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Space Mining

Outland (Mining Themed Movie – 1981)

This information is from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Outland is a 1981 British science fiction thriller film written and directed by Peter Hyams. The film stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, and Frances Sternhagen. Set on Jupiter’s moon Io, it has been described as a space Western,[3] and bears thematic resemblances to the 1952 film High Noon.[4][5]

Plot
In the future, Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) is assigned to a tour of duty at the titanium ore mining outpost ‘Con-Am 27’ operated by the company Conglomerates Amalgamated, on the Jovian moon of Io. Conditions on Io are difficult: gravity is 1/6 that of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere, spacesuits are cumbersome, and miners carry their own air supply. Shifts are long, but significant bonuses are paid. Con-Amalgamated mining franchise general manager Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle) boasts that since he took over the running of Io, productivity has broken all previous records.

Carol O’Niel (Kika Markham) feels she cannot raise their son Paul to live inside a sterile environment far from Earth and with little to do. She takes Paul and flees to the space station serving Io, awaiting a shuttle back to Earth.

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Exclusive – The FAA: regulating business on the moon – by Irene Klotz (Reuters India – February 3, 2015)

http://in.reuters.com/

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – (Reuters) – The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, U.S. companies can stake claims to lunar territory through an existing licensing process for space launches.

The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to “leverage the FAA’s existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis.”

In other words, experts said, Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon, and expect to have exclusive rights to that territory – as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, exploration and other activities.

However, the FAA letter noted a concern flagged by the U.S. State Department that “the national regulatory framework, in its present form, is ill-equipped to enable the U.S. government to fulfill its obligations” under a 1967 United Nations treaty, which, in part, governs activities on the moon.

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Will We Mine Asteroids? – by Fraser Cain (University Today.com – January 8, 2015)

http://www.universetoday.com/

It’s been said that a single asteroid might be worth trillions of dollars in precious rare metals. Will we ever reach out and mine these space rocks? How hard could it be?

Here on Earth, precious metals like gold and silver are getting harder to find. Geologists are developing more elaborate ways to get at the veins of precious metals beneath the surface of the Earth. And for the truly rare metals, like platinum and iridium, forget about it. All the platinum ever mined in the history of the world would fit inside my basement, and it’s not that big of a basement.

There are asteroids out there, just floating past us, taunting us, containing mountains of precious minerals. There are iron-nickel asteroids made entirely of metal. Comets of water, dirt and organic materials, everything you’d need to make an orbital farm. Just a single 30-meter asteroid, like the recently discovered 2012 DA14, is worth $20 trillion dollars. Now, if you could just somehow get to it.

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NEWS RELEASE: Mining entrepreneur Julian Malnic Joins Deep Space Industries’ Board

Houston, Dec 16, 2014 (ABN Newswire) – Deep Space Industries is pleased to announce the election of Julian Malnic, accomplished entrepreneur and business leader, to its Board. Julian is a recognized leader in the global mining industry, having founded both Nautilus Minerals Inc. and Direct Nickel, an emerging nickel producer with a revolutionary and dramatically lower cost extraction technology. In his new role with DSI, Mr. Malnic will add invaluable experience, perspective and drive to the Board of Directors.

“Julian’s addition to DSI’s Board reflects the accelerating evolution of the Company” said Rick Tumlinson, Chair of Deep Space Industries. “Not only is he a geologist with a lot of processing experience, but he is also founder of the world’s first deep sea mining company. He brings us an invaluable level of experience in transformatory mineral resource ventures.”

In addition to founding both Nautilus Minerals Inc. (TSE:NUS)(LON:NUS) and Direct Nickel (ASX:DIR), Mr. Malnic is also the Founder and Chairman of the Sydney Mining Club, the managing director of Fluid Minerals Limited, and Director of Public Relations for the Constitution Education Fund of Australia. He is a well-known voice in mining and policy circles in Australia.

“Space resources is a fast-moving investment frontier and I really like DSI’s focus on using materials that are already out there,” said new Board member, Julian Malnic. “Deep Space Industries is not just an innovator in its industry, it is pioneering it. Using asteroid materials must be the primary basis for any serious development of space. I think DSI is very well positioned to do this.”

