Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Love, fear, greed, and asteroids (featuring Martin Elvis)

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Love, fear, greed, and asteroids (featuring Martin Elvis) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:06
Speaker 1: When Spaniards first encountered platinum in Columbia, they named it platina,
0:10
Speaker 1: which means little silver. What they wanted was the silver
0:14
Speaker 1: and the platinum was a sort of unwanted impurity. But today,
0:19
Speaker 1: on the American Precious Metals Exchange, on September twenty third
0:23
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty four, the price for an ounce of
0:26
Speaker 1: platinum was about nine hundred and seventy eight US dollars,
0:29
Speaker 1: while silver was going for only about thirty one dollars.
0:33
Speaker 1: We have found lots of uses for platinum and other
0:36
Speaker 1: platinum group metals like palladium and rodium. The chemical industry
0:40
Speaker 1: uses platinum group metals in the production of nitric oxide,
0:43
Speaker 1: which we use to make fertilizers. The metals are also
0:46
Speaker 1: important in the automotive industry. For example, we use them
0:50
Speaker 1: in catalytic converters to try to clean up automobile exhausts,
0:54
Speaker 1: and they're also used in jewelry. Part of why these
0:57
Speaker 1: metals are so expensive is because they're super rare. For example,
1:01
Speaker 1: platinum we mostly get from South Africa and Russia, and
1:05
Speaker 1: the fact that we get a lot of it from
1:07
Speaker 1: Russia hits home a point when you only get something
1:10
Speaker 1: really important from a few places, there's a risk of
1:13
Speaker 1: the supply chain getting disrupted. For example, right now, we
1:16
Speaker 1: don't really want to buy from Russia because they've invaded Ukraine.
1:20
Speaker 1: The United States Geological Society has a Critical Minerals List,
1:24
Speaker 1: which is a list of stuff the US really needs
1:27
Speaker 1: that is either like rare or might be hard to get.
1:29
Speaker 1: And three of the six platinum group metals are included
1:33
Speaker 1: in the lists top three. So where can we get
1:35
Speaker 1: more of these valuable metals? Well? Out in space? Vast
1:39
Speaker 1: quantities of resources that are becoming rare or hard to
1:42
Speaker 1: get here on Earth are found in pretty vast quantities
1:46
Speaker 1: in the asteroids. There are asteroids that contain these platinum
1:50
Speaker 1: group metals at higher concentrations than we know of that
1:54
Speaker 1: can be found on Earth right now. And maybe you've
1:57
Speaker 1: even heard that the first trillionaire will be the first
1:59
Speaker 1: person who who can successfully mine asteroid resources and then
2:02
Speaker 1: sell them back here on Earth. But is there really
2:04
Speaker 1: that much money to be made in asteroid resources? And
2:08
Speaker 1: how expensive would it be to go out and get
2:09
Speaker 1: these resources in the first place, Do we have the
2:12
Speaker 1: technology that we need to do it? And if you
2:15
Speaker 1: can do it, who owns those asteroids. Is it legal
2:18
Speaker 1: to extract those resources and sell them on the open market?
2:21
Speaker 1: And what other resources are out there? And could we
2:24
Speaker 1: use those resources to build the first settlements in space.
2:28
Speaker 1: On today's episode, Love, Fear, Greed, and Asteroids, we talked
2:33
Speaker 1: to astronomer and space resources expert doctor Martin Elvis. Welcome
2:38
Speaker 1: to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
2:53
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle basist and I never
2:56
Speaker 2: want to go to space.
2:58
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Kelly. I'm a paris potologist and space settlement nerd,
3:02
Speaker 1: and you know I also don't ever want to go
3:04
Speaker 1: to space. I'm sure it would make me puke and
3:05
Speaker 1: I'm worried I would die.
3:08
Speaker 2: But you know, space might be filled with glittering jewels,
3:11
Speaker 2: which makes me wonder. Kelly, here's a question for you.
3:14
Speaker 2: What is the most expensive thing that you own?
3:18
Speaker 1: WHOA okay, so other than the farm that I live on,
3:22
Speaker 1: in my cars? And then I guess my laptop because
3:25
Speaker 1: I am a snooty person who really loves my MacBook Pro.
3:31
Speaker 1: I think those are my most expensive possessions.
3:33
Speaker 2: What about you me too, I'm not like a fancy
3:36
Speaker 2: jewelry person. I don't have like an emerald or some
3:39
Speaker 2: fancy gold chain or anything. I think my laptop is
3:42
Speaker 2: my most expensive purchase other than of course house and car.
3:45
Speaker 2: So I don't really worry about like getting burgled very
3:48
Speaker 2: much have anything expensive in there? You know, there's a
3:50
Speaker 2: bunch of old New Yorkers. You know what else is
3:53
Speaker 2: somebody going to steal from me?
3:54
Speaker 1: So we have a tractor, but I feel like that's
3:57
Speaker 1: just another form of car. But the tractor costs more
4:00
Speaker 1: than my laptop. But yeah, I don't like fancy stuff
4:02
Speaker 1: for the most part, because I know that i'd break
4:04
Speaker 1: it or my kids would, so why bother?
4:05
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly right. I don't trust myself with fancy stuff.
4:09
Speaker 2: But of course there's lots of fancy stuff on Earth
4:11
Speaker 2: and out in space. Right, It's filled with all sorts
4:15
Speaker 2: of shiny stuff that people could make money on.
4:17
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so is it? So there is a lot
4:19
Speaker 1: of shiny stuff out there that people could make money on.
4:22
Speaker 1: But maybe you've watched Star Wars. Of course you've watched
4:25
Speaker 1: Star Wars, and you know when like Han Solo and
4:27
Speaker 1: everyone's going through the asteroid field and there's like asteroids everywhere.
4:31
Speaker 1: They're dodging back and forth. Actually, those asteroids are way
4:34
Speaker 1: more spread out, like you could stand on one and
4:36
Speaker 1: maybe not see another one. And when you are standing
4:38
Speaker 1: on one, it's probably not a solid rock. In a
4:41
Speaker 1: lot of cases, it's like a rubble pile. We had
4:43
Speaker 1: Phil Plate talking about this the other day, how you
4:45
Speaker 1: might sink inside of one.
4:46
Speaker 2: They probably don't have huge space worms inside of them.
4:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know as a biologist, I would be interested
4:52
Speaker 1: in the space worms, but probably not so.
4:55
Speaker 2: Star Wars not a documentary.
4:57
Speaker 1: You're saying that, and the Martian not docum memories, and
5:01
Speaker 1: the Expanse and the Expanse none of those are documentaries,
5:03
Speaker 1: but they're all wonderful, and we'll be interviewing the Expanse
5:06
Speaker 1: guys for an upcoming episode, which I'm excited about, very excited.
5:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:09
Speaker 1: So I think that you imagine mining for space resources,
5:13
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't have a grasp on like how
5:15
Speaker 1: far away those resources are and how rare they are,
5:18
Speaker 1: and how spread out, and how little we understand like
5:20
Speaker 1: the location of these resources and the quantity of these
5:23
Speaker 1: resources out in the Solar System. It gets complicated, But
5:27
Speaker 1: we've got an expert today.
5:28
Speaker 2: Don't do your space pessimism thing. Kelly, I just want
5:31
Speaker 2: to think about huge nuggets of platinum floating in space
5:34
Speaker 2: that I could just grab onto and then I'm the
5:36
Speaker 2: first tillionaire or quadrillionaire. Don't rain on that parade.
5:39
Speaker 1: Okay, I won't rain on that parade, and I will
5:41
Speaker 1: say that every once in a while, I'll note that
5:42
Speaker 1: I have been told that I'm relentlessly depressing. Today's guest
5:46
Speaker 1: is the person who told me that I'm relentlessly depressing.
5:49
Speaker 1: So anyway, I look forward to Martin's optimism. But first,
5:52
Speaker 1: we wanted to get a handle on what people think
5:55
Speaker 1: are the most valuable resources out there. So I asked
5:58
Speaker 1: my social network what are the most valuable resources in space?
6:02
Speaker 1: And here are some of the answers that they gave us.
6:05
Speaker 2: Probably asteroids that we could mine, but maybe also sunlight.
6:10
Speaker 3: Okay, the most important resource from outer space, as far
6:13
Speaker 3: as I'm concerned, are ideas about the universe, understanding of
6:17
Speaker 3: where we are, appreciation of Earth as a resource and
6:21
Speaker 3: what it provides for us. All of the things that
6:24
Speaker 3: come from outer space, sort of intellectually rather than necessarily physically.
6:32
Speaker 4: I'm going to guess minerals, so I'm biased towards life
6:37
Speaker 4: the whole biophilia thing and so on. So I would
6:40
Speaker 4: think that some of the most valuable resources in space
6:43
Speaker 4: are actually not in space because they're birth found things
6:47
Speaker 4: like food and organic life. That being said, I guess
6:52
Speaker 4: the other valuable things in space would be water and oxygen,
6:58
Speaker 4: and I suppose sense there could be some theoretically valuable
7:03
Speaker 4: raw materials such as metal. And to get more abstract
7:08
Speaker 4: with it, one of the most valuable resources in space
7:11
Speaker 4: is possibility. Maybe there is unknown life or as yet
7:15
Speaker 4: unknown life out there, and maybe there are materials to
7:18
Speaker 4: do amazing new things with.
