Tweets from Space

Check out an article from Marotta Space Research.  It will be posted shortly at Space Safety Magazine.

Tweets from the High Frontier

Space.  It’s vast.  It’s majestic.  It’s so big it defies comprehension and, occasionally, description. But, what if space were full of people?  People with smartphones?  What if there were communities teeming with people living, working and playing up there?  They’d probably have lots to say about their experiences in orbit amongst the space colonies scattered across the high frontier.

Fair reader, you’re in luck.  I have traveled to the future and obtained a representative sample of tweets from space.  What follows are some examples of what humans might say about their lives in future space settlements:

Can’t believe how big this place is @IslandThree! There are actually rain clouds in here! And I can’t see down to the other side! #impressed

image credit: Ed Sweet

Space settlements will be big – much bigger than contemporary ‘tin-can’ space stations like ISS or Tiangong-1.  The latest space settlement design, Kalpana One, envisions a cylinder 250 meters in diameter and 325 meters long – about the size of some of the largest cruise ships today.  Kalpana One can accommodate 3,000 people living in a business park-like setting.  This is a small space settlement – some of the larger designs are miles long and can host hundreds of thousands of people along with plenty of space for forests, farms, lakes and rivers.  All of these structures can be built in space using the same kinds of proven techniques that for decades have been used to construct massive supertankers in shipyards here on Earth.  The challenge is getting the labor and raw materials to start the first community.  Perhaps we should check the help-wanted ads…

Wanted: Agile people with strong upper bodies for lucrative work. Personalized spacesuit included. Join the elite asteroid miners today! #PR-HR

 

Immediate opening: 3D printer technician, must have experience with molten metals in a hazardous environment. Good pay, great views #Spiderfab-HR

The primary reason existing space stations are so small is that they are built on Earth and launched into space on rockets.  And rockets are expensive – it costs over $4,000 to launch one kilogram into space on the cheapest rocket available today.  But future space settlements will not be built on Earth and launched into space.  In-situ raw materials – collected primarily from asteroids – will be refined and shaped into the beams, panels, and windows that will form the settlement.  Just like sailing ships carried shovels and axes to the New World (not log cabins and farm silos), rockets will be used to carry the tools that will build settlements – not the settlements themselves.

Furthermore, the human resources paradigm of space travel is going to change. Currently, thousands of support personnel on Earth work to launch a handful of people into space.  That is set to change as new launch companies field rockets that require only a handful of support staff.  Better rockets and lower labor costs mean rockets can launch more frequently which will make them both safer and cheaper. Soon, a minority of people on Earth will work to support thousands of people living, working and playing in space.  And all those people will need to eat.  Are you getting hungry? Let’s see what’s on the menu in orbit…

For all you space cadet foodies: tried the @Bernal bioreactor algae pudding – gooey, weird and sweet. #spacecuisine

 

@IslandThree’s solar-roasted tilapia is “flaky, light and delicious” says @SnootyChef. Try the local veggies too! #spacecuisine

Many people enjoy the novelty of freeze-dried, packaged ‘space food’ (remember “astronaut ice cream” when you were kid on those trips to the museum?) but few people would want to eat that for the rest of their lives.  Luckily, space settlements will have the capability to grow fresh food.  In fact, space settlements will be required to grow much of their own food because of the size of their populations and the exorbitant cost to ship food up from Earth.  The unusual space environment and unique architecture of space colonies will allow for extremely productive agriculture.  First, the sun shines all day in space allowing for major energy inputs into production. Second, irrigation, fertilization, sowing and harvesting will be tightly controlled and integrated into the architecture of the settlement.  Third, pests, weather and other Earth-bound agricultural problems will not afflict farming in space.  All of these factors will combine to supercharge food and fiber production in space settlements.

So, we’ve arrived, we’ve got a good job and we’ve got plenty of food to eat.  But what is there to do for fun in space?  Contemporary space tourism companies are betting that people will pay millions of dollars to simply look out the window at Earth and spin around in zero-gravity for a week.  While that may appeal to some, most may quickly bore of it and start looking for more.  Recreation in a space settlement will offer many more options than what current space tourism provides.  Spherical pools floating in mid-air, piloting an actual starfighter, and literally flying like a bird are just a few of the possibilities….