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Sudbury Basin formed by comet, not asteroid, researcher says (CBC News Sudbury – November 22, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury

Laurentian University’s Joe Petrus says comet likely created major geologic structure, not asteroid

It’s been long believed the Sudbury Basin was shaped by an asteroid that hit the region more than a billion years ago, but a Laurentian University researcher now says it was likely a comet.

The Sudbury Basin is the second largest known impact crater on Earth — 62 kilometres long, 30 kilometres wide and 15 kilometres deep. PhD candidate Joe Petrus’s recent research looks at what exactly came crashing down from space to form the massive crater.

“Impacts provide … a way to connect space [and] earth by looking at the interaction of things that were in space that have come and created a massive crater on earth,” he said.

“Sudbury is kind of unique in terms of meteorite impact. It’s one of the largest and one of the oldest.” The fiery object that struck near Sudbury, 1.8 billion years ago, formed a deep hole that can be seen from space.

When it slammed into the earth, it punched a hole in the Earth’s crust, allowing the mantle below to well up and fill the basin with a thick sheet of melted rock.

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Research shows comet as cause of Sudbury crater – by Jim Moodie (Sudbury Star – November 24, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

A city known for its rock and snow may well have been formed, nearly two billion years ago, by a giant ball of rock and snow.

New research by Laurentian PhD candidate Joe Petrus suggests the Sudbury basin was the work of a comet, which blasted through the atmosphere at a speed of about 50 km/second and struck with such force that debris rained down as far away as Thunder Bay and Minnesota.

Scientists have understood since the 1960s that the area owes its shape and geology to the impact of a celestial object, but exactly what type of object — asteroid or comet — has remained an open question.

It was a puzzle that Petrus, who earlier studied physics, couldn’t resist probing. “‘Why hasn’t somebody done this?’ ” he recalls thinking. “It seemed a glaring question, especially since Sudbury is one of the most important impact craters on Earth.”

The doctoral student also felt the timing was right. While there had been some earlier speculation about a comet being the cause of Sudbury’s crater, more sophisticated technology was now available to test the theory.

Petrus’s study, undertaken with the support of PhD supervisor Balz Kamber, formerly affiliated with Laurentian University, and geologist Doreen Ames relied largely on chemical analysis of rocks in the impact zone.

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Moon exploration will reduce the shortage of rare earth metals – by Aram Ter-Ghazaryan (Russia Beyond the Headlines – October 26, 2014)

http://rbth.com/

Russian scientists are already referring to the Moon as a hub for flights to other planets. However, the main goal in exploring Earth’s satellite is to expand the production of rare earth metals.

As part of the Federal Space Program, Moon exploration operations will be launched in 2016. In 2018 the first spacecraft will be sent to the Moon to deliver comet material back to Earth. A manned flight is scheduled for 2030-2031. Future plans include the mining of rare earth metals required for the development of high-tech industries.

Looking for comet substances on the lunar south pole

Scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Moscow State University Sternberg Astronomical Institute and the Russian Federal Space Agency are participating in this Moon exploration project.

The first spacecraft to be sent to the Moon will be relatively simple. According to Vladislav Shevchenko, the Sternberg Institute’s Head of the Department of Lunar and Planetary Research, this is because the Russian space program has not carried out a Moon landing for over 40 years.

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Is It Legal to Mine Asteroids? – by Jon Kelvey (Slate Magazine – October 13, 2014)

http://www.slate.com/

How space law could cause conflicts—or cooperation—on Earth

There’s gold in them thar skies, or at least some platinum and a substantial amount of water, according to hopeful space prospectors. Over the past several years, a few companies have announced plans to mine asteroids. If successful, they could reinvigorate earthbound industries with infusions of rare earth minerals.

They could also catalyze a new phase of space exploration by creating orbiting caches of material to build spacecraft as well as water, which could fuel them. Even if these efforts fail, they could lead to new technologies and lower the cost of a rocket ride to orbit.