7:21
Speaker 1: It might just reflect the fact that these were like
7:24
Speaker 1: my friend group that got asked these questions, but I
7:28
Speaker 1: really loved that a common answer was possibility and the
7:32
Speaker 1: things that we could learn along the way, and not
7:34
Speaker 1: necessarily platinum or something. But I think realistically platinum is
7:39
Speaker 1: what we're going out there for. But I loved the optimism.
7:43
Speaker 2: It's nice to think that we're not just a new
7:45
Speaker 2: version of conquistadors, you know, out there to plunder and
7:49
Speaker 2: enrich ourselves. That you know, we're wanting to enrich ourselves
7:52
Speaker 2: in other ways intellectually scientifically, I want.
7:55
Speaker 1: To believe that too, and I say, thank goodness that
7:58
Speaker 1: there are not indigenous people living on those asteroids that
8:01
Speaker 1: we want to be mining.
8:02
Speaker 2: There could be indigenous microbes, there could be what about microbes,
8:05
Speaker 2: that's true. I wanted to say microbes are people too,
8:08
Speaker 2: but I know that they're not.
8:09
Speaker 1: So yeah, it does as a biologist, if there is
8:12
Speaker 1: another instance of life out there, like you know, the
8:14
Speaker 1: cases of evolution, there's an an equals too for us
8:16
Speaker 1: to discover. That would be way more exciting to me
8:20
Speaker 1: than platinum. But we'll just have to wait and see.
8:22
Speaker 2: But platinum is so shiny.
8:24
Speaker 1: It is so shiny, and it makes pretty jewelry. But
8:26
Speaker 1: I'm guessing neither of us own platinum jewelry.
8:29
Speaker 2: I own zero platinum, that's correct, Yes, I can confirm that.
8:33
Speaker 1: So platinum is used in catalytic converters to clean up
8:36
Speaker 1: automobile exhaust, so we might have some platinum in our cars.
8:40
Speaker 2: I have two electric cars, zero mission vehicles.
8:43
Speaker 1: Oh, I've got hybrids.
8:45
Speaker 2: But there might be platinum in some of the electronics.
8:47
Speaker 1: Actually, m hum, Okay, well you win the hippie contest
8:51
Speaker 1: we just had there. You have more points than I do.
8:54
Speaker 2: All right, more Berkeley points from me that's right.
8:56
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's go ahead and jump in and
8:59
Speaker 1: chat with our experts whose last name is Elvis, which
9:03
Speaker 1: is great.
9:03
Speaker 2: Is he gonna tell us all about what it's like
9:04
Speaker 2: to build a heartbreak hotel in space?
9:07
Speaker 1: You know, if I were a better podcast host, I
9:09
Speaker 1: would have looked up more Elvis song names. But I'm
9:12
Speaker 1: so glad that we're a team and you've got us covered.
9:16
Speaker 2: I got you back there, Kelly, got your back, Thanks, Daniel.
9:22
Speaker 3: All right.
9:22
Speaker 1: On today's show, we have doctor Martin Elvis. First thing
9:26
Speaker 1: to know is that he has an awesome last name,
9:28
Speaker 1: and second is that he's an astronomer at the Smithsonian
9:31
Speaker 1: Astrophysical Observatory. His work on quasars got him concerned about
9:35
Speaker 1: the cost of space telescopes. This got him interested in
9:38
Speaker 1: asteroid mining as a way to cut the costs of
9:40
Speaker 1: this research. I personally appreciate Martin's work because I think
9:44
Speaker 1: he's done an incredible job of drumming up loads of
9:47
Speaker 1: excitement for mining space resources while still making clearer that
9:50
Speaker 1: there's a lot of technological, political, and economic hurdles and
9:54
Speaker 1: reasons why space mining might be tough. Asteroid ninety two
9:58
Speaker 1: eighty three, Martin Elvis is named after him. That's pretty awesome.
10:01
Speaker 1: That's a new life goal of mine. And he wrote
10:03
Speaker 1: an excellent book called Asteroids, How Love, Fear, and Greed
10:08
Speaker 1: will determine our future in space. Welcome to the show, Martin, Hi,
10:12
Speaker 1: good to be here. Good to have you. How's your
10:14
Speaker 1: nay going?
10:15
Speaker 5: That's not very interesting, Actually it's all bureaucracy so far,
10:18
Speaker 5: but this will help.
10:20
Speaker 1: We had Phil Plate on the show to talk about
10:22
Speaker 1: how asteroids might crash into the Earth and cause problems.
10:25
Speaker 1: So you are going to give us a more upbeat
10:28
Speaker 1: perspective on asteroids today.
10:30
Speaker 5: I suspect, yeah, that's one of the things. But there's
10:33
Speaker 5: other things to love about asteroids too, So okay, well let's.
10:36
Speaker 1: Jump right into that. So your book lays out three
10:38
Speaker 1: motivations for working on resources in space, Love, fear, and greed.
10:43
Speaker 1: Let's start with love and fear. How do these motivations
10:46
Speaker 1: work in space?
10:46
Speaker 5: Heere is what you're totally phil Platt about, because that's
10:50
Speaker 5: killing off the dinosaurs and could it happen to us?
10:52
Speaker 5: And the answer is yes, and eventually it will. If
10:55
Speaker 5: we don't do something about it right now, there could
10:58
Speaker 5: be a thousand delays dinosaur killer type asteroids out there.
11:02
Speaker 5: We found nine hundred and something of them, but it
11:05
Speaker 5: only takes one, so we better find all of them, right,
11:09
Speaker 5: and there are plans to do that. So that's a
11:11
Speaker 5: really good thing. And then what do you do if
11:12
Speaker 5: you find one? You have to move it, change its
11:16
Speaker 5: orbit enough to stop it hitting the Earth. And that's
11:19
Speaker 5: why NASA did the dart test, hitting the moon of
11:22
Speaker 5: another asteroid and watching you change its orbit that way,
11:27
Speaker 5: the first time humanity has ever changed the Solar system,
11:30
Speaker 5: at least deliberately.
11:31
Speaker 1: That went well, amazingly.
11:33
Speaker 5: Well, yes, nice, let's hope we're not fooled by that,
11:37
Speaker 5: and say, okay, we don't need a really big rocket
11:39
Speaker 5: to hit this thing. It just a regular sized one.
11:42
Speaker 5: And then the next one that's actually going to kill
11:44
Speaker 5: us all doesn't respond as effectively as we'd like, then
11:47
Speaker 5: you're all going to die.
11:48
Speaker 1: Oh good, good, So I reckon.
11:52
Speaker 5: We need to practice just a few more times to
11:54
Speaker 5: make sure that wasn't an outlier.
11:56
Speaker 2: We don't want any of these asteroids to enter the
11:58
Speaker 2: atmosphere and become hunks and hunks of love.
12:00
Speaker 3: Do we?
12:03
Speaker 5: Is that some kind of Elvis joke? Kind?
12:06
Speaker 2: That was my best Elvis joke. But you raise a
12:12
Speaker 2: real issue there, which is that we don't know what
12:14
Speaker 2: these asteroids are made out of, so we don't know
12:16
Speaker 2: how they'll respond to a push. Right, some of them
12:18
Speaker 2: might be piles of rubble, other ones might be mostly ice.
12:21
Speaker 2: What do we know about what's inside these asteroids.
12:25
Speaker 5: That's right inside is really tricky. We know what the
12:28
Speaker 5: surfaces like, what is made of for about a thousand
12:32
Speaker 5: or two thousand of them, something like that, but there's
12:35
Speaker 5: like many, many times that out there that we'd love
12:38
Speaker 5: to know what they are. And then what you can
12:40
Speaker 5: do is take a spectrum look at the colors of
12:43
Speaker 5: an asteroids reflected sunlight, so it reflects sunlight like everything.
12:48
Speaker 5: And if it turns out that it's got a dip
12:50
Speaker 5: in its colors that one's missing basically way in the
12:54
Speaker 5: infrared beyond what we can see, then you know it's
12:56
Speaker 5: got water on the surface, or at least water is
12:59
Speaker 5: bound into clays.
13:00
Speaker 2: So it's a wet thing because it's absorbing light of
13:02
Speaker 2: a certain frequency.
13:04
Speaker 5: Water at absorbs a particular kind of frequency of light
13:07
Speaker 5: or wavelength of the light. But we can't do that
13:10
Speaker 5: very easily because that's a very difficult wavelength to look
13:13
Speaker 5: at from the ground, so we really need a telescope
13:16
Speaker 5: in orbit to do that, and I think some observations
13:19
Speaker 5: with the James web Space telescope are trying to do
13:22
Speaker 5: that for a few objects, but that's much too valuable
13:26
Speaker 5: piece of equipment to spend a huge amount of time
13:29
Speaker 5: and doing asteroids. Most astronomers think of them as vermin
13:32
Speaker 5: of the skies, right, just a little bit of rock
13:34
Speaker 5: get in the way.
13:35
Speaker 2: What about the theoretical side. You've told us about what
13:38
Speaker 2: we could do to see these asteroids bounce light off
13:40
Speaker 2: of them, But what about our models of solar system
13:42
Speaker 2: and development? Do they tell us that asteroids should be
13:45
Speaker 2: made of the same stuff that the Earth is made
13:46
Speaker 2: out of? Or different stuff?