Exclusively @IslandThree Resort: come fly a REAL X-Wing in ACTUAL space! Shoot drones and complete the obstacle course. Earn your Rebel wings! #RogueSquadron

Dive into the water, stroke stroke stroke then I shoot out the other side! Spherical pools @Bernal resort are crazy! #nextOlympicsport ?

 

image credit: David A. Hardy

That was fun but space settlements can serve a higher purpose than merely offering sustenance or recreation.  Throughout history there are numerous instances of people with similar religious or philosophical leanings banding together to form communities where they can pursue their interests without interference.  Space settlements offer the ultimate refuge for people seeking peace and  isolation.

Want to live in harmony with like-minded individuals? Do you feel a (much) higher calling? Come join us in the first temple in orbit! #L5Mormons

In fact, a recent film made the exact same conclusion (albeit in a wholly negative light) that space settlements can act as enclaves for like-minded individuals.

Human nature being what it is, it is unlikely that space settlement will be as innocuous, high-minded and fun as depicted in the selection of tweets above.  But the purpose of space settlement should not be to create utopias in the sky.  While they can expand the resource base of Earth and provide a higher standard of living for all who occupy them, space settlements will not by themselves eliminate war, greed, stupidity or laziness.  Rather, the purpose of space settlement is to expand the stage upon which the human drama plays out.  Space settlements will be little Earths full of love, hate, sadness and joy.  While the food there may be better and the recreation might be different, space settlements, at the end of the day, will be like little Earths: familiar and cozy.

 

Main Street in Space: Module Specifications

This post will describe the basic specifications of a single Main Street in Space (MSIS) module.

• is a linear “spine” 10.5 meters in length and 3.6 meters in width at the longest and widest points.  It is designed to fiit into the expanded fairing of a Falcon 9.
• does not produce artificial gravity and is not designed to rotate.
• provides an internal cargo transport system. Each MSIS module has four 1-cubic meter cargo cubes that can transport themselves (using magnetic conduction motors) within the structure so materials can be moved between service ports and between modules.
• generates at least 20 kilowatts of baseline electrical power using one deployable solar electrical panel (not shown). Includes active thermal management systems i.e. radiators which are derived from ISS technology (not shown).
• has six service ports: four designed for docking and berthing “tenants” or “users” and two designed to attach to other MSIS modules so the station can grow indefinitely. Each service port provides connections for all necessary utilities.
• each MSIS module has a remote manipulator arm (not shown) that is 1/4 the scale of Canadarm 2 on ISS. It can move itself between the power data grapple fixtures (PDGF) sites shown in the image.
• has a dry mass of less than 13,000 kilograms.
• estimated to cost $100,000,000 to construct, and $56,000,000 to launch into low earth orbit.

The image above shows one MSIS module with solar panel (blue) and radiator panel (brown) deployed, as well as a IDS docking port on the bottom.  A second module, without its panels deployed, is linked above the first one.

Part 3 of 4: The pros & cons of Capturing an Asteroid to deliver raw materials to orbit

The first two posts in this series have focused on the pros and cons of using rockets and mass drivers to collect raw materials in orbit. This post will discuss the merits of capturing an asteroid using what I’m calling the Planetary Resources (PR) method. As far as I can tell, PR will capture whole asteroids (small ones) and somehow drag them back to more convenient orbits closer to Earth for processing (as opposed to strip-mining them or processing the ore on-site).

How PR will (probably) capture asteroids. Credit: Planetary Resources

Let’s start with the advantages:

• Easier transportation to destination – The more accurate way to state this is that it takes less of a change in velocity (delta-v) to move asteroids around the Earth-Moon system than it does to haul materials up from the Moon or Earth. This is because asteroids are already at the top of the cislunar gravity well. In other words, one should expend less fuel moving a typical asteroid from its orbit into, say, geosynchronous orbit, than one would on moving an equivalent mass from the lunar surface to geosynchronous orbit.

This is a HUGE advantage. Perhaps an Earth-bound analogy will drive home the point. Consider two mines on Earth. In one, the ore is laying on the surface and just has to be picked up and trucked to the processing facility. This is the PR method – snagging an asteroid and sliding it to where it needs to go. Now, consider another mine where the ore is buried deep underground. First one digs up the ore and hauls it to the surface and then it has to be trucked to the processing facility. Obviously it’s a lot more work to move all that heavy stuff around but this is what happens when ore is collected from the Earth or the Moon and then transported into orbit. By eliminating the need to haul the material up out of a gravity well, Planetary Resources has a great advantage over the other methods.

