Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking either weyone and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, hey, where
Speaker 1: do you keep your access and guns? I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. That's a reference to something that
Speaker 1: happened off Mike Anyway, today, we wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: mining really, you know, the future of mining mining, so
Speaker 1: pick axes and uh I had to bring access back
Speaker 1: to axes, shovels and lasers and seven dwarves follow snow
Speaker 1: white around. No, we're actually talking maybe lasers. We're talking
Speaker 1: about space mining at mining mining asteroids to be perfectly
Speaker 1: uh specific. And the reason why we were talking about
Speaker 1: this as well, I mean we've actually brought it up
Speaker 1: on several episodes of Forward Thinking. Yeah, we referenced it
Speaker 1: in the podcast. In the video about water we talked
Speaker 1: we talked about a little bit with colonization as well,
Speaker 1: and some more other space exploration. Yeah, and so it
Speaker 1: came up often enough that we were like, well, let's
Speaker 1: just dive in through the whole thing, right, And and
Speaker 1: the reason why we would even look at mining asteroids
Speaker 1: in the first place, with a couple of reasons. Right.
Speaker 1: There's one is that if we're going to really focus
Speaker 1: on space exploration beyond just going to the Moon, I
Speaker 1: sualy just going to the Moon, like that's no big deal,
Speaker 1: But beyond beyond our immediate surroundings, Uh, it behooves us
Speaker 1: to look at the potential for using other sources of
Speaker 1: uh thing, everything from fuel to water to two materials
Speaker 1: to actually build stuff, whether it's as space station or
Speaker 1: a space colony or even another spacecraft. Uh. It helps
Speaker 1: if we can get that material somewhere other than just
Speaker 1: from Earth, because moving stuff from Earth to space is
Speaker 1: not easy. It's it's not really economical. I mean it
Speaker 1: costs what ten dollars a pound to to put stuff
Speaker 1: in space. Yeah, that's the old NASA estimate is that
Speaker 1: across the lifespan of the space program, it costs generally
Speaker 1: about ten dollars a pound to take stuff up into
Speaker 1: low or low Earth orbit, which is slightly more expensive
Speaker 1: than the tuna I like to buy the loceral grocery store. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. Now, keep in mind that it's entirely
Speaker 1: possible that this uh asteroid mining operation won't turn out
Speaker 1: to be economical. We've got to say that all of
Speaker 1: this is tentative, right, Sure, it's just based on estimates
Speaker 1: and ideas of what might work. Nobody has been able
Speaker 1: to do it yet, right. And and the possibility also
Speaker 1: of of saving the environment a little bit of grief
Speaker 1: from from you know, not having to drill into our
Speaker 1: own Earth for these kind of resources is hypothetically groovy.
Speaker 1: And there's also the possibility that certain elements that are
Speaker 1: extremely rare on Earth could be slightly less rare when
Speaker 1: you take the take into account all the asteroids out there.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a chance that we could end up
Speaker 1: getting material that we would actually use back here on
Speaker 1: Earth from asteroids. Yeah, in both of the ways that
Speaker 1: this could be economically feasible, it's based on sort of
Speaker 1: the locality of economics that uh so, we could go
Speaker 1: out to asteroids to get stuff that's extremely rare on Earth,
Speaker 1: so rare that it's incredibly valuable. And these would be,
Speaker 1: for example, platinum group metals very useful in lots of
Speaker 1: different applications beyond just that looks shiny and pretty, so
Speaker 1: extremely valuable here because of local rarity. But it's of course,
Speaker 1: on the scale of the universe, not meaningfully scarce at all. Think,
Speaker 1: I think everything on the scale the universe tends fairly
Speaker 1: plentiful by our standards. And then, of course the other
Speaker 1: half of that is that there are things that might
Speaker 1: not be all that valuable here on Earth, but they're
Speaker 1: tremendously valuable in space, but too people who are currently
Speaker 1: in space u in trying to do stuff there. So
Speaker 1: it goes both ways, but in each case the reason
Speaker 1: it would make sense economically is because of local scarcity
Speaker 1: and total scarcity. Right For example, one of the first
Speaker 1: things that a lot of companies that are well, the
Speaker 1: two major companies that have announced that they are seriously
Speaker 1: looking into asteroid mining as an actual business. Um, the
Speaker 1: thing that both of them are really focusing on early
Speaker 1: on is water. Which water is not something that we
Speaker 1: would necessarily want to or need to bring back to Earth.