13:48
Speaker 5: Ballpark? The whole solar systems made out of the same stuff, right,
13:52
Speaker 5: But in the case of small things like the Earth
13:55
Speaker 5: or asteroids, most of the hydrogen has disappeared. That's only
13:59
Speaker 5: left attached to the big planets that have a strong
14:03
Speaker 5: enough gravity to do that. So apart from hydrogen and
14:06
Speaker 5: some helium too, then we're more or less the same. Now,
14:10
Speaker 5: all geologists and planetary scientists got really annoyed with there
14:13
Speaker 5: no they're not. There's fascinating differences, yeah, yeah, true, but
14:18
Speaker 5: overall everything has the same composition. The differences come from
14:22
Speaker 5: processes like when you make an asteroid or any big
14:25
Speaker 5: enough body, it starts to melt and get hot because
14:29
Speaker 5: of the radioactive decay on the elements, and that's enough
14:33
Speaker 5: to liquefy modest sized planets, including the Earth at first,
14:37
Speaker 5: and even the normally the precursors of the asteroids called planetesimals.
14:43
Speaker 5: They were like a thousand miles across, and that was
14:45
Speaker 5: big enough that they kept enough heat in that they
14:48
Speaker 5: melted and differentiated. That is, the heavy stuff fell to
14:52
Speaker 5: the center and the light stuff stayed on the top,
14:56
Speaker 5: and so you get the same kind of structure you
14:59
Speaker 5: have on Earth, where you have metal core made of
15:02
Speaker 5: solid iron and whatever dissolves in iron, which turns out
15:06
Speaker 5: to be very interesting because those are the platinum group metals,
15:09
Speaker 5: very expensive things because they're rare, and they're rare because
15:13
Speaker 5: most of the platinum on Earth is six thousand kilometers
15:16
Speaker 5: beneath your feet in the core of the Earth.
15:18
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's not very helpful. Yeah.
15:20
Speaker 5: Around the metal core is a pile of silicate rock,
15:23
Speaker 5: which is kind of not interesting to me that I'm
15:27
Speaker 5: sure the details are really fascinating. And then sometimes at
15:31
Speaker 5: least around that is a sort of crust which isn't
15:35
Speaker 5: quite the same as it's a bit that never got
15:37
Speaker 5: hot enough, so it's still got the original composition of
15:41
Speaker 5: the Solar System. And that's where there's lots of water
15:44
Speaker 5: because water is very common in space. It turns out
15:47
Speaker 5: not what you'd think, but it is because hydrogen oxygen
15:50
Speaker 5: are two of the most common elements, and that's the
15:52
Speaker 5: simplest thing molecule they can make, and it happens in
15:55
Speaker 5: all sorts of star forming regions. Dark clouds are full
15:58
Speaker 5: of water.
16:00
Speaker 1: That's lucky for us.
16:01
Speaker 2: I think that's something a lot of people don't appreciate
16:02
Speaker 2: how much water there is in the Solar System, you know.
16:05
Speaker 2: They imagine we'll have to bring water with us from
16:07
Speaker 2: Earth or something. But like the ice giants are basically
16:10
Speaker 2: huge balls of water, right.
16:12
Speaker 5: There are icy moons that are pretty solidly water.
16:15
Speaker 2: What about Neptune and Urinus.
16:17
Speaker 5: Well, when they call them ice, we're not talking about
16:20
Speaker 5: water ice.
16:21
Speaker 2: Oh, Astronomers have a different meaning of the word ice,
16:23
Speaker 2: don't they, As we.
16:24
Speaker 5: Do with metals. The astronomer's periodic table says hydrogen helium metals,
16:32
Speaker 5: So you know, we like to gloss over fiddly detailed
16:35
Speaker 5: for convenience of some time.
16:36
Speaker 1: One of the things to me that was most surprising
16:38
Speaker 1: in your book was that you argue that one of
16:41
Speaker 1: the first resources that's going to be the most valuable
16:43
Speaker 1: in space is water, which I think we take for
16:46
Speaker 1: granted because we live on like a super wet planet.
16:50
Speaker 1: Can you go into a little bit more about why
16:52
Speaker 1: water will be so valuable in space.
16:54
Speaker 5: If you're living on the International Space Station right now,
16:56
Speaker 5: you don't use a lot of water. Actually, you reuse
16:59
Speaker 5: a lot of water, as you were pointing out in a.
17:01
Speaker 1: Recent talk yesterday's coffee.
17:04
Speaker 5: Yesterday's coffee.
17:05
Speaker 3: Mmm.
17:07
Speaker 5: But I can't see after the first few tourist types
17:11
Speaker 5: go up there, or researchers or industrial people, they're not
17:15
Speaker 5: going to put up with the kind of conditions that
17:17
Speaker 5: these right stuff kind of astronauts do. I mean they
17:20
Speaker 5: have that sort of a macho thing about it. I
17:22
Speaker 5: think that yeah, we can put up with this. That's
17:25
Speaker 5: not going to fly for most people. So they're going
17:27
Speaker 5: to need showers toilets that really work. Eventually, they're going
17:31
Speaker 5: to have to grow crops in orbit because it's ridiculously
17:35
Speaker 5: expensive to take a salond from the ground and bring
17:38
Speaker 5: it to the space station, and it wouldn't be all
17:40
Speaker 5: that fresh either, right, So there's going to be a
17:42
Speaker 5: bigger demand for water in orbit if there are all
17:45
Speaker 5: these other people going to orbit, and that depends on
17:47
Speaker 5: how well tourism really takes off, which I think is
17:50
Speaker 5: likely to be getting a lot cheaper quite quickly once
17:53
Speaker 5: the initial exploration has been done, trials have been done.
17:57
Speaker 5: If we get real space stations that replace the International
18:01
Speaker 5: Space Station, which would be a lot cheaper to operate
18:04
Speaker 5: and use, then it could become economical to first have
18:07
Speaker 5: a space hotel, and that would be occupied by people
18:12
Speaker 5: who think five star hotels are a bit of a calmdown,
18:14
Speaker 5: so they would have to have some serious facilities on
18:17
Speaker 5: board to make them comfortable. Then you're going to have
18:21
Speaker 5: ordinary scientists doing research, not astronaut scientists, because at the
18:25
Speaker 5: moment you have to learn Russian and then spend two
18:27
Speaker 5: years training for every mission. No a scientist can actually
18:31
Speaker 5: afford to be away from their work for two years
18:34
Speaker 5: because you completely get out of touch with where the
18:36
Speaker 5: field's got to I'm sure you appreciate that.
18:38
Speaker 2: Can we go back to space hotels? Though? I feel
18:40
Speaker 2: like I've been hearing projections that space hotels are ten
18:43
Speaker 2: years away forever. When do you think we're going to
18:45
Speaker 2: have the first like space hotel and people can actually
18:48
Speaker 2: go and spend their honeymoon, you know, looking at the stars.
18:50
Speaker 5: I was pretty keen on Axiom Space because they seem
18:53
Speaker 5: to be clued into the whole NASSA network and they
18:56
Speaker 5: knew what was going on. They seemed to have a
18:58
Speaker 5: good plan. I apparently very in financial difficulties right now,
19:02
Speaker 5: so that's unfortunate. They were planning for like twenty thirty
19:05
Speaker 5: to launch a module, one piece of a space station
19:07
Speaker 5: that would start off attached the International Space Station, but
19:11
Speaker 5: then later detach once the International Space Station has reached
19:15
Speaker 5: its end of life. And I read just now this
19:18
Speaker 5: morning that there's a leak in one of the Russian
19:21
Speaker 5: pieces of the space station that's been there since twenty
19:24
Speaker 5: nineteen and presumably getting a little worse and getting people
19:28
Speaker 5: really worried. Now if it breaks off, what does that mean? Hikes,
19:31
Speaker 5: that's exaggerating. I don't know that that's going to happen,
19:33
Speaker 5: but they're concerned. Let's see.
19:35
Speaker 1: I think leaks happen on the International Space Station and
19:38
Speaker 1: other space stations before that way more often than I
19:42
Speaker 1: would be comfortable with if I were an astronaut. There
19:45
Speaker 1: was a story a little while ago about a soyez
19:47
Speaker 1: having a hole in it that appeared to have been drilled,
19:49
Speaker 1: and it was not clear if well the soyers was
19:51
Speaker 1: being made. Somebody accidentally drilled a hole and then patched
19:54
Speaker 1: it in a crappy way, like didn't do enough, and
19:57
Speaker 1: then when it got to space the patch came off.
19:59
Speaker 1: Or then the Russians were saying that one of the
20:01
Speaker 1: astronauts wanted to go back to Earth really quickly and
20:04
Speaker 1: was angry, and so they drilled a hole to try
20:06
Speaker 1: to like force an emergency landing. International politics on the ISS.
20:11
Speaker 1: It's exciting stuff.
20:12
Speaker 5: That's just the case of somebody going crazy, right.
20:15
Speaker 1: That's right space madness.
20:17
Speaker 2: But the point is everything is harder in space. I
20:19
Speaker 2: think running a hotel down here on Earth is a
20:21
Speaker 2: pretty small margin business. Twenty thirty seems very optimistic for
20:25
Speaker 2: having a space hotel. Are we talking decades and decades
20:28
Speaker 2: into the future.
