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Deep Space Industries Launches

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
January 23, 2013
Filed under , , , ,

Deep Space Industries FireFlyDeep Space Industries Unveils Mining and Manufacturing Plans, SpaceRef Business
Deep Space Industries (DSI) is another new entry in the asteroid mining field who want to go beyond just mining asteroids and into manufacturing products in space. As with another recent new commercial space venture, Golden Spike, DSI showcased some savvy space veterans but lack the resources to execute their plans to completion.
In fact both companies made a point of going public so that potential investors might take notice. Unfortunately they and other like minded companies are all after the same investors who don’t seem to be interested at this stage.
Asteroid mining: US company looks to space for precious metal, Guardian
“Keith Cowing, editor of NasaWatch.com, said he was not yet convinced by Deep Space Industries’ plans. “Is the prospect of using asteroid resources crazy? No it’s not. Is if difficult? Yes it is. Can you make a business case for it? People are trying, and making progress.” But he said any company must have a product, experienced people and a business case. “This is like a three-legged stool. You need all three legs, otherwise it’s not a business, it’s a hobby,” he said.”
Commercial Asteroid Hunters announce plans for new Robotic Exploration Fleet, DSI
“Senior leaders at NASA have been briefed on DSI’s technologies, which would make eventual crewed Mars expeditions less expensive through the use of asteroid-derived propellant.”
Keith’s note: I asked NASA PAO for a statement regarding DSI’s claim. This is NASA’s official response this morning – no mention of any briefings by Deep Space Industries, just the same sort of generic but positive comentary about space commerce that they have issued on other occassions.
“President Obama’s space policy is aimed at creating an environment where commercial space companies can build upon past successes, allowing NASA to focus on the Administration’s ambitious path for deep space human exploration, which includes sending humans to an asteroid for the first time and ultimate to Mars. The increasing number of private U.S. companies attempting to push the boundaries of space shows the wisdom of that policy.”
During their press conference yesterday, DSI stated that they had briefed the White House (OSTP). I haven’t seen any commentary on this from OSTP.

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

22 responses to “Deep Space Industries Launches”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    I like that they’re trying to focus on cheaper set-ups (CubeSat-style space probes), although without much investment capital they’ll probably fade away in a couple of years. I hope they at least get some demo work done on the Micro-Gravity Foundry first.

    • Mark_Flagler says:
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      If they do fade away, I doubt that they will be gone for good. It took a lot of commercial launcher start ups before SpaceX succeeded.

      • chriswilson68 says:
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        I’m not sure in what sense you mean that they won’t be gone for good.  SpaceX’s succeeded, but the Kistler K-1 still seems to be to be just as “gone for good”.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      DSi seems to be planning an incremental approach, which is good.  Each stage builds on the results/learning of the preceding stages.  This is both cost effective and good risk management.  I  wish NASA would think more like this, as they did in their Mercury and Gemini days, instead of proposing so many mega-programs, where they try to do too much at once and create unsupportable price tags.

      I’d like to see DSi succeed, both as an example to NASA of incremental development and because what they’re setting out to accomplish simply makes a great deal of sense to me.  Acquiring and processing ET resources will be necessary eventually, so why not take advantage of it sooner, rather than later, if we can.

      This is an area where I think NASA could/should have been doing R&D before now.  It’s starting to look like NASA may be left behind in yet another area of space development.

      • DTARS says:
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        Shed the fat NASA or should I say NACA?????

        What if NASA structured it’s R and D to support the needs of such ventures.

        Would it help ???

        or not???????????

      • chriswilson68 says:
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        Yes, absolutely they are taking a good approach.  Sadly, it won’t matter if they can’t get funding, and an incremental approach can only bring costs down so far.  When the cost/reward ratio is so high to begin with, I’m afraid I have trouble believing it’s likely the could make money without decades and hundreds of billions of dollars.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          Chris,

          I would say that reality definitely supports your assessment.

          I’m optimistic, though, because the way I see things, it may take many attempts by many different parties over a fairly long period of time before acquisition and processing of asteroid resources becomes a working process, but it will happen, either for profit or out of need for the resources, or some combination of the two.

          And now, somewhat earlier than I would have expected, we have the first few players making their first serious forays into the field.  They may all fail, for any of several reasons, but lack of investment obviously tops the list.  However, whatever they learn will be passed on to the next round and the knowledge and experience base will grow.