• Provides massive infusions of raw material – Thousands of tons of material will be delivered immediately upon the arrival of a near-earth asteroid at the destination. No other technology known today has the capacity to deliver thousands of tons in one delivery. Rockets can, at most, deliver tens of tons of material. Space elevators and mass drivers provide a continuous trickle of material that, over time, can add up to thousands (even millions) of tons –but it requires patience.  If you need a lot of space rocks and you need them right away, asteroid capture may be the way to go.
• Provides goodies – Asteroids could more easily provide resources that are not known to exist in great quantities on the Moon and are difficult to haul up from Earth e.g. rare platinum group metals, volatiles or even hydrocarbons.

But what about those disadvantages:

• Lots of unknowns – No one has ever captured, or barely even landed on an asteroid. Pristine asteroidal material has never been examined on Earth. The composition of different classes of asteroids is essentially unknown and manipulating asteroids is, at this point, a best guess. Can a rubble pile asteroid be de-spun without it falling apart? Can a volatile-rich asteroid be “bagged” without all the water and oxygen boiling off and popping the containment unit? Mastering the capture and processing of asteroids will take many years, as well as the coordination of the swarms of robots it will take to accomplish these tasks. It may be decades before these techniques are commercially viable, especially when compared to the more familiar technologies required to exploit lunar resources.

“A mine is just a hole in the ground owned by a liar”

– Mark Twain

• Long delays between deliveries – While a mass driver or space elevator provides a steady continuous trickle of material to orbit, asteroid capture provides huge shipments once every two or three years. This time lag will  complicate processing as facilities will have to be designed to store or digest a huge amount of material when the asteroid arrives but will then lay fallow while they wait for the next shipment. It could lead to inefficiencies.
• Potential public relations problem – I’m not going to spill too much e-ink on this topic but it is possible that the same Luddites who oppose nuclear-powered space probes could oppose and potentially derail or delay asteroid mining because they fear “killer space rocks” being positioned closer to the Earth. Even though putting them into a more convenient orbit makes it easier for them to be deflected and diverted should something go wrong.
  

So, lots of pros and cons for this item. Stay tuned for the final installment regarding lunar space elevators.

 

Part 2 of 4: The pros & cons of using Mass Drivers to deliver raw materials to orbit

In a previous post I described the pros and cons of using rockets to deliver raw materials to orbit. And, in the post before that, I explained that this part of a series of posts discussing the best ways to amass raw materials in orbit needed for space development. In this post, I will discuss the pros and cons of using mass drivers to accumulate a resource base in Earth orbit.

The biggest advantage to using mass drivers is that they are very efficient. That is, once they are set up and functioning well, no fuel is required to launch payloads into orbit. In theory, the mass driver can launch hundreds of times its own weight using only electricity.

Furthermore, extensive research has been completed on mass drivers, and their earthbound cousin, the railgun. The Space Studies Institute and Gerard K. O’Neill himself built a small mass driver in the 1970s basically proving that this idea will work. And today, the US Navy is working on an electromagnetic railgun to fire artillery shells which is basically a mass driver.

Gerard K. O’Neill and his team with a working mass driver prototype in the 1970s. Courtesy: SSI

In practice, however, one cannot be sure that a mass driver will function as promised. It is, after all, a machine and machines require maintenance and upkeep. I am skeptical that mass drivers can function anywhere near their peak performance without a human presence on the moon to maintain them.

Which brings us to the biggest disadvantage to using mass drivers: they require a massive upfront investment in infrastructure. This infrastructure includes not only the kilometer-scale mass drivers but also megawatt-scale power systems (probably nuclear due to the long lunar nights – which means additional headaches), loading machinery, canister processing machinery and all the subsystems needed to make this structure work. Essentially, one must build a minor lunar base in order to construct, and possibly operate, a mass driver on the moon*.

So, bottom line, mass drivers are extremely efficient, but require a massive upfront investment in order to work.

*The fact that a mass driver may require a lunar base could be construed as either a positive or a negative, depending on one’s point of view. Positive because, hey, who doesn’t like moon bases, right? Negative because moon bases are expensive and, in this case, would simply be an overhead cost as we establish our raw material delivery system.