20:29
Speaker 5: I don't think so. I mean, if everything works with well,
20:32
Speaker 5: even without starship, the SpaceX starship, which it should bring
20:35
Speaker 5: the cost of doing things and getting to low Earth
20:38
Speaker 5: orbit down by tenfold, we still have just with Folcan
20:42
Speaker 5: nine and presumably with Blue Origins coming up their new
20:46
Speaker 5: Glen rocket, that should enable access to space at a
20:50
Speaker 5: much better price than people are currently paying. What the
20:53
Speaker 5: guy's name, Jared something who just went up and did
20:56
Speaker 5: a space.
20:57
Speaker 1: Walk, I don't remember his name, but yeah, they're.
20:59
Speaker 5: Paying tens of millions of dollars, maybe fifty million dollars
21:02
Speaker 5: per person. That's kind of too much for a real market.
21:05
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a billionaire market. That's great, but then
21:09
Speaker 5: there's no reason to test to cost that much. I
21:11
Speaker 5: think they're paying a premium for being first, and it
21:14
Speaker 5: should come down to just a few million handfuls of
21:17
Speaker 5: millions soon. So you know, I just opened that piggybank
21:20
Speaker 5: and awhere you go.
21:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm still not going.
21:23
Speaker 5: You've read all about the dangerous holes that get drilled
21:26
Speaker 5: in the side of.
21:27
Speaker 1: These things, you know that would be on my mind too,
21:30
Speaker 1: But also I don't have the money.
21:31
Speaker 5: But there is a much bigger market for one million
21:33
Speaker 5: dollars than for ten million. Dollars and so right, so.
21:36
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. I can imagine some people saving,
21:38
Speaker 1: you know, their whole life for like that amazing trip,
21:40
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it would be incredible holes in the
21:43
Speaker 1: habitats aside. But so you had mentioned that, like tourists
21:47
Speaker 1: are probably not going to want to drink water that
21:49
Speaker 1: was recycled from urine, and so they're going to want
21:52
Speaker 1: clean water. Why would you get it from asteroids or
21:56
Speaker 1: somewhere else in space rather than shipping it from Earth?
21:58
Speaker 5: Even with starship, it's going to cost you a million
22:01
Speaker 5: dollars a ton just pure water, and then you have
22:03
Speaker 5: to put in a container of some kind, so it
22:05
Speaker 5: probably goes up to two million dollars a ton, So
22:08
Speaker 5: it's still expensive even then, and if you need many tons,
22:13
Speaker 5: maybe it's cheaper to bring it from an asteroid, but
22:16
Speaker 5: that depends a lot on whether we can bring the
22:18
Speaker 5: cost of mining an asteroid down to something less than that.
22:22
Speaker 5: So it's a business case. It's not a physics problem, right.
22:25
Speaker 5: The physics tells you that the energy terms, it's much
22:28
Speaker 5: better to get it from an asteroid because you're both
22:31
Speaker 5: already out in space away from the gravity well of
22:34
Speaker 5: the Earth. As opposed to trying to climb out of
22:37
Speaker 5: that every time. So energy wise, yeah, it's absolutely much
22:41
Speaker 5: better to go to the asteroid or the moon. There
22:43
Speaker 5: are asteroids that are easier to reach and get back
22:46
Speaker 5: from than the moon.
22:47
Speaker 2: But I want to point out, and we'll come back
22:49
Speaker 2: to this later, I think that this is a scenario
22:51
Speaker 2: where you find the resource in space and you use
22:54
Speaker 2: the resource in space. It's not like you're mining it
22:56
Speaker 2: in the asteroids and then you're bringing it down to
22:58
Speaker 2: Earth or something. Craasies like that in situ, right, But
23:02
Speaker 2: this touches on sort of the bigger picture here. Kelly
23:04
Speaker 2: talked about love and fear, and you're really talking about
23:07
Speaker 2: business like greed.
23:09
Speaker 5: Well, this is sorry, How did I get onto that?
23:11
Speaker 5: It's just my natural averice.
23:15
Speaker 1: You're in the US, so it's fascinating.
23:17
Speaker 2: If capitalism is really going to drive our exploration into space,
23:22
Speaker 2: you see that as the future of this field.
23:25
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, the trouble is I wrote this for a
23:30
Speaker 5: conference called Building a Space for Civilization. I wrote this
23:33
Speaker 5: chapter where I said, you know, we talk about going
23:36
Speaker 5: to the stars and thinking that we'll take our better
23:39
Speaker 5: solves there, but immediately when we start talking about how
23:42
Speaker 5: we're going to do it. It's the same old stuff
23:44
Speaker 5: we do anyway, and we're really just going to reproduce
23:47
Speaker 5: our civilization in space. You know, it'll look a bit different.
23:50
Speaker 5: But the things that are driving us so like profit,
23:54
Speaker 5: it's how we get started, for sure. Is there any
23:57
Speaker 5: way to not do that later on and get an
24:00
Speaker 5: or perhaps nobler way of doing things, maybe that we
24:03
Speaker 5: don't need anything like that. And it's fine, but I
24:06
Speaker 5: get a bit depressed because in some ways, because in
24:09
Speaker 5: the longer term, if we keep on growing our economy
24:13
Speaker 5: the way we have for the past two hundred years
24:15
Speaker 5: since the industrial revolution started, then in four hundred years
24:18
Speaker 5: we'll have finished with all the resources of solar system
24:22
Speaker 5: that are accessible. Because it's exponential growth and that runs away,
24:26
Speaker 5: right you go one, two, four, eight, sixteen thirty two,
24:30
Speaker 5: and very soon you're into big numbers.
24:32
Speaker 1: I thought. Our population so like the number of babies
24:36
Speaker 1: that every woman is having globally is projected to fall
24:39
Speaker 1: below replacement rates, so every you know, man and woman
24:43
Speaker 1: on average will have less than two kids. Is that
24:45
Speaker 1: going to help with the resource use? It seems like
24:48
Speaker 1: it should go down at some point.
24:49
Speaker 5: You would think so. And also there's some kind of
24:51
Speaker 5: belief that some numbers to suggest that energy use and
24:56
Speaker 5: material use per dollar of GDP is going down. So
25:00
Speaker 5: we're getting better at making things that don't actually need
25:04
Speaker 5: huge amounts of iron and concrete and so on, And
25:07
Speaker 5: that's like information and related stuff mostly. I assume on
25:12
Speaker 5: the land there is a bigger physical underpinning to that.
25:14
Speaker 5: And will we reach a saturation point in that? I
25:18
Speaker 5: don't know. Yeah, I guess I was getting annoyed in
25:20
Speaker 5: a way with Jeff Bezos because he's saying he has
25:23
Speaker 5: a vision of a future where there's a trillion people
25:27
Speaker 5: living and working in space. You know. First of all,
25:30
Speaker 5: I guess he said a trillion because it's the only
25:32
Speaker 5: number that still impresses him. He's really wanting that trillion here.
25:39
Speaker 1: He might get there.
25:40
Speaker 5: He might, He might, and so might mister Musk if
25:43
Speaker 5: he doesn't mess up further.
25:45
Speaker 2: Who knows, But what's your objection to the number of
25:48
Speaker 2: a trillion?
25:48
Speaker 5: If you imagine a trillion people living in working in space,
25:51
Speaker 5: they can't be all on planets because there aren't enough
25:53
Speaker 5: room on planets, So you have to be living in
25:55
Speaker 5: these artificial space cities that are rotating cylinders, so you
25:59
Speaker 5: stand on the inside of the wall of it. I mean,
26:01
Speaker 5: if you feel one g gravity like Earth. But I
26:04
Speaker 5: looked at I happen to have Handy just over there
26:07
Speaker 5: on my shelf. As nineteen seventy seven study of these things,
26:10
Speaker 5: And it turns out, although the illustrations show pictures of
26:14
Speaker 5: greenery stretching away and then Renaissance cathedral here and a
26:18
Speaker 5: French bistro there, it's actually going to be kind of crowded.
26:22
Speaker 5: It's more like the Bronx. The amount of space you
26:25
Speaker 5: get is really small per person. You get a two
26:27
Speaker 5: bedroom apartment per person and a little bit of outdoor
26:31
Speaker 5: space per person, but for a million people it adds
26:33
Speaker 5: up to like five central parks. I think it is wow,
26:36
Speaker 5: not small, but there's nothing like a wilderness area that
26:40
Speaker 5: you can really get lost in for a few days
26:42
Speaker 5: that won't be available.
26:44
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and we'll get back to
26:46
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss my chance to rant about
26:48
Speaker 1: rotating space stations, So when we get back from the break,
26:51
Speaker 1: I'll take my moment, okay, and we're back. One of
27:10
Speaker 1: the other things that I wonder about when I look
27:12
Speaker 1: at those rotating space stations so first of all, the
27:14
Speaker 1: xterior is always glass, which I think is just not
27:16
Speaker 1: going to work with space radiation that you're going to
27:19
Speaker 1: get baked inside of there. But then also like you
27:22
Speaker 1: look along the bike tire shaped habitat and there's no
27:27
Speaker 1: airlocks separating each of the different things, right, and so
27:30
Speaker 1: if base is filled with junk, if something crashes one
27:32
Speaker 1: of your windows, everyone's getting sucked into the abyss.