Speaker 1: The the problem with water on Earth, like fresh drinking
Speaker 1: what on Earth is again a locality issue, not a
Speaker 1: quantity issue as of right now. Um, some of it, well,
Speaker 1: not just locality, but also what state it is in,
Speaker 1: whether it's solid or not. Yeah, So if you're living
Speaker 1: in say a very parched desert region. The problem is
Speaker 1: getting local clean water. And that's actually the same problem
Speaker 1: that astronauts face spaces like a desert. Yeah. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't really come by exactly if you look up at
Speaker 1: the International Space Station that they have to just meticulously
Speaker 1: recycle every molecule of water, and they still can't do
Speaker 1: it perfectly. Right, They've got it. They've got it up
Speaker 1: to like success rate or recovery rate I think. But
Speaker 1: but even even that, even is over a long haul
Speaker 1: is eventually you run out when it's something that humans need,
Speaker 1: you know, and and this is this is something so
Speaker 1: like there they are trained to be super efficient with water. Um,
Speaker 1: imagine if you were trying to start a colony, or
Speaker 1: you know, even worse, like trying to manufacture something in space.
Speaker 1: I mean, in these cases we use tons of water, right,
Speaker 1: We're not even aware of how much water we just
Speaker 1: waste it? Would you know, drive these I S S
Speaker 1: astronauts crazy? Well. And on top of that, water itself
Speaker 1: is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, which are two
Speaker 1: in radiants for rocket fuel. If you want to create
Speaker 1: a propellant of some sort, then you could actually manufacture
Speaker 1: propellant gathered from water. That you're getting out of asteroids.
Speaker 1: That's great, because the more propellant you need, the heavier
Speaker 1: your rocket's going to be when you're launching it from Earth.
Speaker 1: The heavier it's going to be, the more rocket you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes a cycle where you have to start doing
Speaker 1: these complicated calculations to figure out exactly how big your
Speaker 1: your rocket needs to be in order to get everything
Speaker 1: you want to get up into space and to its
Speaker 1: final destination. Right. But if you can come across water
Speaker 1: in space, you can separate water into its constituent elements,
Speaker 1: which are hydrogen and oxygen, which are the ingredients you
Speaker 1: need to make rocket propellant, right, and then you you're
Speaker 1: able to to at least change your considerations when you're
Speaker 1: actually at ground level. I mean, also you're talking about
Speaker 1: the ability to do manufacturing and and construction out in space.
Speaker 1: These are all things that are going to be invaluable
Speaker 1: in the future. But then there's also the elements that
Speaker 1: are getting increasingly rare on Earth that we are relying
Speaker 1: upon in lots of manufacturing, things like gold and platinum
Speaker 1: that we could in theory run out of a usable
Speaker 1: supply within a few decades. So it's it's important stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're actually um so, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't even know, Like what do you really use platinum for. Well,
Speaker 1: one one of the big things I know now is
Speaker 1: the auto industry. Sure, it's huge there because of catalytic converters.
Speaker 1: It's also very popular in fuel cells. It's used in
Speaker 1: fuel cell membranes. It's part of a catalyst. You when
Speaker 1: you get platinum down to the nanoparticle size, it has
Speaker 1: this uh catalyst effect on the the reactions that you
Speaker 1: get in fuel cells where you have hydrogen on one
Speaker 1: side oxygen on the other. The membrane allows hydrogen ions
Speaker 1: to pass through, but not the electrons. The electrons go
Speaker 1: and do work through a circuit. Then they recombine with
Speaker 1: the hydrogen and oxygen on the other side. They output
Speaker 1: you get as electricity, heat, and water. So the important
Speaker 1: part there is that membrane and the platinum isn't uh
Speaker 1: you know, without the catalyst there, this reaction really doesn't
Speaker 1: take place on an efficient level to make a fuel
Speaker 1: cell useful at all. So that's another important use of platinum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: platinum is platinum and platinum group metals are actually generally
Speaker 1: really useful as an oxidization catalyst in like the production
Speaker 1: of chemicals on an industrial level. So UM, you can
Speaker 1: use like platinum or platinum rhodium alloy catalysts UH to
Speaker 1: catalyze up an oxidation of ammonia and that creates nitric
Speaker 1: oxide UM and use nitric oxide to make fertilizer or
Speaker 1: explosives or nitric acid that would use in other things. Right,
Speaker 1: and quite a bit of the these materials that we're
Speaker 1: talking about actually the reason why they're on Earth and
Speaker 1: the first places because of ancient asteroid collisions. We're talking
Speaker 1: about back when the Earth was cooling, partially because the
Speaker 1: Earth and the asteroids that UH collided with the Earth
Speaker 1: are all pretty much made up of the same stuff,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of the these deposits came from originally,
Speaker 1: if you go back a couple of few billion years,
Speaker 1: came from asteroid impacts. So you know, it's not a
Speaker 1: big leap to say let's go back out there and
Speaker 1: look for more. UM. Well, I don't know. I would
Speaker 1: say it is a big leap, but it's not an
Speaker 1: unreasonable I think it's not a big leap, uh intellectually,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about the practicality, Yes, getting getting it
Speaker 1: done is hard. Yes, the idea of this is where
Speaker 1: we should look makes sense. The idea of this is
Speaker 1: how we're going to do it. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: different conversation. Yeah. So one of the questions we'd want
Speaker 1: to ask is how much is out there? And part
Speaker 1: of the problem right now is we don't really know.
