From: sun-barr!olivea!samsung!rex!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll@apple.com (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Asteroid mining
> The resources I'm thinking of may be salable (even at VERY low
> prices) in the very short-term. I.E. before real operations get
> started. Take nickel. It's current price is around $1/lb. With
> a typical Nickel Asteroid, you could sell it for $.05/lb, and
> still make a klilling. (Do you know how much nickel would be in
> an asteroid 1km wide?). Could any mining company compete? More
> importantly, could we get them to invest?
The Sudbury asteroid has two advantages that allow it to produce
nickel at a lower cost than nickel produced by exploiting other asteroids.
These advantages are:
Life Support: Sudbury suppplies some life support services gratis.
These services include air, some light, and radiation
shielding. The temperature range is well within that range
conventional technology can deal with. There is almost
certainly local life on Sudbury.
Access: The delta vee required to reach the Sudbury asteroid and
to send the nickel produced at Sudbury is very small, and
can be handled by simple chemical engines. Indeed, if all
you want to do is *reach* Sudbury, stone age technology
(feet) can do the job from Eurasia, given time and an Ice Age.
If you want to sell your asteroid nickel, it has to be cheaper
(or at least as cheap) as nickel from competing sources. If your life support
costs, and transport costs are as high as *current* technology make them,
you won't be able to sply ET nickel at the current price and no-one will
buy your $2000.00/lb nickel (exept *maybe* in locations like LEO, where
the transport costs from Sudbury are almost as high) and the amount of
nickel in your source does not affect LS and transport costs/lb. If I were
company, I would not invest in asteroid mining unless I had good reason to
believe I could meet current market prices with my products and current
technology does not seem to be able to do this wrt nickel production in
space.
Decrease transport and production costs in space, and maybe ths will
change. What reason wqould a mining company to have to expect this in the