27:35
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, you've got to divide it into air tight sections.
27:39
Speaker 1: Yes.
27:40
Speaker 5: And as a bio person, you'll be pleased to realize
27:43
Speaker 5: that when your food growing areas also very much have
27:46
Speaker 5: to be sealed off and kept pristine because if you
27:49
Speaker 5: get potato blight or the equivalent in one of them
27:52
Speaker 5: and it spreads, you all die. Yeah, So it's going
27:55
Speaker 5: to be at least I would say ten or a
27:56
Speaker 5: dozen sections.
27:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:58
Speaker 5: On the plus side, that will make it hargh of
28:00
Speaker 5: any years there would be dictator to take over the
28:03
Speaker 5: whole place, because each sector would have to be self sufficient,
28:06
Speaker 5: so they couldn't say I will turn off your oxygen
28:09
Speaker 5: supply if you don't do everything I say.
28:11
Speaker 1: Charles Kuqul would be very happy with this design.
28:14
Speaker 5: That's how it came up because he was talking about
28:17
Speaker 5: his freedom engineering and his modular designed stuff. It's just
28:21
Speaker 5: like the Titanic, only slightly improved, separate sections hermetically sealed.
28:27
Speaker 5: And then it's difficult and each one would have to
28:29
Speaker 5: have escape ponds that could get to the next one
28:32
Speaker 5: of these space cities, and.
28:33
Speaker 2: These space cities presumably were building them in space, and
28:36
Speaker 2: so we're going to need resources, which I hope takes
28:38
Speaker 2: us back to the question of asteroid mining. What's in
28:41
Speaker 2: the asteroids and can we use those asteroids to like
28:44
Speaker 2: build these fantastical space.
28:45
Speaker 5: Yes, indeed, because precursors of the asteroids were these planetesimals,
28:49
Speaker 5: But then they weren't formed on random orbits, so they
28:52
Speaker 5: tended to collide with each other and break up. And
28:55
Speaker 5: so the cause the iron cores had got exposed. And
28:59
Speaker 5: there's a mission on its way to sixteen Psyche called Psyche,
29:03
Speaker 5: which is terrible idea confusion all around. You mean the
29:08
Speaker 5: asteroid or you mean the mission or anyway Psyche is
29:12
Speaker 5: about to see if sixteen Psyche, which is the formal
29:15
Speaker 5: name of the asteroid, is made of solid metal, is
29:19
Speaker 5: it really the core of a planet or planetesimal, a
29:21
Speaker 5: little planet and if it is, then that there's huge
29:25
Speaker 5: amounts of iron there, and iron in orbit could be
29:29
Speaker 5: used for construction. For instance, you could build space cities,
29:33
Speaker 5: or you could build giant telescopes. Oh Am, I letting
29:36
Speaker 5: my astronomy show.
29:38
Speaker 1: So all of the use cases for the resources that
29:41
Speaker 1: you've noted have been in space. Is there any resource
29:44
Speaker 1: that would be worth bringing back to Earth to sell?
29:47
Speaker 1: Is the only reason to go out and use the
29:48
Speaker 1: space resources?
29:49
Speaker 5: To use them well talked about? Right? One of them
29:52
Speaker 5: is not from asteroids, but only from the Moon. The
29:55
Speaker 5: one from asteroids is the platinum group metals, because I
29:58
Speaker 5: mentioned they dissolved in liquid iron early on and got
30:01
Speaker 5: sank to the core. So sixteen psyche should be rich
30:04
Speaker 5: in platinum and palladium and other very expensive, rare precious metals.
30:10
Speaker 5: So you could mine those and bring them back to
30:12
Speaker 5: Earth and in principle make a profit. You could sell
30:15
Speaker 5: them for a lot of money anyway, Right, And I
30:17
Speaker 5: did ask some banking people, and they thought that the
30:20
Speaker 5: market was elastic if I got it the right way round.
30:23
Speaker 5: That is, if you sell more, the price stays constant
30:26
Speaker 5: as opposed to declining. You've saturated the market or whatever.
30:29
Speaker 1: It's called okay.
30:30
Speaker 2: But again, these metals are also present here on Earth,
30:33
Speaker 2: and presumably we've got much more of them in the
30:36
Speaker 2: Earth than we do in the asteroids. Is the reason
30:39
Speaker 2: they might be accessible economically in asteroids, just because asteroids
30:42
Speaker 2: are smaller, so it's easier to get to them. You
30:44
Speaker 2: have to dig as far into them as you do
30:46
Speaker 2: into the Earth.
30:47
Speaker 5: No, I think in total the asteroids will have more
30:51
Speaker 5: accessible platinum than the whole of the crust of the
30:54
Speaker 5: Earth because we can't get to the core and mine
30:57
Speaker 5: our own platinum from the molten core of the Earth.
31:00
Speaker 5: But most of the platinum, which I didn't really get
31:03
Speaker 5: into it comes from collisions with asteroids in the early
31:06
Speaker 5: Solar System. They used to plunge in, go right through
31:09
Speaker 5: the crust, but then get recycled into the crust through
31:12
Speaker 5: convection and stuff, or as geology things that happen.
31:15
Speaker 2: I don't know this, but it really is about access,
31:19
Speaker 2: it's about where they are on the object.
31:21
Speaker 5: There's also the strategic thing that there are two places
31:24
Speaker 5: which produce ninety something percent of the platinum in the world,
31:27
Speaker 5: and that's Southern Africa and Russia. Neither is a particularly
31:32
Speaker 5: stable place, so you might worry that the supply would
31:35
Speaker 5: disappear or be highly curtailed at some point, But they're
31:38
Speaker 5: worth fifty million dollars a ton roughly, so you don't
31:42
Speaker 5: have to bring back ten tons, and you've got a
31:44
Speaker 5: serious amount of money. But of course you have to
31:46
Speaker 5: be able to bring that amount back for less than
31:49
Speaker 5: you going to get paid for it. So whether that's
31:52
Speaker 5: true is another business case. And I don't know that.
31:54
Speaker 1: Could you walk us through, like where are these asteroids?
31:57
Speaker 1: What kind of technology would we need to extract this stuff?
32:00
Speaker 1: Like what would it look like to actually try to
32:02
Speaker 1: do this?
32:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, so absolutely always the asteroids you first go to
32:06
Speaker 5: are the ones that are energetically easiest to reach. That
32:10
Speaker 5: means your rocket has to be less powerful than it
32:13
Speaker 5: would otherwise, and that most of those are in what
32:17
Speaker 5: orbits that come near to the Earth, and they're cleverly
32:19
Speaker 5: named near Earth objects. They're not always near the Earth,
32:22
Speaker 5: but they do come near the Earth at some point.
32:24
Speaker 5: They're only ten or twenty thousand of those that are
32:26
Speaker 5: reasonable size, like because a football stadium or something like that,
32:31
Speaker 5: which you could mine, And then only a few percent
32:33
Speaker 5: of those are actually going to be made of iron
32:37
Speaker 5: and have platinum in them, and of those only a
32:40
Speaker 5: quarter will be rich in platinum. And that's based just
32:43
Speaker 5: on the numbers we get from picking up iron meteorites
32:46
Speaker 5: on Earth and which are just little fragments of asteroids,
32:50
Speaker 5: so we have some idea how often we get that.
32:52
Speaker 5: So some small fraction, like one or two percent of
32:55
Speaker 5: all asteroids are going to be rich in platinum, and
32:59
Speaker 5: that comes down to two hundred or so candidates, and
33:04
Speaker 5: you would go to the biggest one because that obviously
33:06
Speaker 5: gives you the most payoff and start mining it. Extracting
33:11
Speaker 5: platinum from these asteroids, although they're rich in platinum, that's
33:15
Speaker 5: still grams per tone, so a fraction of an ounce
33:19
Speaker 5: per ton, a small fraction of an ounce per ton,
33:21
Speaker 5: So it actually takes quite a bit of clever chemistry
33:24
Speaker 5: to extract that platinum and the other metals there, like palladium.
33:29
Speaker 2: And even before you extract it from the ore, how
33:32
Speaker 2: do you get the ore? I mean, you have to
33:34
Speaker 2: deliver some mining equipment to this asteroid.
33:37
Speaker 5: Presumably you've done all your prospecting remotely with telescopes, and
33:41
Speaker 5: then by going nearby and getting samples of the surface
33:44
Speaker 5: or maybe hit it with a laser, let it evaporate
33:47
Speaker 5: and see what it's made of that way, or of course,
33:49
Speaker 5: my favorite method is X ray fluorescence, which is because
33:52
Speaker 5: I'm an extra astronomer, so I naturally think of that.
33:54
Speaker 5: And the Sun's X ray from the Sun hit the
33:56
Speaker 5: surface and that excites the atoms to emit and part
34:00
Speaker 5: killar energies of X ray wavelengths, and and you can
34:04
Speaker 5: tell what it's made of from that, and it's particularly
34:06
Speaker 5: good for heavy elements like iron and platinum and on. Anyway, however,
34:11
Speaker 5: you done it. You've done that that kind of prospecting work.