Speaker 1: We we sort of have have to guess. And the
Speaker 1: only way we would really end up knowing for sure
Speaker 1: is to follow through with some of these survey missions
Speaker 1: to get up close on these asteroids and and do
Speaker 1: some more serious analysis. But because there's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot of asteroids out there, both in the Main Belt
Speaker 1: and um, the near Near Earth asteroids. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and I think it's the near Earth asteroids that people
Speaker 1: are really focused on right now because the Main Belt
Speaker 1: is far pretty um. But so there are some estimates
Speaker 1: out there that people have put forward, like, uh, one
Speaker 1: of the people from Deep Space Industries, which is one
Speaker 1: of the companies we're going to talk about, Uh, they
Speaker 1: estimated that remember that asteroid that flew by Earth back
Speaker 1: in February, that was d A fourteen. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the one that coincided with the meteorite that struck Russia. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. The two, by the way, totally not connected
Speaker 1: to each other. Just want to get completely know as
Speaker 1: far as the government has told us, you can go
Speaker 1: to stuff they don't want you to know and peddle
Speaker 1: that around. Okay, So, but so this thing is very small,
Speaker 1: just about a hundred and fifty feet wide and tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: and the grand scheme of things, yes, yeah, um, but
Speaker 1: what they estimated is that well, I mean, something like
Speaker 1: this could feasibly yield about sixty five billion in recoverable
Speaker 1: water and a hundred and thirty billion These are dollars,
Speaker 1: hundred thirty sixty five billion dollars and a hundred thirty
Speaker 1: billion dollars in recoverable medals. And that's huge, um. They
Speaker 1: So if we want to look a little bit bigger,
Speaker 1: Peter Diamandis, who's one of the people involved in planetary resources,
Speaker 1: has said that basically a single five hundred meter platinum
Speaker 1: rich asteroid, uh could be more platinum than we have
Speaker 1: ever mined in all of human history. Yeah. Now, of
Speaker 1: course that presumes that there is such an asteroid that
Speaker 1: is identifiable and reachable by us. But you know, when
Speaker 1: you've got like nine thousand year Earth asteroids and maybe
Speaker 1: a thousand more discovered every single year, and you've got
Speaker 1: some odds of at least finding stuff that will be useful.
Speaker 1: The question is whether you know how expensive is it
Speaker 1: going to be to get there, to then get the material,
Speaker 1: and then to do whatever it is you plan on
Speaker 1: doing with it. Was selling it off to whomever is
Speaker 1: it doesn't make economic sense? Yea. So we know there's
Speaker 1: there's probably good stuff out there and we would probably
Speaker 1: be really useful for us, How would we actually get it? What?
Speaker 1: What's the mission outline that these people have proposed, Well,
Speaker 1: let me let me talk about Planetary Resources specifically for that,
Speaker 1: because they they've kind of laid out their plan probably
Speaker 1: a little more in depth than uh than the deep
Speaker 1: space industries as far as I can tell, and I've
Speaker 1: I've read about deep space industries approach as well, but
Speaker 1: it it's it's a little more vaguely defined at least
Speaker 1: the information I found. So here's what plan Interior Resources say.
Speaker 1: First of all, that their mission is to apply commercial
Speaker 1: innovative techniques to explore space, So they're looking at this
Speaker 1: is beyond just asteroid mining. That's part of their mission,
Speaker 1: but They also want, according to their mission, to expand
Speaker 1: our scientific knowledge about our solar system and to uh
Speaker 1: to really find a profitable way of doing that. Their
Speaker 1: backers include Google's founders or a couple of Google's founders,
Speaker 1: um and then they they for the first plan is
Speaker 1: to develop a low cost robotic spacecraft that's designed to
Speaker 1: explore asteroids. And the first launchest plan for and the
Speaker 1: name of that is the ARCID one hundred. This is
Speaker 1: technically a space telescope and it's meant to be used
Speaker 1: in low earth orbit. Uh. Do you guys know where
Speaker 1: the name comes from. It's a from it's a Star
Speaker 1: Wars reference. It's from Arcade Industries, which is a droid manufacturer. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's correct. I did not know that yet. It's there.
Speaker 1: Which droids do they make? Uh? They only make the
Speaker 1: droids that break down in the series. Are not necessarily that. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I honestly, I couldn't tell you I
Speaker 1: knew that much. And beyond that, you know, you're getting
Speaker 1: a little too deep into the Star Wars lore for
Speaker 1: me to be able to follow along. Uh. The so
Speaker 1: that's the telescope. The purpose of the telescope, of course,
Speaker 1: is to not only explore our solar system, to to
Speaker 1: look into our solar system in greater detail, but also
Speaker 1: to identify potential asteroids for us to look into further.