Part I: The pros and cons of Rockets for delivering orbital raw materials

In a previous post I described the four new options for amassing raw materials in orbit for the purpose of space development. They are: using rockets to lift stuff up from Earth, using mass drivers on the moon to shoot regolith into orbit, capturing asteroids a la Planetary Resources, and constructing a lunar space elevator a la LiftPort to transfer lunar ore into orbit. In this post I will describe the basic advantages and disadvantages of each method.

The goal here is to determine the fastest and most cost-efficient method for collecting hundreds of tons of raw material in Earth orbit. Hundreds of tons – if not thousands – are necessary to manufacture the large structures necessary to develop space i.e. to build a self-sustainable and self-replicating civilization in orbit. Let’s talk pros and cons one by one:

I. Rockets – There are several big benefits to using rockets:

1. Proven technology with a deep market: rockets are proven and there are lots of vendors to choose from. It’s the “devil we know” versus the other technologies which are all unproven.
2. Direct to orbit: rockets are the only option available to boost items directly from the Earth’s surface. This, in theory, allows one to boost finished structures to orbit, skipping the raw material/manufacturing stage. This is both a blessing and a curse: while having some finished products in orbit will be useful (Bigelow modules and 3d printers immediately come to mind), especially in the early stages of space development, ultimately the goal is to build an indigenous manufacturing base in orbit, not just boost everything up from Earth. Also, rockets are the only way to get people into orbit!

However, the major drawback to using rockets is, of course, their expense. Rockets are ultimately too expensive to boost anything except the highest value cargo. This is reef that every space development has foundered on since the beginning of the space age.

Future posts will discuss mass drivers, asteroid capture and lunar space elevators.

An Expanding Menu: Rockets, Mass Drivers, Asteroid Capture and Space Elevators

Since the halcyon days of Gerard K. O’Neill and his grand visions of massive solar power satellites and palatial space colonies, space cadets the world over have pondered the best way to collect the raw materials necessary to construct such structures in orbit. Many, including myself, deferred to Mr. O’Neill’s assertion that the lunar mass driver is the best mechanism to amass a raw material base in orbit. Indeed, there is something elegant in the idea of combining thousands of tiny cargos to form one large resource pile, as opposed to the brute force concept of launching one gargantuan payload at great expense. On the one hand, space enthusiasts have the familiar image of an explosive rocket breaking the surly bonds of Earth (and occasionally failing) in order to put a complete payload into orbit. But O’Neill offered a new, more tranquil vision: rows of silent, miles-long electromagnetic catapults safely and efficiently zooming thousands of tiny payloads into orbit over many months.

Mass Drivers….

Nice day for a lunar picnic next to the serene mass driver. Courtesy of the Lunar Institute. Credit: Pat Rawlings.

….Versus Rockets.

Hot dog! Look at that mother go! Yipppee! I just wish it weren’t so risky and inefficient…

But how times have changed. Today we have two additional visions. The first involves Planetary Resources and asteroid capture. The second involves LiftPort and the lunar space elevator.

As the readers of this blog know, Planetary Resources is a well-funded and well-staffed outfit based in Seattle, WA. They hope to develop new technology and methods to eventually capture and mine near-earth asteroids. LiftPort, the space elevator company, is also based in Seattle, WA and is slightly less well-funded and well-staffed than Planetary Resources. However, I would argue that LiftPort’s ideas and vision generate just as much enthusiasm as do the ideas of Planetary Resources. Furthermore, LiftPort has already failed and resurrected itself AND has successfully crowd-sourced innovation in the past. These two factors alone (perseverance in the face of failure and the ability to manage far-flung groups of researchers) indicate that LiftPort has the potential for success*. In fact, one could argue that Planetary Resources, with its venture capital and in-house engineering staff, represents the old style (1990s) of aerospace innovation while LiftPort, with its open(er)-source development plan and bootstrapping culture represents a new way, or at least a different way, of generating innovation.  

LiftPort, after an ignominious bankruptcy in 2007, is back from the dead, having just raised almost $80,000 over $110,000 of R&D funding in less than a month on, of all places, Kickstarter.

But let’s get to brass tacks – which method is the best way to support space development: rockets, mass drivers, capturing asteroids or lunar space elevators? In future posts I will discuss how each of these options have benefits and drawbacks to amassing raw materials in orbit. UPDATE: Part 1 of 4 (Rockets) is linked above.