          I wouldn’t be surprised to to see the same person/people try and fail multiple times before finally succeeding, securing fresh investments with each attempt, because I think belief will play a big part in this, on the parts of both the “miners” and the investors.  Without belief in the endeavor, it all falls back to the short-term ROI motive, which means that it would never happen.  But I think we’ve seen plenty of evidence that enough people believe in ISRU in general, and asteroid mining in particular, to sell their souls going after this.

          Steve

          • DTARS says:
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            On the McLaughlin group they were talking about china and al Qaeda in Africa. Then one of them said what should the USA be doing about positioning ourselves to get resources from Africa?? The smell of exploitation in that statement made me sick. I turned the TV off.

            What if we could get many of our resources from outer Space? Couldn’t that be wonderful!???

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Unfortunately, George, I’m afraid there will always be these self-centered business people who are interested only in the easiest, cheapest route to profits and seemingly couldn’t care less who it hurts or exploits.  Fortunately, many governments across the planet seem to be cracking down more on these pirates, but not enough.  Could that be because too many of the politicians and the pirates are the same people, or at least the same families?  It makes me sick, too, so I rarely watch TV news shows.  I agree that getting resources from space would be wonderful, but I fear you and I won’t live to see it happen.  We can at least take comfort that the process is now being taken more seriously and is in its initial stages.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “without much investment capital they’ll probably fade away in a couple of years”

      Sadly, I have to agree with you.  That’s been the fate of so many small private space ventures in the past, and it’s likely to be the fate of so many in the future.

      Maybe someday when SpaceX gets a fully-reusable booster launch costs will come down enough to make a lot more space-based business plans make sense.  Until then, there’s no money to be made in asteroid mining or most of these other areas, and when there’s no money to be made, these ventures won’t be funded.  Occasionally you get a billionaire who is willing to invest huge amounts of cash with no return for the foreseeable future (or who is too dumb to realize there is no money to be made), so the lucky few projects can move forward.  But even these billionaires don’t have infinite resources, so if there isn’t money to be made, eventually these businesses will fade away.

  2. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    An interesting proposition. I like the 3d printing of nickle/iron idea a lot. It means that you only really need two machines to make complex steel structures. One to reduce raw materials to proper feed stock for the 3d printer… and the 3d printer. No plate mill, tube mill or casting mill. No smelter necessary either. Just crush the raw material and separate out the different elements.

    Nice to see some competition for Planetary Resources too. Everybody is saying that competition in space will drive down prices. The first place we might see that is in the rock collector camp. The first ones in will bring in the highest prices then they’ll start coming down.

    I think the ice has cracked on commercial space ventures this last couple of years now that we have a truly commercial launch platform in the SpaceX Falcon launch vehicle. At last, small companies can go to a launch company, deal with a launch company, launch with a launch company and pay a launch company. SpaceX deals with whoever they need to get the job done. A contract, a price and that’s it.

    When SpaceX (or Spacelines that buy their hardware) start flying reusable launch vehicles at a million dollars a flight I think we’ll start seeing some real innovation. A lot of small companies will start thinking about ten tonne payloads costing just a few million dollars to fabricate and launch. These mining companies could launch hundreds of prospectors in a launch (maybe even on the same vehicle).

    Elon Musk is right. Reusable launch vehicles are the Golden Goose. I think these companies and others are banking on reusable launch vehicles to be operational by the time they’re ready for phase two; resource acquisition.

    tinker

    • DTARS says:
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      And I’m working with a steel company lol. What fun! 🙂

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “Elon Musk is right. Reusable launch vehicles are the Golden Goose. I
      think these companies and others are banking on reusable launch vehicles
      to be operational by the time they’re ready for phase two; resource
      acquisition”

      Yeah, cheap access to orbit is the only thing that could make their plans viable.  And I think you’re about right that a million dollars for around 10 tons is the ballpark that is both realistic for SpaceX to eventually achieve and that will unlock a lot of doors.