Speaker 1: But it's not designed to actually get to the asteroid
Speaker 1: and look at it, right, And it's actually not extremely
Speaker 1: well suited to looking for asteroids, according to Phil Plate
Speaker 1: of Bad Astronomy. At any rate, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: twenty or eight inch telescope and um on a pretty
Speaker 1: tiny little body about the size of a human head,
Speaker 1: if that's if that's a good reference for for satellite size.
Speaker 1: It does, however, way more than a human head. I
Speaker 1: mean not that I've you know, done comparisons or anything.
Speaker 1: Don't look in my bag. Um at any rate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be better suited for forgetting
Speaker 1: shots of say, uh bright nebula or galaxies or something
Speaker 1: like that, something like that. A little bit further planets
Speaker 1: Earth Earth. There's gonna be a lot of pictures of Earth.
Speaker 1: It's going to be difficult to to really hone it
Speaker 1: in on something as as close by and quick moving
Speaker 1: as an asteroid. And yeah, uh it does raise some questions.
Speaker 1: They're their next phase in their plan is to design
Speaker 1: the Archid two hundred, also known as the intercept or.
Speaker 1: That's actually what they call it. And uh, in this case,
Speaker 1: what they do is they take that basic ARCID one
Speaker 1: design and they would tweak it a bit and then
Speaker 1: including adding propulsion to it and some more instrumentation design
Speaker 1: specifically to perform fly by observations of nearby asteroids, so
Speaker 1: these would actually travel out to near Earth asteroids and
Speaker 1: get a closer look. Uh. And maybe that we end
Speaker 1: up identifying the asteroids using other instrumentation and then just
Speaker 1: aim the Archid two D so that it's on an
Speaker 1: intercept path, not that you know they detected and then
Speaker 1: moved to it. Um. Yeah, it sounds like along the
Speaker 1: and I know we're not done yet, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like along the timeline. What's sort of going on is
Speaker 1: that there's a slow narrowing down of candidates. Yes, like
Speaker 1: you'd use the first series telescope to to scope out
Speaker 1: a wide range of possible candidates. You'd basically say what's
Speaker 1: coming near here and what's going to be the easiest
Speaker 1: to intercept, and then and then once you be able
Speaker 1: to get closer and look with a more powerful or
Speaker 1: a or a closer view, you would actually start to say, okay,
Speaker 1: which are the ones that have the things we need.
Speaker 1: You might even argue that the first step is not
Speaker 1: even to find candidates at all. It's really to develop
Speaker 1: the basic technology for the space telescope in a privatized way,
Speaker 1: and then once we are able to have the propulsion
Speaker 1: element added in. Because one of the things that Planetary
Speaker 1: Resources talks about is that while it's working on one
Speaker 1: stage of this, it's in research and development for the
Speaker 1: other stages. So the build out time for the first
Speaker 1: stage gives them more research and development time for stages
Speaker 1: two and three and so on, right, and furthermore to
Speaker 1: just drive excitement and uh and sponsorship hopefully for the
Speaker 1: further levels. You know. It's it's the one was a
Speaker 1: kickstarter funded mission. It was a one million dollar kickstarter
Speaker 1: that that ended up earning um uh one point five
Speaker 1: million something a little bit both that and um I
Speaker 1: know a guy who backed that. Yeah, yeah, well it
Speaker 1: seems I remember reading about it. It's pretty cool, the
Speaker 1: crowd funded telescope because they would they had like a
Speaker 1: sort of educational initiative where if your group donated, I
Speaker 1: think you could you could get time to aim the
Speaker 1: telescope yourself. Yeah, they had they had two cute things.
Speaker 1: They had one which is which is a little video
Speaker 1: screen on the outside of the satellite um with a
Speaker 1: with a camera that would take a picture of any
Speaker 1: image that you gave them. It could be grumpy cat
Speaker 1: and with the Earth in the background as like a
Speaker 1: little planetary selfie for for motivation. But then then and
Speaker 1: then also they sold time or would donate time from
Speaker 1: the main telescope cameras to point at whatever your research
Speaker 1: or classroom wanted to look at. Right, so you could
Speaker 1: actually if you wanted to, you could uh contributed at
Speaker 1: a certain level and then on your behalf that are
Speaker 1: your time would actually go to a school or scientific
Speaker 1: research facility. It wasn't wasn't necessarily you that got to dictated,
Speaker 1: although if you donated at a higher level you could.
