long time and then disappears. That's just it's

945
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 5: going behind some distant mountain on the south Pole. And

946
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:57,480
Speaker 5: so you can map out where these places are. And

947
00:46:57,520 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 5: there are no places that are really one hundred percent

948
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 5: illuminated all the time throughout the month. But if you

949
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,000
Speaker 5: go up a few meters a few yards above the surface,

950
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 5: they get much more illuminated because you're getting above the

951
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:15,319
Speaker 5: local ridges and mountains and things, and so pretty quickly

952
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:18,240
Speaker 5: you can get mighty something percent in a few small places.

953
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:21,360
Speaker 5: Ninety percent of the time is the sun is shining

954
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,520
Speaker 5: on there, which is great because you get permanent solar power,

955
00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:29,840
Speaker 5: and your equipment isn't cycling between extremely cold and really

956
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 5: really hot all the time. It stays pretty hot. Then

957
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 5: it's easier to deal with because you add radiators and

958
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 5: so on. Anyway, but there are only a few of

959
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:40,520
Speaker 5: these places, like really a few.

960
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 1: I think it was like one billionth of a percent

961
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: of the moon surface.

962
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 5: Tiny, tiny fraction of the Moon's surface. But even if

963
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:49,479
Speaker 5: you just stick to the South Pole region, it's really

964
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 5: only crater rims that get illuminated like this, and occasional

965
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 5: ridges connecting one crater to another. So it's kind of long,

966
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 5: skinny regions maybe a mile or so long by a

967
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:03,879
Speaker 5: one hundred yards wide. So everyone will want to land

968
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 5: there and put their solar panels there, And because there

969
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:11,280
Speaker 5: are so few of them, the chances that two different

970
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:13,279
Speaker 5: agencies or whatever will want to land in the same

971
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 5: place is not small. I've mapped out where NASA has

972
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 5: said they want to land. They had thirteen hundred eate

973
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 5: sites where Artemis three, the first human lander for fifty years,

974
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 5: will land thirteen sites the Chinese have mapped out I

975
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 5: think nine and three of them overlap. Three or four

976
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,720
Speaker 5: of them overlap, So already there's a pretty decent chance

977
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 5: the very first time you want to land, somebody else

978
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,359
Speaker 5: will have landed in your favorite spot already. You can't

979
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 5: land next to somebody because when you land, you kick

980
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:46,439
Speaker 5: up enormous amounts of fast moving sharp rock, which could

981
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 5: damage the next spacecraft over. That's definitely a no no

982
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:52,360
Speaker 5: on the Outer Space Treaty.

983
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 2: One of my favorite ways to explore these questions is

984
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 2: to read science fiction, because in some cases they really

985
00:48:57,719 --> 00:48:59,839
Speaker 2: have thought this through and imagine like what it would

986
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 2: be like. Like have you ever read science fiction that

987
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:04,840
Speaker 2: tackles these questions in a way that you think is

988
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 2: insightful or realistic? You know? For example, there's the show

989
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:10,440
Speaker 2: on Apple TV called four All Main Kind where they

990
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 2: talk about a lot of these issues and they even,

991
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 2: I think, try to redirect an asteroid and all this

992
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,400
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Have you seen anything realistic and impressive

993
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 2: in that category?

994
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 5: Yeah? I enjoyed that whole long series. Yeah. They start

995
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 5: having international disputes on the Moon fairly early on. Right,

996
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 5: for some reason, they have guns. I've forgotten why they

997
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 5: have guns, but there's some excuse. The Chinese race off

998
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 5: and do something. They and the Americans go to the

999
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:38,440
Speaker 5: Chinese base and destroy it and the vice versa, and

1000
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 5: I don't know what kind of mess they get into

1001
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:43,520
Speaker 5: after that. But yeah, there's another what was that other

1002
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:49,440
Speaker 5: science fiction movie which was mostly terrible and got panned.

1003
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 5: But when they get they land on the Moon before

1004
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:54,400
Speaker 5: going off to I don't know where, Jupiter or something,

1005
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 5: and they have this huge base with advertising Arby's Roast

1006
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 5: Beef and the so on, with big Neon figures, and

1007
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 5: then they get into a fight with the neighboring base,

1008
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:09,919
Speaker 5: which belongs to some other country. I don't know which.

1009
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt was in this, right, his dad had like

1010
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 1: lost his mind on some spacecraft and he was supposed

1011
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 1: to Oh what was it called?

1012
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 5: Right? Could be yeah, but.

1013
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:22,480
Speaker 1: I remember he went up the elevator and there was

1014
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:25,360
Speaker 1: an RB sign and I thought that could be pretty accurty.

1015
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:27,719
Speaker 5: Yeah. I thought that was the first time I've seen

1016
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:31,839
Speaker 5: that in a science fiction movie. You know, although if

1017
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,520
Speaker 5: you go back to two thousand and one, we all

1018
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:38,280
Speaker 5: remember that had PanAm as they shuttle and the Hilton

1019
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:41,359
Speaker 5: was in the space station. Another thing they got right,

1020
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 5: which apparently Arthur C. Clark didn't like, but Sanley Kubrick

1021
00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 5: insisted on, was that when they land on the Moon,

1022
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 5: they have this giant thing that opens up and they

1023
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 5: come inside out like in the crater and land in

1024
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:55,640
Speaker 5: there and then it steals up. That's actually much more

1025
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 5: plausible than you need have guessed, because now we know

1026
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 5: there are these big skylight on the Moon that are

1027
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 5: one hundred yards across and they open into huge spaces

1028
00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:09,520
Speaker 5: underneath call lava tubes, which is where you probably want

1029
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:12,239
Speaker 5: to build your base. So actually, maybe that was a

1030
00:51:12,280 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 5: super smart idea of mister Koprick's.