*Full disclosure: I used to work for LiftPort. I quit in 2004, thinking at the time that the company was doomed. In  2007, I was proven right. But now, in 2012, I’m not too sure. LiftPort is scrappy and their vision is mesmerizing. Even if they don’t build a space elevator, they might generate enough IP and interest to get bought up by Google X Labs or some other group of yuppie-genius billionaires who will then carry the LiftPort vision to fruition.

G-Lab needs a space station and a launcher. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

I’m starting to think humanity is on the brink of a full-fledged space renaissance, and this time for real. The good news just keeps on coming, this time from the venerable Space Studies Institute. Yes, that SSI. The one founded by Gerard K. O’Neill, the godfather of space cadets everywhere. The guy who invented the space colony. The one that used to be headquartered in Princeton, NJ (of all places) and spent the last twenty years being irrelevant until it got a new lease of life with its new President Gary Hudson. Yes, that Space Studies Institute.

Yes, that SSI.

SSI has got its mojo back and recently announced that it’s going to – basically – build a space station using private donations:

In order to investigate the long-term effects of partial gravity on humans and other vertebrates, the Space Studies Institute proposes the private development of a co-orbital free-flyer laboratory, in trail ~10 km aft of and station-keeping with the International Space Station (ISS)….

Our SSI approach calls for these initial three phases to be funded exclusively by private contributions or sponsorships.

Talk about ballsy! I didn’t find any concrete numbers but something like this will probably cost at least $200 million. Think about it: design, development and construction of a small space station and then a “heavy launch” vehicle to get it all into orbit. The launch alone will cost ~$100 million using the lowest-cost launcher (almost) available: the Falcon 9 Heavy.

But will SSI accept donations in kind? Hmm let’s see. I know (of) a guy who is selling space stations. And I know (of) a guy who is selling rockets. If the justification to ask for hundreds of millions of dollars in donations is that the donor wants to remembered forever, why not go straight to the biggest space geeks out there who, by the way, have exactly what you need anyway?

In short, if they’re being ballsy, SSI should just ask Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace to donate a BA-330 module to this effort and ask Elon Musk to donate a Falcon 9 Heavy launch to put the G-Lab in orbit. You can call it the Bigelow-Musk Orbital Research Facility or something like that. Bottom line, it gets the job done. And, as my dad always said, there’s no harm in asking!

Could SSI's G-Lab be a donated Bigelow BA-330 module launched on a donated Falcon 9 Heavy? Why not?

A billion asteroids?!

NASA and JPL, two obviously reputable space exploration organizations, have claimed that there a billion meter-sized asteroids in near-Earth space! The exact quote:

Because of their small size, object’s [sic] of this size are difficult to discover but there is likely to be nearly a billion objects of this size and larger in near-Earth space and one would expect one to strike Earth’s atmosphere every few weeks on average.

This is very exciting news for the Dragon Flyer. It means that there are potentially hundreds of millions of targets for the mission. However, I am skeptical – this seems too good to be true. The full article (read it here) offers no substantiation for the billion-asteroid claim and does not define “near-Earth space.” Also notice that pesky clause “and larger.” Are most of the asteroids about a meter in diameter or are most larger than what can be accommodated by the Dragon Flyer? So many questions! Thus, I have contacted the authors for more information. Stay tuned!

Asteroids in our Solar System - there may be a lot more out there!

The Dragon Flyer is a good investment.

By now, regular readers of this blog know that the Dragon Flyer will be the first privately-financed deep space mission. It will return an intact, pristine asteroid to Earth. Not only is this something that the scientific community wants, but Dragon Flyer will do it better than previous missions, and at a lower cost.

The Dragon Flyer is also a good investment providing more than a 30% return on capital. This assumes a <$250 million total mission cost and a $700 million revenue event (i.e. when the customer pays for the asteroid once it is delivered). The investment time horizon is four years.

The Dragon Flyer will provide a 30% return on capital for a forward-thinking aerospace corporation.