Speaker 1: Um there were one thousand, nine eight backers who uh
Speaker 1: who put in at the amount for the five minutes
Speaker 1: of time for students or for science, which I calculated
Speaker 1: at being nine thousand, eight hundred nine minutes or a
Speaker 1: hundred sixty five hours or about seven days worth of
Speaker 1: holeoscope time total. I mean that's added up. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: actually go for seven They wouldn't say all right for
Speaker 1: the first seven days just doing this, it would actually
Speaker 1: be spaced out over it's it's initial days, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that that's the ar Kid one hundred, the
Speaker 1: two hundred very similar to it's got the propulsion and
Speaker 1: allows it to fly to an asteroid and get a
Speaker 1: closer look. Then you have the arc at three hundred,
Speaker 1: which you know, the two was the interceptor, the three
Speaker 1: was the Rendezvous Prospector, so it just really just kind
Speaker 1: of combines two Western tropes into one. Anyway, so you
Speaker 1: got the Rendezvous Prospector, which was an augmented interceptor, so
Speaker 1: it would also have deep space laser communication software and
Speaker 1: hardware on it to allow it to communicate back on Earth,
Speaker 1: and was designed to travel to asteroids that are further
Speaker 1: away from Earth. Because the interceptors mainly focusing at asteroids
Speaker 1: that are passing between Earth and the Moon, the Rendezvous
Speaker 1: Prospector can go further out and it would actually enter
Speaker 1: the orbit of an asteroid to collect that on them,
Speaker 1: including the asteroids density, shape, composition, size, rotation, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and you would actually have multiple devices focus
Speaker 1: on the same asteroid in order to distribute mission risk,
Speaker 1: so if one failed, you'd still have others that we're
Speaker 1: looking at this asteroid because if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: potential mining opportunity, you want to have as you know,
Speaker 1: you want to try and guarantee success as much as
Speaker 1: you can. And then finally, the last phase is to
Speaker 1: develop means of harvesting and delivering the resources on asteroids
Speaker 1: to space based and terrestrial customers. Now, this is the
Speaker 1: most vaguely defined of their steps because we frankly don't
Speaker 1: know how we would do it yet, right, And and
Speaker 1: the their point is that during the time where they're
Speaker 1: developing these other phases that they've already laid out, they
Speaker 1: will be working on what would be the best approach
Speaker 1: at doing this, how would we do it? And again
Speaker 1: they would initially focus on water rich asteroids to get
Speaker 1: both water and its component elements for propulsion, but there
Speaker 1: will be no firm plans on how recovery would take
Speaker 1: place other than the teams are researching it right now.
Speaker 1: Part of it seems like kind of a smart business
Speaker 1: model to start with water, because as you mind water,
Speaker 1: you'd also be I would imagine sort of developing your
Speaker 1: customer base because the more water you can produce in space,
Speaker 1: the easier it is for people to sustain activity in space. Um,
Speaker 1: so you can get more people up there who need
Speaker 1: more of what you're creating. It's also a great I mean,
Speaker 1: I would imagine I don't know, I honestly don't know
Speaker 1: what would be the quote unquote easiest resource to mine
Speaker 1: on an asteroid, but I would imagine water would be
Speaker 1: way up there in terms of processing, right, I would think. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean that's one of the big questions is Okay,
Speaker 1: So imagine you get to an asteroid and we can
Speaker 1: talk more in a minute about where this would happen
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, because that's a big question too.
Speaker 1: But what wherever the asteroid is. Imagine you're there and
Speaker 1: you want to mind it. So you dig up some
Speaker 1: rocks and these rocks have some significant platinum content. How
Speaker 1: do you get it out? Yeah? You might have to
Speaker 1: use some sort of either a chemical approach to try
Speaker 1: and leach it out, or you know, there's some discussion
Speaker 1: about using lasers to to vaporize any material that is
Speaker 1: not whatever it is you're going for that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever it is you're talking about what sounds like a
Speaker 1: fairly hardware intensive kind of process where you need lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. They're doing its job, um and all of
Speaker 1: our experience, but I'm not saying it can't be done.
Speaker 1: Of course, all of our experience with the so far
Speaker 1: is on Earth, where you can you know, you can
Speaker 1: just like burn or and smelt it off and doing
Speaker 1: this in microgravity, um, and without without an air supply
Speaker 1: to make combustion happen. I definitely never mind I was
Speaker 1: gonna make an air supply joke. I'm going to just
Speaker 1: walk away from that. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Okay,
Speaker 1: it was right on the cusp. Uh. No. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the other big company,
Speaker 1: the Deep Space Industries approach um and what they think
Speaker 1: they are going to, how they're how they're approaching this
Speaker 1: the same task, right they've got they've got they've got
Speaker 1: three steps instead of that four. But it's basically running
Speaker 1: along the same the same projected not timeline, but but
Speaker 1: just scope of of projects. Um, you've got. They're they're
Speaker 1: thinking about sending um uh, prospecting probes out around these
Speaker 1: these are calling fireflies. Um, you can't take taking some
Speaker 1: of our our beloved brown coats. Yeah, I'm sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that might have a little tiny bit of something
Speaker 1: to do with it. It could be an extreme coincidence.