  3. Steve Whitfield says:
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    This could all be done via robotics and tele-presence initially

    Brian,

    While I definitely agree that it should be done with robotics and tele-presence in the long run, I think you’re being far too optimistic saying “initially.”  It’s going to take R&D, trial and error, and considerable time before robotics and tele-presence can be made to work reliably on the lunar surface, or anywhere off Earth, particularly when volatile and potentially explosive materials are involved.  Whether on the Moon, chasing an asteroid, or in free fall, these things need to be done incrementally, progressively, or we’re only going to wrack up expensive failures.  We can’t simply transplant what’s been done on Earth to the space environment.

    Also consider that the more we read and think about going after an asteroid, instead of jumping in and out of the lunar gravity well, the more sense it is beginning to make.  And since it is something that we will have to do eventually anyhow, maybe we should be starting our mining/processing with the asteroids.  Sometimes I think we automatically say “Moon” or “Mars” only out of habit because we’ve been saying them for so long.  Perhaps it’s time to give more thought to some of the viable alternatives.

    Steve

    • DTARS says:
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      After Spacex recovered that first, first stage booster, tick pilots and their droids had a lot of salvage business in GEO and LEO. NASA provided the research to provide better radiation shielding and the number of jobs in space started to multiply. And of course tick pilots were the first ones to by hired by the space mining industry.

      Parallel lines

  4. DTARS says:
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    Can 3D printing have economical applications here on earth soon????

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      It already has (I’m no expert, but here goes).  It’s been used in many different areas for several years, from auto parts prototyping to making dental pieces, and lots in between.  What’s changing at this point is the materials that are being used by the printer.  So far it’s been making stuff in plastics and soft metals (both start out as powders), but now they are developing systems that print parts in harder, less porous metals, which expands the applications significantly because of the greater strength.  The process is slow, but very flexible, so it’s typically used for one-off situations rather than production (it can typically take hours to print one piece).  At this point in time, only for small, simple items (where you can print a bunch of them at the same time) would you consider using it for production.  Also, to date, the printer beds are not overly large (you could prototype a couple of car engine pistons, but not an engine block in one).  I suspect that both the speed and the size will increase quickly, if they haven’t already.  There is a great deal of potential for 3D printing, both in making parts and making molds for parts.

  5. Doug Booker says:
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    Uh, everyone is forgetting one key step.  Refinement of the ore into pure nickle, iron, titanium, aluminum, etc. powder to be used by the newly patented zero-g, 3D printer.   

    Someone please demonstrator that with ore mined from an asteroid in zero-g and I might start paying attention.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      Yeah, that’s definitely the hard part.  But it’s good to know at least some people are working on the problem.

      Unfortunately, mining and refinement tends to involve many steps and require lots of chemicals and lots of energy.  It is also hard on the machinery, which tends to require a lot of maintenance, and it tends to be very labor-intensive.

      Also, mining usually uses water. Lots and lots of water. So we may need to mine ice from comets to use to mine metals from asteroids.

  6. chriswilson68 says:
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    While some people have mentioned cheap launch costs as making asteroid mining cheaper, please keep in mind that cheap launch costs are a double-edged sword for asteroid mining.  As much as the lower costs of mining resources, they also lower the costs of just hauling the materials up from the surface of the Earth as an alternative.  Anything that reduces both your own and your competition’s costs by the same factor doesn’t help your competitive position.

    That applies only to the mining of bulk materials like iron and nickel for in-space use.  It doesn’t apply to the other proposal, which is to bring back platinum-group metals or other expensive materials for use on Earth.  But the in-space use was always the much more realistic business case.  And if cheap launch costs bring about more in-space activity, it enlarges the total market for in-space resources.

  7. chriswilson68 says:
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    I think the idea of in-space 3-d printing is actually more important for the near future than asteroid mining.  It’s realistic to do it with near-term technology, much simpler and cheaper than mining, and it doesn’t require traveling any long distances.  And if you can just launch bulk materials and then print parts from them in orbit you can potentially make a lot of things a lot cheaper to do in orbit — and beyond.

  8. Geoffrey Landis says:
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    “Is the prospect of using asteroid resources crazy? No it’s not. Is if difficult? Yes it is. Can you make a business case for it? People are trying, and making progress.” But he said any company must have a product, experienced people and a business case. “This is like a three-legged stool. You need all three legs, otherwise it’s not a business, it’s a hobby.”
    I have to say, this is about the most insightful, accurate, and succinct assessment of asteroid resource mining I’ve seen.