34:14
Speaker 5: Now you have to send out quite a few tons
34:17
Speaker 5: I would think of mining equipment. Right, So the Osiris
34:21
Speaker 5: REX spacecraft weighed two tons when it got to Benu,
34:25
Speaker 5: the little asteroid Benu, which is about the size of
34:28
Speaker 5: asteroid you'd be mining. You think, well, two tons, that's
34:31
Speaker 5: about the same as an F one fifty pickup. So
34:34
Speaker 5: that's pretty hefty, you know, seriously. But then you're backing
34:37
Speaker 5: that F one fifty up to the rose bowl and saying, okay,
34:41
Speaker 5: I'm going to start digging and taking away the stadium
34:44
Speaker 5: and get extracting the valuable bits from it. It's like Yeah,
34:48
Speaker 5: let's say that's optimistic or a minimum. So you have
34:51
Speaker 5: to get at least two tons, probably ten tons at
34:54
Speaker 5: least before you can get serious about mining.
34:57
Speaker 2: But the mechanics of mining, like the technology the robots
35:00
Speaker 2: that we have here on Earth, apply at all. Or
35:03
Speaker 2: is it completely different problem to get the ore off
35:06
Speaker 2: the surface and into your processing pipeline.
35:09
Speaker 5: We'll know a lot more about that after Psyche has
35:12
Speaker 5: done its job. Because is it one solid lump of
35:15
Speaker 5: iron like it melted, it's set, solidified and never broke
35:18
Speaker 5: up again. Or is it a pile of rubble, which
35:22
Speaker 5: like many rocky asteroids are made of just piles of rubble,
35:25
Speaker 5: in which case you can actually scoop it up pretty easily.
35:28
Speaker 5: So it's going to make a huge difference whether it's
35:30
Speaker 5: solid iron or not. If you're after the iron, it's great.
35:34
Speaker 5: You can just chop it into pieces and here's a
35:37
Speaker 5: chunk and you take it home.
35:38
Speaker 2: Sorry, how do you chop solid iron into pieces in
35:41
Speaker 2: space with a saw? I mean they do that in
35:47
Speaker 2: my garage all the time.
35:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course you do. But you have to worry
35:51
Speaker 5: that different problems come up. I mean you have to
35:54
Speaker 5: have to use special vacuum grease to keep it and
35:57
Speaker 5: you'd have to have some way of cooling yet because
36:00
Speaker 5: it's going to get hot, and there's probably a bunch
36:02
Speaker 5: of other issues coming up. But I don't think you
36:05
Speaker 5: can actually tell now what the best way of doing
36:08
Speaker 5: it is. You're going to have to learn about these asteroids,
36:12
Speaker 5: do some little tests, and there's going to be a
36:14
Speaker 5: lot of learning on this.
36:16
Speaker 2: And that makes me wonder about the balance between, you know,
36:18
Speaker 2: government research funding and capitalism business funding. I think a
36:22
Speaker 2: lot of times in our history we've had the government
36:25
Speaker 2: fund research for a long time when it was very
36:27
Speaker 2: long term before it would have any payoff, and then
36:30
Speaker 2: at some point it becomes commercial and industry rushes in
36:33
Speaker 2: and of course there's a lot more resources. Do you
36:35
Speaker 2: think we're at that point where like business is ready
36:38
Speaker 2: to invest in these technologies to develop these tools even
36:42
Speaker 2: when we don't know, like what the basic mechanism will
36:45
Speaker 2: be for extracting this stuff from the asteroid, or do
36:47
Speaker 2: we need a little bit more government funded exploration to
36:50
Speaker 2: answer these questions.
36:51
Speaker 5: I would think we're the kind of the beginning of
36:53
Speaker 5: the wedge where commercial interests so if you start doing
36:56
Speaker 5: things we've had our first round of asteroid mind companies
37:00
Speaker 5: that were all very famous for a short while and
37:03
Speaker 5: then they're fifteen minutes was up and they didn't get anywhere.
37:07
Speaker 5: There's a new crop coming up. Now. They should always
37:10
Speaker 5: be doing this. This is what capitalist systems do. You
37:13
Speaker 5: keep trying until someday you'll hit the right moment of
37:16
Speaker 5: which to do this. Before that, everybody fails and then
37:19
Speaker 5: suddenly it's a great success. And if you wait longer,
37:23
Speaker 5: then you've missed the boat, right, So you have to
37:24
Speaker 5: keep trying. But I'd say this, first of all, we're
37:28
Speaker 5: going to know a lot more about the whole asteroid
37:30
Speaker 5: population in ten years time, and that's not an arbitrary time.
37:35
Speaker 5: The telescope now just starting up in Chile, which is
37:39
Speaker 5: the Verira Rubin Observatory, and is doing what they call
37:43
Speaker 5: a large scale survey in space and time, which means
37:47
Speaker 5: they take a photograph of the all the night sky
37:49
Speaker 5: that ever comes up in South America. Every three nights.
37:53
Speaker 5: They cover the whole sky, and they are particularly working
37:55
Speaker 5: to make sure that they can see asteroids which have
37:57
Speaker 5: come up as look like stars, but they move, which
38:00
Speaker 5: stars don't. So then now you know it's a little
38:03
Speaker 5: rock in the Solar System going around somewhere, and by
38:06
Speaker 5: tracking how our fasts moving and exactly which way it's going,
38:09
Speaker 5: you can get its orbit, and we will get the
38:11
Speaker 5: colors of this thing, and you'll be able to tell
38:14
Speaker 5: for sure if it's just a boring, stony asteroid made
38:18
Speaker 5: of silicate rock. And that's all the ones we know
38:22
Speaker 5: now that are near the Earth, eighty five percent of
38:25
Speaker 5: just rock. And that's not very interesting toward capitalist anyway,
38:30
Speaker 5: we have rocks here are if you're a geologist, that's
38:32
Speaker 5: very different. Right.
38:35
Speaker 1: So we've talked a little bit about how we don't
38:36
Speaker 1: really know enough about the asteroids, and because we don't
38:39
Speaker 1: know enough about the asteroids, we don't really know enough
38:41
Speaker 1: about what kind of techniques we would need to extract
38:43
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're interested in. Let's take a break,
38:46
Speaker 1: and when we come back, let's talk about the legal
38:48
Speaker 1: aspects of going out there and collecting the asteroids. So
39:08
Speaker 1: you mentioned that there was a round of asteroid mining
39:12
Speaker 1: companies that kind of peaked and fell, So Planetary Resources
39:16
Speaker 1: I think is probably one of them that you had
39:17
Speaker 1: in mind. And I was talking to Chris Lawicki, who
39:19
Speaker 1: was one of the big guys at Planetary Resources, and
39:22
Speaker 1: he helped get some of the US laws on the
39:25
Speaker 1: books to try to clarify what's allowed with these asteroids.
39:28
Speaker 1: But my sense from talking to him was that a
39:31
Speaker 1: lack of clarity about what's allowed in space was a
39:34
Speaker 1: big problem for planetary resources and getting investors. So what
39:38
Speaker 1: is the current status of Like, if you land on
39:41
Speaker 1: one of those two hundred asteroids that have the levels
39:43
Speaker 1: of platinum that would be worth getting, does that belong
39:47
Speaker 1: to you? Are you allowed to collect it and mash
39:49
Speaker 1: it up and sell it? What are you allowed to
39:50
Speaker 1: do in space?
39:51
Speaker 5: Okay, the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven says
39:54
Speaker 5: you cannot own any celestial body or part thereof right,
39:58
Speaker 5: no one can, no country in particular, So that's still true.
40:03
Speaker 5: But the Act of Congress that Chris Lackey helped move
40:07
Speaker 5: along said that, yes, but if you pick something up
40:10
Speaker 5: from a celestial body, including the Moon, and it becomes
40:15
Speaker 5: property at that point, So if you pick it up
40:16
Speaker 5: and put it in the bag, it's now yours. Right
40:19
Speaker 5: And in fact, I don't know why this isn't actually
40:22
Speaker 5: widely accepted, because those Apollo Moon rocks clearly belong to
40:26
Speaker 5: the US government and nobody else, and they can do
40:28
Speaker 5: what the hell they like with them. You want to argue, no, right, no,
40:33
Speaker 5: sir no. And the same with the Japanese samples of
40:37
Speaker 5: the asteroids, the Chinese samples from the far side of
40:40
Speaker 5: the moon, and the old Soviet samples that came back
40:43
Speaker 5: from the lunar missions. So everyone's been acting as though
40:46
Speaker 5: that was absolutely the case forever.
40:49
Speaker 1: But you're using the word samples, which does have a
40:51
Speaker 1: legal definition and is different than collecting an entire giant
40:56
Speaker 1: asteroid and selling it off. At that point, you're not
40:58
Speaker 1: talking samples anymore.
41:00
Speaker 5: Okay, I don't know the legal definition of sample. Do
41:02
Speaker 5: tell me.
41:03
Speaker 1: I don't have it memorized, but it's something to let
41:05
Speaker 1: you go and you collect it, and it's a quantity
41:07
Speaker 1: that you need to like figure out, like what is
41:09
Speaker 1: it made out of? What could you do with it?
41:12
Speaker 1: So none of those things were collective for profit. They
41:13
Speaker 1: were collective for science to try to understand it better.