Of course, there are technical challenges. A vast, radiation-filled vacuum separates the space entrepreneurs from the space rocks of their ambitions, and any actual mining is many years away and might fail. But the current crop of space entrepreneurs are far more credible than the cranks of yesteryear, people who might have sold plots of lunar real estate in the days before the Apollo missions.

There are tech giants with proven track records, such as X Prize Founder Peter Diamandis, whose Planetary Resources boasts James Cameron as well as Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt as investors. There is a real possibility that asteroid mining could become a reality within our lifetimes.

That possibility raises some very interesting questions. First and foremost, it’s not entirely clear whether mining and selling asteroid stuff is even legal, which could really hamper the whole enterprise.

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Moon First—Mine the Asteroids Later – by Paul D. Spudis (Air Space Magazine – August 6, 2014)

http://www.airspacemag.com/

Let’s learn how to extract space resources closer to home.

The UK Daily Mail recently published a piece extolling the benefits of asteroid mining (before lightly tripping over some mundane, yet critical, technical details). The article leads with the headline: Single asteroid worth £60 trillion if it was mined – as much as world earns in a year. Should we chide them for such blatant sensationalism? Then again, is it blatant, or are they merely following an established pattern?

Asteroid mining is a field with lots of hype but little sober consideration. To redeem the technique of in situ resource utilization (ISRU) from the realm of ridicule and science fiction and make it a routine aspect of space mission architectures, we must honestly discuss the difficulties of extracting useful product from raw asteroid debris.

As with every Solar System body of interest and potential use, I am firmly convinced we will eventually mine asteroids. In truth, if we do not take up these formidable technical challenges, there is little hope for any permanent and extensive human presence in space. As long as we confine ourselves to launching everything we need for spaceflight from the bottom of the deepest gravity well in the inner Solar System, we will remain mass- and power-limited and thus, capability-limited.

Essential, low-information density material – spaceflight’s “dumb mass” of propellant and consumables – should be obtained from sources in space, rather than long-hauled (at great cost) from Earth. Only complex, high-information density items not easily made in space should be brought up from Earth.

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Forty five years after man first walked on the moon, a new space race is beginning to take shape – by Peter Kavanagh, (National Post – July 22, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

It was our first truly global village moment, and it didn’t even take place on the planet.

Forty five years ago this past weekend, July 20th, 1969, at 20:18 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), half a billion people sat around radios or television screens, or stood, outside, eyes scanning the sky. I was one of them, moving back and forth between the TV in our living room and our front yard where I could stare straight into the sky and see the moon. I remember the moment — which I can (and do) relive on YouTube — and the incredible, quiet excitement when, while holding my breath and watching the slow, agonizingly descent, I heard the words, “Houston … Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

What we were all really waiting for, though, was the extreme rush that came six hours later when Neil Armstrong stepped down on to the surface of the moon and uttered that now famous phrase, “That’s one small step for man … one giant leap for mankind.” It was amazing, stunning, excruciatingly exciting. Every science-fiction story written had been made real, palpable and possible on that summer’s night. Everyone and anyone could dream about going to the stars, and no longer be dismissed as simply a dreamer. Having one’s head in the clouds lost its sting, briefly, as an insult.

And the world cheered … well, part of the world cheered. After all, despite the “We are all in it together” sentiment of Armstrong’s quote, landing on the moon was a key component of the space race, an adjunct of the Cold War. America’s accomplishment was, for the Soviets, a bitter defeat.

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Mining the moon: The 21st century gold rush – by Stephanie Orford (MetroNews.ca – March 17, 2014)

http://metronews.ca/

Five years ago, if you had brought up moon mining among geologists, “you would have been laughed out of the room,” said Gordon Osinski, founder and director of the Canadian Lunar Research Network, and an assistant professor of geology at the University of Western Ontario.

Times have changed. Mining on the moon and on asteroids, formerly the stuff of science fiction, is clearly in the sights of governments and, increasingly, private companies.

In February, NASA announced it was accepting applications from U.S. companies to build robots for lunar prospecting, a step toward creating an economy in space.