Speaker 1: Maybe they haven't seen television in the past twenty years.
Speaker 1: These are these are small, small little things, UM that
Speaker 1: would be launched a piggyback with with commercial satellites there
Speaker 1: there by cutting down on cost um and and are
Speaker 1: really reconnaissance missions again, just just going out with telescopes
Speaker 1: and looking for the kinds of things that they might
Speaker 1: later start to to UM reach out to with sample
Speaker 1: return missions called dragonflies. UM. They don't have a projective
Speaker 1: timeline for this, but they're thinking about the third step
Speaker 1: in so I guess that would be somewhere between twenty
Speaker 1: I had read at one point, according to one article,
Speaker 1: that the optimistic approach was that dragonflies would be launching
Speaker 1: a year after they had started launching fireflies. So that
Speaker 1: would be uh. It seems really really optimistic to have
Speaker 1: something that could uh intercept and asteroid, take a sample
Speaker 1: and come back reliably, but not outside the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1: It's just very It's a an accelerated timeline to be fair. UM.
Speaker 1: The Planetary Resources also plans on launching the first arcade.
Speaker 1: So the timelines here are very similar. Those dragonflies would
Speaker 1: also be pretty small. They're they're using cubes at cube satellites.
Speaker 1: These are little one leader cube satellite texts that are
Speaker 1: it's it' kind of the raspberry pie of of satellite
Speaker 1: and I and I kind of adore this entire concept,
Speaker 1: um and uh. And then the third step again in
Speaker 1: would hYP hypothetically be the harvesters um. So all of
Speaker 1: this I feel like it's ranging deeply into halo terms
Speaker 1: when when I read the term micro gravity foundry was
Speaker 1: really right, right, So so this is once once they've
Speaker 1: got these harvesters out there working on their asteroids, They've
Speaker 1: they've got plans for propellant refineries and micro gravity foundries,
Speaker 1: um and uh. They're thinking about trying to use new
Speaker 1: new spins on three D printing to turn any any
Speaker 1: materials that they get into usable parts parts right right,
Speaker 1: and they they've got some apparently patent pending technologies that
Speaker 1: help metal based three D printing happen better. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: read something about that where it was like, so there's
Speaker 1: some idea where you just have a machine where it's
Speaker 1: got a hopper or something and you just throw rocks
Speaker 1: that have like nickel content into them and they smash
Speaker 1: them up and somehow process that into the what do
Speaker 1: you call the material those three D printer prints in.
Speaker 1: I don't know essentially what what would be ink at
Speaker 1: the metal point smelt, I guess, yeah. And so that
Speaker 1: that just be one whole direct line process of taking
Speaker 1: the ore and turning it into a product at the
Speaker 1: end of three Interesting. I wonder how that works in microgravity.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the adds a whole new level of
Speaker 1: complexity to the three D printing process, most of which
Speaker 1: end up printing, you know, base taking relying upon Earth's gravity,
Speaker 1: on the fact that everything falls at what is at
Speaker 1: nine point eight per second towards per second? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I would think maybe if they're printing in metals, they
Speaker 1: might be able to use magnets to some extent. Depends
Speaker 1: on if it's a fairest material. But yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I don't know. I honestly don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to that, because I don't think anyone's built a
Speaker 1: three D printer microgravity foundry yet. They have not. They,
Speaker 1: as I said, are working on the patent process, and
Speaker 1: I think I feel like deep space industries is a
Speaker 1: little bit more um overtly economically minded than than planetary
Speaker 1: there um. They're they're funding current operations by you know,
Speaker 1: the normal sponsorship investment kind of stuff, but they're playing
Speaker 1: planning on selling fuel that they get from the water
Speaker 1: from asteroids to satellites and space stations and other commercial propositions.
Speaker 1: So they're just going to the interplanetary space gas station. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a growth industry. There's a wide open
Speaker 1: space there. Yeah. No, I mean, I may I make jokes,
Speaker 1: but these are things that are going to be necessary.
Speaker 1: We need to have a space infrastructure, including a fuel infrastructure,
Speaker 1: if we want this future of space exploration colonization to
Speaker 1: become a reality. It's funny how quick some people are,
Speaker 1: at least some people that I've read, just to ah,
Speaker 1: this is impossible. You know. Yeah, there's some some grouchy
Speaker 1: people talking about you know, I think there were plenty
Speaker 1: of people who said it was impossible to land someone
Speaker 1: on the Moon and get them back to Earth safely.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were plenty of people who said that.