41:15
Speaker 1: Some of them did end up on the auction block
41:18
Speaker 1: at so the bees setting something like precedent. But I
41:21
Speaker 1: still feel like it's a little bit unclear that if
41:23
Speaker 1: you collected one of those giant asteroids and said this
41:26
Speaker 1: is all mine.
41:27
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's a difference between tay. If you
41:29
Speaker 5: went to an asteroid and took big pieces away, right,
41:32
Speaker 5: then maybe you can get away with that up to
41:34
Speaker 5: some point. But some of the ideas I wrapped the
41:37
Speaker 5: entire asteroid in a sealed bag and heat it up
41:39
Speaker 5: and drive off the water and collect the water, and
41:42
Speaker 5: then that whole asteroid is being put in a bag, right,
41:45
Speaker 5: it's all yours. You might even mine it so it
41:48
Speaker 5: doesn't exist anymore at all. And you could destroy to
41:51
Speaker 5: celestial object, but you never claim to own it. You
41:56
Speaker 5: only hold the product. So you can see the horrifying
41:59
Speaker 5: loops that space lawyers will be getting into.
42:02
Speaker 2: I mean there's an issue here of relativity. Also, because
42:05
Speaker 2: you land on an object, you pick up a rock.
42:07
Speaker 2: You could say, okay, I've picked the rock up off
42:09
Speaker 2: the asteroid. You could also say I've picked the asteroid
42:11
Speaker 2: up off the rock. I mean, physics doesn't really care
42:14
Speaker 2: and the like. You could say, oh, now I picked
42:16
Speaker 2: up this whole asteroid and left the rock behind. I'm
42:19
Speaker 2: going to happily claim that. So yeah, I think the
42:21
Speaker 2: lawyers are going to have a field there.
42:23
Speaker 5: It keepts even more complicated. There are no such things
42:25
Speaker 5: as mining rights therefore, because you can't only celest your
42:29
Speaker 5: body in any way, say they market as mine for
42:33
Speaker 5: mining purposes. So without those rights, you're going to get
42:37
Speaker 5: a lot of sketchy behavior going on, right because people
42:40
Speaker 5: will start spying on you to see where you're going,
42:42
Speaker 5: and then maybe they'll try to jump the claim and
42:46
Speaker 5: get there first and start mining before you do, because
42:49
Speaker 5: they didn't have to invest all their money in finding
42:52
Speaker 5: a good asteroid. They just built a bigger rocket and
42:54
Speaker 5: got there faster. There could then be rustling of asteroids.
42:59
Speaker 5: You've found the right asteroid, but somebody else rushes there
43:03
Speaker 5: and put a little rocket motor on the inside of
43:05
Speaker 5: it and pushes it goes off into some orbit that
43:08
Speaker 5: they know but you don't. You've lost your asteroid and
43:11
Speaker 5: they've got it. And finally, this piracy, which is just
43:15
Speaker 5: just intercept your inning guts of platinum on the way back.
43:19
Speaker 5: Of those four different things, the only one that's actually
43:22
Speaker 5: illegal is piracy. That's definitely illegal. Under the Outer Space Treaty,
43:28
Speaker 5: spying is actually encouraged. You're allowed to visit other people's
43:31
Speaker 5: facilities in space, and you're not allowed to not say no.
43:34
Speaker 5: In fact, really.
43:35
Speaker 2: All these are laws that we set up decades ago
43:37
Speaker 2: when we didn't really anticipate what was going to happen.
43:40
Speaker 2: Do you foresee, like somebody's going to make a whole
43:42
Speaker 2: new set of laws once things really kick an eye
43:44
Speaker 2: gear and people want to protect their interests and we
43:47
Speaker 2: sort of understand the dynamics of the space economics.
43:50
Speaker 5: Well, yes we need those some laws like that. And
43:54
Speaker 5: then you've got this terrible thing of if you make
43:56
Speaker 5: a set of laws too soon, you may lock in
44:00
Speaker 5: some stupidities that you didn't anticipate the realities of what
44:03
Speaker 5: doing this kind of mining is. Space mining is like
44:06
Speaker 5: if you wait too long, there'll have been a free
44:08
Speaker 5: for all, and people have established positions and they aren't
44:11
Speaker 5: going to give those up lightly because it cost a
44:13
Speaker 5: lot to get them. So it's a very tricky job
44:16
Speaker 5: to get the whole international regulation right.
44:20
Speaker 1: Where are we now? Are we too soon? Is it
44:23
Speaker 1: time or have we missed the right time frame? Where
44:25
Speaker 1: are we?
44:26
Speaker 5: Personally? I think we'd better hurry up and do something
44:28
Speaker 5: in the next few years, especially on the Moon. There's
44:31
Speaker 5: going to be human bases on the Moon and competing
44:34
Speaker 5: ones and they're going to have a lot of issues.
44:36
Speaker 5: It's where that all these issues are first going to arise.
44:39
Speaker 5: And right now, of course, NASA has the Artemis of
44:42
Speaker 5: Courds with thirty something other space agencies, and that's great
44:46
Speaker 5: and they're all going to work together, etc. Except they
44:48
Speaker 5: don't include China or Russia. It may help set some standards,
44:52
Speaker 5: but it's not going to be definitive without those countries.
44:55
Speaker 5: The other possibilities going to the United Nations Committee on
44:58
Speaker 5: the Peaceful Uses of out US Space COPUOS.
45:01
Speaker 1: I never remember congratulations. I can never remember the acronym.
45:05
Speaker 5: Oh, some of us have great talents in these areas.
45:09
Speaker 1: It's true.
45:10
Speaker 5: I even remember the alphabet. Okay, they're studying the issues, right,
45:14
Speaker 5: but they tend to move slowly, and so maybe they'll
45:17
Speaker 5: have a report on what the issues are in four
45:19
Speaker 5: years and they'll then start considering what to do about it.
45:24
Speaker 5: So that would be good because it's totally international. The
45:27
Speaker 5: Chinese and I'm definitely on board with it, and that
45:31
Speaker 5: is essential. But maybe it will be too late by
45:34
Speaker 5: the time they actually come out with some rules. I
45:38
Speaker 5: don't know. It's such a tricky one.
45:41
Speaker 1: One of the things that I learned from reading your papers,
45:44
Speaker 1: is how rare the good stuff is, or like how
45:47
Speaker 1: concentrated it is. I looked at the Moon, I'm like, oh,
45:49
Speaker 1: it's all like this gray stuff kind of seems the same.
45:52
Speaker 1: But you know, like the water and the great places
45:54
Speaker 1: to set up your solar panels, it's really concentrated. So
45:58
Speaker 1: what do you think the implications are there for geopolitics
46:02
Speaker 1: moving forward?
46:03
Speaker 5: I think you're going to get a lot of people
46:04
Speaker 5: wanting to do land grabs and say, these peaks of
46:07
Speaker 5: eternal light are mine?
46:08
Speaker 1: What are those?
46:09
Speaker 5: Ah, what are the peaks of eternal light? Well, at
46:12
Speaker 5: the poles of the moon, right, if you imagine a
46:15
Speaker 5: single mountain at the south pole of the moon, for instance,
46:18
Speaker 5: the sun will just circle the horizon all the time
46:21
Speaker 5: because there's essentially no seasons on the Moon. The Earth
46:24
Speaker 5: is tilted over twenty three and a half degrees, and
46:26
Speaker 5: that's so sometimes the sun is very low in the
46:29
Speaker 5: sky all the time. That's winter, and sometimes it's very
46:31
Speaker 5: high and at summer. Great the moon instead is tilted
46:34
Speaker 5: one and a half degrees, so there's a tiny effect.
46:37
Speaker 5: But basically there are places on the south pole of
46:40
Speaker 5: the Moon where the sun only sets for a day
46:43
Speaker 5: or so instead of fourteen days on the rest of
46:46
Speaker 5: the moon, and then comes back up and stays for
46:48
Speaker 5: a long long time and then disappears. That's just it's
46:51
Speaker 5: going behind some distant mountain on the south Pole. And
46:55
Speaker 5: so you can map out where these places are. And
46:57
Speaker 5: there are no places that are really one hundred percent
47:01
Speaker 5: illuminated all the time throughout the month. But if you
47:04
Speaker 5: go up a few meters a few yards above the surface,
47:08
Speaker 5: they get much more illuminated because you're getting above the
47:10
Speaker 5: local ridges and mountains and things, and so pretty quickly
47:15
Speaker 5: you can get mighty something percent in a few small places.
47:18
Speaker 5: Ninety percent of the time is the sun is shining
47:21
Speaker 5: on there, which is great because you get permanent solar power,
47:25
Speaker 5: and your equipment isn't cycling between extremely cold and really
47:29
Speaker 5: really hot all the time. It stays pretty hot. Then
47:34
Speaker 5: it's easier to deal with because you add radiators and
47:36
Speaker 5: so on. Anyway, but there are only a few of
47:38
Speaker 5: these places, like really a few.
47:41
Speaker 1: I think it was like one billionth of a percent
47:42
Speaker 1: of the moon surface.