And there’s certainly a market for what’s up there. Many elements that are rare on Earth can be found aplenty on the moon. Satellite imaging has shown that the top 10 centimetres of regolith (moon soil) at the south pole of the moon appears to hold about 100 times the concentration of gold of the richest mines in the world, according to a recent paper coauthored by Dale Boucher, the CEO of Deltion Innovations, based in Sudbury, Ont.

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NASA is offering $35,000 in awards to asteroid hunters – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – March 10, 2014)

http://www.mining.com/

The US space agency, in partnership with asteroid-mining firm Planetary Resources, said Monday it will give away $35,000 in awards over the next six months to citizen scientists who can develop improved algorithms to find space rocks that could pose a threat to our planet — or at least be of interest to scientists and cosmic mineral prospectors.

The first contest in the series will kick off on March 17. Prior to the kick off, competitors can create an account on the contest series website and learn more about the rules and different phases of the competition.

Managed by the NASA Tournament Lab, the entire contest series runs through August and is the first contest series contributing to the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge.

“For the past three years, NASA has been learning and advancing the ability to leverage distributed algorithm and coding skills through the NASA Tournament Lab to solve tough problems,” said in a statement Jason Crusan, NASA Tournament Lab director. “We are now applying our experience with algorithm contests to helping protect the planet from asteroid threats through image analysis.”

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Mining the Moon: Plans Taking Off, but Rules Lacking – by Joshua Philipp (Epoch Times – January 29, 2014)

http://www.theepochtimes.com/

Just two years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, a treaty was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. Signed even as the race to get to the moon was well underway, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty declared that no nation-state could ever own the moon.

The treaty, however, was written at a time when current threats were too real and visions of the future were too dim. Concepts like space tourism, orbital hotels, and companies mining the moon for minerals would have been written off as science fiction.

Fast-forward to today and you’ll find companies like Virgin Galactic ferrying wealthy tourists into space, a man skydiving from low orbit for a Red Bull advertisement, and companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries looking to mine the moon for its resources.

While the 1967 Space Treaty governs what countries can and cannot do on the moon, it leaves private companies unregulated. For countries like China, where many large companies are state-owned, the line separating the interests of government and business is unclear.

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US funds afoot in junior space – Roundup talk – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – January 30, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

We check in on sentiment about the junior market at the AME BC Roundup conference in Vancouver BC.

VANCOUVER, BC (MINEWEB) – I’ve had a lot of where-is-this-junior-market-going conversations in the past three days here at the Roundup conference in Vancouver BC. As at the recent Cambridge International VRIC show there appears to be a small pickup in optimism about junior market.

It’s not euphoria. Far from it. There’s still lots of healthy scepticism.

I bumped into a consulting geologist, Andrew Abraham with Paradigm Shift 3D Geological Consulting, on the way into the conference this morning and he noted that at so many recent conferences there was a similar buzz. Only, afterwards, it invariably soured. He recalled following up once positive sounding leads only to get non-committals: sorry, we still don’t have any cash to spend.

There have been a spat of financings in recent weeks, however. And that has not escaped many people’s attention here. Many here also take that as a good sign.

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Sudbury firm wins key space contract – by Jim Moodie (Sudbury Star – January 30, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

It would be a stretch to say he’s over the moon, but Dale Boucher is certainly excited by the chance his company’s drilling equipment could get on board for a lunar mission.

It’s a possibility that edged nearer to a probability this week, as the Canadian Space Agency awarded a contract to Deltion Innovations of Sudbury to tailor its technology to moon-like conditions. “It’s not a flight contract,” said Boucher. “But what it does is get us one step closer to that.”

Deltion’s DESTIN drill, which takes core samples, was put through its paces in 2012 at a NASA experiment in Hawaii. The Mauna Kea volcano features terrain similar to the cratered ball that orbits earth, and the Sudbury-designed drill did its bit, so to speak.

“It was a practice run and our system passed with flying colours,” said Boucher, adding the unit worked in conjunction with a rover designed by Neptec Designs. Last month, Deltion formed a strategic partnership with this Kanata-based company.

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