Speaker 1: The thing is that I I love seeing an engineer
Speaker 1: when you tell an engineer that something is impossible, because
Speaker 1: that just solidifies the determination to prove you wrong. Um.
Speaker 1: Human ingenuity has proven time and time again that that
Speaker 1: the impossible is just it's really possible. You just need
Speaker 1: the right amount of time and energy and money to
Speaker 1: go into it for it to become that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Telling a good engineer that, uh, something like this is impossible,
Speaker 1: it's like putting a you know, plate of something up
Speaker 1: on a high counter and thinking that dog will never
Speaker 1: find a way. Yes, or furthermore, my enterprising children, or furthermore, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I can leave this unattended for five minutes, nothing will
Speaker 1: go wrong. Yeah, it's I I I certainly wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's impossible. I think that the timelines we've discussed are
Speaker 1: very optimistic. I'm not even saying that that's impossible, but
Speaker 1: I will be pleasantly surprised if they are able to
Speaker 1: meet those timelines, both companies planetary resources and deep space industries,
Speaker 1: and uh either way, I mean, if they do that,
Speaker 1: it's a huge boon for science. Even if they fail,
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge huge win for science. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything else, it's is showing again that
Speaker 1: these sort of endeavors really increase the excitement around science.
Speaker 1: There is some danger, at least some people have said
Speaker 1: that there could be some danger that if these projects
Speaker 1: fail it could end up setting people back a bit
Speaker 1: because people be like I supported this thing, and I
Speaker 1: was all, I'm not going to invest in another one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although at least with in these cases it's all unmanned
Speaker 1: probes um and I think that that is really the
Speaker 1: best possible idea right now for space exploration and asteroid
Speaker 1: exploration and mining operation. And right we don't. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about some manned mining operations fictional ones anyway, in
Speaker 1: our next podcast. Yes we will. Well, that is one
Speaker 1: thing that I hate to hurt people's feelings because I'm
Speaker 1: sure when you say asteroid mining, what they're imagining is
Speaker 1: people at space suits with pick axes. I guess. And
Speaker 1: first will is there the Seven Dwarves or whatever? Skyrom
Speaker 1: in Space. I've been playing a lot of Skyrom again recently.
Speaker 1: You know Minecraft, there you go Minecraft in Space. Sure,
Speaker 1: but you're just looking at me with dead eyes. Joke.
Speaker 1: I've never played this game. So that what do you
Speaker 1: just like? Hit rocks? There's o um Okay, So I
Speaker 1: think we should talk about UM. Imagine all this works,
Speaker 1: and we can set down on asteroids, we can sample them,
Speaker 1: we can figure out which ones have the resources we want.
Speaker 1: What's the best way to get it? Um Some people
Speaker 1: have talked about, well, okay, I guess you'd UM, you'd
Speaker 1: send something out to an asteroid and then it would
Speaker 1: collect raw materials and then uh and then launch off
Speaker 1: and bring it to wherever it's useful. Or other people
Speaker 1: have talked about simply moving very small asteroids, that you
Speaker 1: create some kind of capture vehicle that would harness the
Speaker 1: entire thing and bring it into orbit of the Earth
Speaker 1: or say the Moon, which would make it a lot
Speaker 1: easier for us to access it, to get to it
Speaker 1: and from it with the return materials. Sure, right, that's
Speaker 1: Deep Space Industries plan is to UM to harness some
Speaker 1: near Earth asteroids and bring them back to to either UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: either Earth, Moon or or that fun in between period
Speaker 1: that I forget the technical term for that. That that
Speaker 1: that's pretty much balanced by the gravity of the two. Right,
Speaker 1: So moving an asteroid could be complicated in the sense
Speaker 1: of you could have some sort of capture vehicle is
Speaker 1: either physically bringing the asteroid on or somehow towing it. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there. I've seen proposals where you would put essentially
Speaker 1: thrusters on the asteroid itself and turn the asteroid into
Speaker 1: a spacecraft of sorts, and that you're just using the
Speaker 1: thrusters to maneuver it into wherever, whichever orbit you need. Um,
Speaker 1: there's the concept of gravity towing, although I don't think
Speaker 1: that would necessarily work, because you're talking about a very
Speaker 1: very slow process. With gravity towing, it's usually more in
Speaker 1: line with with moving an asteroid, so it takes a
Speaker 1: different path rather than actually pulling it to a specific destination.