47:44
Speaker 5: Tiny, tiny fraction of the Moon's surface. But even if
47:47
Speaker 5: you just stick to the South Pole region, it's really
47:49
Speaker 5: only crater rims that get illuminated like this, and occasional
47:52
Speaker 5: ridges connecting one crater to another. So it's kind of long,
47:56
Speaker 5: skinny regions maybe a mile or so long by a
48:00
Speaker 5: one hundred yards wide. So everyone will want to land
48:03
Speaker 5: there and put their solar panels there, And because there
48:08
Speaker 5: are so few of them, the chances that two different
48:11
Speaker 5: agencies or whatever will want to land in the same
48:13
Speaker 5: place is not small. I've mapped out where NASA has
48:17
Speaker 5: said they want to land. They had thirteen hundred eate
48:19
Speaker 5: sites where Artemis three, the first human lander for fifty years,
48:24
Speaker 5: will land thirteen sites the Chinese have mapped out I
48:27
Speaker 5: think nine and three of them overlap. Three or four
48:31
Speaker 5: of them overlap, So already there's a pretty decent chance
48:34
Speaker 5: the very first time you want to land, somebody else
48:37
Speaker 5: will have landed in your favorite spot already. You can't
48:40
Speaker 5: land next to somebody because when you land, you kick
48:42
Speaker 5: up enormous amounts of fast moving sharp rock, which could
48:46
Speaker 5: damage the next spacecraft over. That's definitely a no no
48:50
Speaker 5: on the Outer Space Treaty.
48:52
Speaker 2: One of my favorite ways to explore these questions is
48:55
Speaker 2: to read science fiction, because in some cases they really
48:57
Speaker 2: have thought this through and imagine like what it would
48:59
Speaker 2: be like. Like have you ever read science fiction that
49:02
Speaker 2: tackles these questions in a way that you think is
49:04
Speaker 2: insightful or realistic? You know? For example, there's the show
49:08
Speaker 2: on Apple TV called four All Main Kind where they
49:10
Speaker 2: talk about a lot of these issues and they even,
49:12
Speaker 2: I think, try to redirect an asteroid and all this
49:14
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Have you seen anything realistic and impressive
49:17
Speaker 2: in that category?
49:18
Speaker 5: Yeah? I enjoyed that whole long series. Yeah. They start
49:22
Speaker 5: having international disputes on the Moon fairly early on. Right,
49:26
Speaker 5: for some reason, they have guns. I've forgotten why they
49:29
Speaker 5: have guns, but there's some excuse. The Chinese race off
49:33
Speaker 5: and do something. They and the Americans go to the
49:36
Speaker 5: Chinese base and destroy it and the vice versa, and
49:38
Speaker 5: I don't know what kind of mess they get into
49:39
Speaker 5: after that. But yeah, there's another what was that other
49:43
Speaker 5: science fiction movie which was mostly terrible and got panned.
49:49
Speaker 5: But when they get they land on the Moon before
49:52
Speaker 5: going off to I don't know where, Jupiter or something,
49:54
Speaker 5: and they have this huge base with advertising Arby's Roast
49:59
Speaker 5: Beef and the so on, with big Neon figures, and
50:03
Speaker 5: then they get into a fight with the neighboring base,
50:07
Speaker 5: which belongs to some other country. I don't know which.
50:10
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt was in this, right, his dad had like
50:12
Speaker 1: lost his mind on some spacecraft and he was supposed
50:15
Speaker 1: to Oh what was it called?
50:18
Speaker 5: Right? Could be yeah, but.
50:20
Speaker 1: I remember he went up the elevator and there was
50:22
Speaker 1: an RB sign and I thought that could be pretty accurty.
50:25
Speaker 5: Yeah. I thought that was the first time I've seen
50:27
Speaker 5: that in a science fiction movie. You know, although if
50:31
Speaker 5: you go back to two thousand and one, we all
50:34
Speaker 5: remember that had PanAm as they shuttle and the Hilton
50:38
Speaker 5: was in the space station. Another thing they got right,
50:41
Speaker 5: which apparently Arthur C. Clark didn't like, but Sanley Kubrick
50:45
Speaker 5: insisted on, was that when they land on the Moon,
50:47
Speaker 5: they have this giant thing that opens up and they
50:50
Speaker 5: come inside out like in the crater and land in
50:52
Speaker 5: there and then it steals up. That's actually much more
50:55
Speaker 5: plausible than you need have guessed, because now we know
50:58
Speaker 5: there are these big skylight on the Moon that are
51:02
Speaker 5: one hundred yards across and they open into huge spaces
51:06
Speaker 5: underneath call lava tubes, which is where you probably want
51:09
Speaker 5: to build your base. So actually, maybe that was a
51:12
Speaker 5: super smart idea of mister Koprick's.
51:15
Speaker 1: I guess that wouldn't necessarily save you all the trouble
51:17
Speaker 1: of worrying about regalis and rocks getting blown, because you'd
51:20
Speaker 1: still probably do that on the way down if.
51:22
Speaker 5: It's big enough, If you keep going back to the
51:24
Speaker 5: same place, you build a landing pad, and then you
51:27
Speaker 5: don't have the rocks problem.
51:28
Speaker 1: As someone who's excited about base resources, what in the
51:33
Speaker 1: next decade will you be looking for as a sign
51:36
Speaker 1: that things are moving in the right direction, that this
51:38
Speaker 1: is going to happen and it's going to happen in
51:40
Speaker 1: a good way. I never ask people like how many
51:43
Speaker 1: years until we figure this out? Because those kinds of
51:45
Speaker 1: questions depend on your political will and blah blah blah.
51:47
Speaker 1: What are you looking for to happen to show that,
51:49
Speaker 1: like we're taking this seriously.
51:51
Speaker 5: Sore several things ares actually surveys for asteroids that I've
51:55
Speaker 5: already talked about, and there's another one that's going at
51:59
Speaker 5: It's a NASA mission will look for very dark asteroids,
52:02
Speaker 5: particularly called the Near Earth Objects Surveyor, which can find
52:06
Speaker 5: huge amounts more water than we currently think is out there.
52:08
Speaker 5: So there's government surveys. There'll be some replacement for the
52:12
Speaker 5: International Space Station, one assumes, and that could be commercial.
52:16
Speaker 5: If it's commercial, that starts to open up that whole
52:19
Speaker 5: regime of an in space economy we were talking about.
52:22
Speaker 5: Are the mining companies that are starting up again. What
52:25
Speaker 5: astro Forge is a particularly busy one. They are very active.
52:30
Speaker 5: They have a test some of their equipment in orbit
52:33
Speaker 5: now and they're going to do a test going to
52:36
Speaker 5: an asteroid which they will not name soon And that's
52:39
Speaker 5: the beginning of this problem of not having any kind
52:42
Speaker 5: of mineral rights. If they tell you where they're going,
52:45
Speaker 5: then it gives away that a lot of their intellectual property,
52:48
Speaker 5: so it's a whole big legal issue. There's going to
52:50
Speaker 5: be stuff on the Moon. We think that Chinese who
52:53
Speaker 5: want to land there by twenty thirty. NASA keeps saying
52:56
Speaker 5: it's going to land there earlier, but that will be
52:59
Speaker 5: a challenge because it depends on Starship not only working reliably,
53:04
Speaker 5: but also being able to be refueled in orbit and
53:07
Speaker 5: then having a special variant of it which can land
53:10
Speaker 5: on the Moon and take off again. So that's a
53:13
Speaker 5: lot of work to do in a very short time.
53:15
Speaker 5: If they're going to be twenty thirty. Yeah, but you
53:18
Speaker 5: know that sort of stuff is happening that will spur
53:21
Speaker 5: a lot of this legal stuff, I suspect.
53:23
Speaker 1: So are you overall feeling optimistic? What do you think?
53:27
Speaker 5: I'm getting a lot older than I was when I
53:29
Speaker 5: started this, and so I'm not so sure I'm going
53:31
Speaker 5: to see much of it.
53:32
Speaker 1: It never moves as fast as you want it to.
53:34
Speaker 5: Yeah, but it could happen.
53:37
Speaker 1: I think it will happen eventually. I just want to
53:39
Speaker 1: see it happen peacefully.
53:41
Speaker 5: But ucefully and hopefully with a good ethic going forward,
53:45
Speaker 5: so we don't actually run out of space resources in
53:47
Speaker 5: four hundred years.
53:49
Speaker 2: Well, as much as it's going to make everything more complicated,
53:51
Speaker 2: I'm really hoping for a bunch of surprises. Hoping when
53:54
Speaker 2: we get out there and we test out these asteroids,
53:56
Speaker 2: we discover weird stuff in there that doesn't make any sense.
53:58
Speaker 2: We'd learned something new about this system, and that might
54:01
Speaker 2: upend some startup companies plans for extracting the platinum, but
54:05
Speaker 2: that's my preference.
54:06
Speaker 5: I like that, And in fact, I had a high
54:08
Speaker 5: school student, I'm an undergrad who made a list of
54:11
Speaker 5: meteorite minerals, minerals that are found only in meteorites, not
54:15
Speaker 5: on Earth. They had like seventy of them when they
54:17
Speaker 5: finished the list, So there are strange things out there
54:21
Speaker 5: that we do not know.
54:22
Speaker 1: That seems like an exciting note to end on to
54:24
Speaker 1: be Thank you so much for your time, Martin. It
54:26
Speaker 1: was great chatting with you and we're all keeping our
54:29
Speaker 1: fingers crossed that this goes forward ethically and ethically.
54:34
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Great fun.
54:43
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