1031
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: I guess that wouldn't necessarily save you all the trouble

1032
00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: of worrying about regalis and rocks getting blown, because you'd

1033
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:22,439
Speaker 1: still probably do that on the way down if.

1034
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 5: It's big enough, If you keep going back to the

1035
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:26,920
Speaker 5: same place, you build a landing pad, and then you

1036
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 5: don't have the rocks problem.

1037
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:33,279
Speaker 1: As someone who's excited about base resources, what in the

1038
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,480
Speaker 1: next decade will you be looking for as a sign

1039
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:38,879
Speaker 1: that things are moving in the right direction, that this

1040
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:40,799
Speaker 1: is going to happen and it's going to happen in

1041
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 1: a good way. I never ask people like how many

1042
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 1: years until we figure this out? Because those kinds of

1043
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:47,839
Speaker 1: questions depend on your political will and blah blah blah.

1044
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 1: What are you looking for to happen to show that,

1045
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:51,720
Speaker 1: like we're taking this seriously.

1046
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 5: Sore several things ares actually surveys for asteroids that I've

1047
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 5: already talked about, and there's another one that's going at

1048
00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:02,839
Speaker 5: It's a NASA mission will look for very dark asteroids,

1049
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 5: particularly called the Near Earth Objects Surveyor, which can find

1050
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 5: huge amounts more water than we currently think is out there.

1051
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 5: So there's government surveys. There'll be some replacement for the

1052
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 5: International Space Station, one assumes, and that could be commercial.

1053
00:52:16,080 --> 00:52:19,200
Speaker 5: If it's commercial, that starts to open up that whole

1054
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 5: regime of an in space economy we were talking about.

1055
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 5: Are the mining companies that are starting up again. What

1056
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 5: astro Forge is a particularly busy one. They are very active.

1057
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 5: They have a test some of their equipment in orbit

1058
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 5: now and they're going to do a test going to

1059
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 5: an asteroid which they will not name soon And that's

1060
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:42,839
Speaker 5: the beginning of this problem of not having any kind

1061
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 5: of mineral rights. If they tell you where they're going,

1062
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 5: then it gives away that a lot of their intellectual property,

1063
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:50,880
Speaker 5: so it's a whole big legal issue. There's going to

1064
00:52:50,880 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 5: be stuff on the Moon. We think that Chinese who

1065
00:52:53,200 --> 00:52:56,759
Speaker 5: want to land there by twenty thirty. NASA keeps saying

1066
00:52:56,800 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 5: it's going to land there earlier, but that will be

1067
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:04,080
Speaker 5: a challenge because it depends on Starship not only working reliably,

1068
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:07,880
Speaker 5: but also being able to be refueled in orbit and

1069
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:10,279
Speaker 5: then having a special variant of it which can land

1070
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 5: on the Moon and take off again. So that's a

1071
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 5: lot of work to do in a very short time.

1072
00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 5: If they're going to be twenty thirty. Yeah, but you

1073
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:21,200
Speaker 5: know that sort of stuff is happening that will spur

1074
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:23,520
Speaker 5: a lot of this legal stuff, I suspect.

1075
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 1: So are you overall feeling optimistic? What do you think?

1076
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 5: I'm getting a lot older than I was when I

1077
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 5: started this, and so I'm not so sure I'm going

1078
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 5: to see much of it.

1079
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:34,360
Speaker 1: It never moves as fast as you want it to.

1080
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 5: Yeah, but it could happen.

1081
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: I think it will happen eventually. I just want to

1082
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 1: see it happen peacefully.

1083
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:45,280
Speaker 5: But ucefully and hopefully with a good ethic going forward,

1084
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 5: so we don't actually run out of space resources in

1085
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:48,760
Speaker 5: four hundred years.

1086
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 2: Well, as much as it's going to make everything more complicated,

1087
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 2: I'm really hoping for a bunch of surprises. Hoping when

1088
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 2: we get out there and we test out these asteroids,

1089
00:53:56,440 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 2: we discover weird stuff in there that doesn't make any sense.

1090
00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:01,359
Speaker 2: We'd learned something new about this system, and that might

1091
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 2: upend some startup companies plans for extracting the platinum, but

1092
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 2: that's my preference.

1093
00:54:06,480 --> 00:54:08,319
Speaker 5: I like that, And in fact, I had a high

1094
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 5: school student, I'm an undergrad who made a list of

1095
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:15,279
Speaker 5: meteorite minerals, minerals that are found only in meteorites, not

1096
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:17,880
Speaker 5: on Earth. They had like seventy of them when they

1097
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:21,239
Speaker 5: finished the list, So there are strange things out there

1098
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 5: that we do not know.

1099
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:24,239
Speaker 1: That seems like an exciting note to end on to

1100
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: be Thank you so much for your time, Martin. It

1101
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: was great chatting with you and we're all keeping our

1102
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 1: fingers crossed that this goes forward ethically and ethically.

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00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Great fun.

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00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:47,200
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