Speaker 1: And obviously there's some safety concerns here, not just for
Speaker 1: the probes but for Earth itself. UM, deep space industries
Speaker 1: at any rate would only be it says that they
Speaker 1: would only be targeting, you know, less than thirty meter
Speaker 1: uh in diameter asteroids, because those would be small enough
Speaker 1: that if they lost control of the asteroid and it
Speaker 1: plummeted into the Earth, that would really just plummet into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and burn up. It was just depending upon
Speaker 1: what it's made of. If it's thirty meters, possibly destroy
Speaker 1: a small town, maybe a medium size city. At any rate,
Speaker 1: they they say that there might be um that there's
Speaker 1: about a thousand, one hundred of these that they have
Speaker 1: already looked at and targeted and said, hey, that one
Speaker 1: could work. It's maybe fifteen years off right now. But
Speaker 1: this is part of the problem is that a lot
Speaker 1: of these New Earth asteroids are on you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty year orbit cycles that only come close enough
Speaker 1: to Earth to be useful every so often, right, right,
Speaker 1: This is the challenge, a challenge aside from space. One
Speaker 1: distinction we should make, and we sort of made it earlier,
Speaker 1: but I guess it's worth being clear the difference between
Speaker 1: a near Earth asteroid and a main Belt asteroid when
Speaker 1: people think of asters right, But when people think of asteroids,
Speaker 1: they think of the asteroid belt. Right, This is not
Speaker 1: really what we're talking now, asteroid belt. If you if
Speaker 1: you take very far away, if you take the dis
Speaker 1: if you were to take the distance between Earth and
Speaker 1: the Sun and then multiply that by two point five,
Speaker 1: that's the distance between Earth and the asteroid belt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these things are too far away in the near future
Speaker 1: to really be useful for us. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: our near Earth asteroids that orbit the Sun in a
Speaker 1: way that every now and then brings them very close
Speaker 1: to Earth relatively speaking. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly, so that
Speaker 1: you know, maybe far off in the future, when we
Speaker 1: developed propulsion systems that are incredibly fast, we might explore
Speaker 1: the or or we've actually board beyond Mars. At that point, Um,
Speaker 1: we might be using asteroids in the asteroid belt for
Speaker 1: mining purposes. But until that point, it's really take years
Speaker 1: for us to get back and forth effectively. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: could be a great thing in the far future, when
Speaker 1: you're talking about sort of a mastery of the inner
Speaker 1: Solar System, a sort of full full colonization future. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, in the near term, there's really no advantage
Speaker 1: to that, especially until we've got a way of making
Speaker 1: fuel in space that we don't have to ship fuel
Speaker 1: into space, which is mind bogglingly not very efficient. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we've kind of explored it. We've we've talked
Speaker 1: about how we've got companies that are actually moving on this,
Speaker 1: which it's kind of cool. It's turning science fiction into
Speaker 1: science fact. Whether or not it's successful is something that
Speaker 1: we still have to wait and see, but it's it's
Speaker 1: certainly I'm sure that we will be doing it in
Speaker 1: the future. Whether or not it's through the same process
Speaker 1: that's outlined in these companies approaches or something entirely different
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. But I have no doubt that
Speaker 1: we will be attempting and successful in those attempts to
Speaker 1: harness the resources of these asteroids for our own use,
Speaker 1: and possibly in a way that isn't terrifying. Fingers crossed,
Speaker 1: Fingers crossed. Well, one way to feel good about it
Speaker 1: is that I would just say from a lot of
Speaker 1: the people that I like to read a lot of
Speaker 1: astronomy buffs and and people who are big on space exploration,
Speaker 1: a lot of them tend to be skeptical people, um
Speaker 1: and they are often quick to to pooh pooh the
Speaker 1: more fanciful space exploration ideas. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: seem to have good feelings about this, and I think
Speaker 1: that comes from the fact that it's um that there
Speaker 1: is a strong financial incentive behind it, and it does
Speaker 1: offer a sort of comprehensive plan that you can fully
Speaker 1: integrate into the future of space exploration, and there are
Speaker 1: clear steps that people are taking. I think that both
Speaker 1: of these companies outlines are a great ideas. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's nice that they have, at least for the
Speaker 1: first few phases, a specific outline of what they want
Speaker 1: to achieve and how they want to achieve it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it certainly is the sort of thing that is
Speaker 1: necessary if you're going to go forward with a commercial
Speaker 1: approach to this and not you know, not a government
Speaker 1: funded science, just purely science based uh endeavor. Right, So
Speaker 1: we'll see how it turns out. We will be following
Speaker 1: us because it's it's cool stuff, so we're excited to
Speaker 1: see what happens. And guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics of forward Thinking, I recommend you get
Speaker 1: in touch with us and tell us because we won't
Speaker 1: know otherwise. One way you can do that is by
Speaker 1: sending email our addresses FW thinking at Discovery dot com
Speaker 1: or go to FMW thinking dot com. That's where we
Speaker 1: have the blogs, podcast videos, et cetera. That's the way.
Speaker 1: That's another way you can get in touch with us.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff there that's really fascinating. Highly commended.
Speaker 1: Check it out and we will taught you again, really Sarah.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic in the future of technology,
Speaker 1: visit forward thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota.
Speaker 1: Let's Go Places