A 30% return is probably too low to attract venture capitalists. However, it is high enough to attract investment from mining, aerospace or utility corporations. See the chart below:

Type of Investor	Internal Rate of Return Expected by Investor	Total Paid to Investor over Four Year Time Horizon	Profit Realized By The Dragon Flyer*
Free money	0%	$0	$456,300,000
Kind venture capitalist	41%	$719,534,390.36	-$263,234,390
Realistic venture capitalist	>100%	$3,655,500,000.00	-$3,199,200,000
Commercial gold mine	~30%	$452,331,570.00	$3,968,430
Aerospace project e.g. Airbus 380	<19%	$245,001,165.48	$211,298,835
New nuclear power plant	<17%	$212,966,313.08	$243,333,68

*For the purposes of this chart, the investor’s IRR is essentially the “interest rate” at which the venture borrows money from the investor i.e. no additional fees or costs are included in the borrowing costs.

---

The Dragon Flyer will provide a rate of return higher than recent aerospace projects like the Airbus 380 and will require a far lower capital outlay. In conclusion, the Dragon Flyer is an attractive project for a forward-thinking, innovative aerospace corporation.

To read more about the investment potential of the Dragon Flyer, download the full paper here for free.

It’s back of the envelope fun time!

Many space enthusiasts propose extracting precious metals* from asteroids as way to pay for space development. Other space enthusiasts argue that water should be the target of asteroid miners. Mark Sonter has done a particularly thorough job arguing in favor of water, as opposed to precious metals. Personally, I’m agnostic. However, I did some back of the envelope calculations regarding both scenarios. Here they are:

Asteroid prospecting - Image courtesy of NASA

Water

Let’s assume we get an investor to spend $500 million on an asteroid water harvesting mission. That includes the investor’s profit and all mission costs. How much water could we get for that amount?

The competition is water launched from Earth. NASA just bought 12 Falcon 9 launches for $1.6 Billion. That’s $134 million per launch (rounded up) or approximately $2342/lb launched to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Let’s say we sell our asteroid harvested water for $2000/lb in order to  beat the competition.

$500,000,000 total mission cost / $2000/lb of water = 250,000 lbs of water.

This is slightly less than eleven Falcon 9 launches worth of water. So now, of course, the big question is can one profitably sell asteroid-harvested water for $2000/lb? Dunno. This is just back of the envelope play time, not real research. But what about the shiny metal stuff? How might that work out?

Gold

This time around, instead of an investor, let’s pretend our super-rich uncle hands you a check for $500 million, musses up your hair, and says, “Go get me some gold in space, kiddo!” So you round up Elon Musk and Burt Rutan and a bunch of crazy wild-eyed geniuses and you cobble together a mission. A few years later you wrangle a gold-bearing asteroid in LEO. How much gold have you collected? Hope you still have some room left on the back of that envelope…

Oh good, plenty of space.

Let’s assume you’re not going to deorbit the asteroid, but rather sell it to another entity that will extract the gold in orbit (you’ll see why later**). So, instead of the market price, you sell it for $500/troy ounce to give the mining entity some room for their own costs and profit. There are 32.15 troy ounces in one kilogram. Therefore:

$500/troy ounce x 32.15 troy ounces/kg = $16,075/kg

So, how much gold do we need to mine in order to break even?

$500,000,000/$16,075 = 31,105 kg of gold to break even

Uncle Moneybags striking it rich.

Chances are only a portion of the asteroid will actually be gold. Let’s assume a very optimistic 5% concentration of gold in our asteroid. So that means to get 31,105 kg of gold to break even, the rock is 622,100 total kg. If we assume a density of 1000 kg/m3 (total guess, and it makes the math easy) for the gold-bearing asteroidal material then the asteroid is 622.1 m3. Therefore, the diameter of the asteroid is a surprisingly manageable 10.6 meters. A space rock about the size of a house could be worth $500 million, in theory at least.

A space rock about the size of a house could be worth $500 million, in theory at least.

Hmm maybe this will work. Use this handy calculator to figure out how to make Uncle Moneybags some profit once a gold-bearing asteroid is discovered in near Earth orbit.

*Wait wait wait – what about platinum?!? All those links at the beginning of the post talk about platinum, and the associated platinum group metals, as being the best target for asteroid miners. Well, the price of gold right now is $1730.75 per troy ounce. Platinum? $1652 per troy ounce. There may be compelling reasons for pursuing the less-expensive platinum but, at least for back-of-the-envelope fun time, I prefer to use the shiny metal with the higher market price.

**I am highly skeptical that $500 million is enough money to both capture the asteroid and place mining infrastructure in orbit or figure out a way to safely deorbit an asteroid 10.6 meters in diameter. Let someone else with deeper pockets figure it out.