Asteroid mining is one of those ideas that cycles in and out of public fascination — generating enormous excitement, then fading when people realize it won't happen within the next news cycle. But the concept never truly disappears, and for good reason.
Host | Matthew S Williams
For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
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Episode Notes
Asteroid Mining: The Promise, the Problems, and the Philosophy
Asteroid mining is one of those ideas that cycles in and out of public fascination — generating enormous excitement, then fading when people realize it won't happen within the next news cycle. But the concept never truly disappears, and for good reason.
Near-Earth asteroids, numbering in the millions, contain staggering quantities of precious metals, rare earth elements, and water ice. Ironically, those same materials — iron, gold, platinum, nickel, and dozens of others — were originally delivered to Earth by asteroids during the Late Heavy Bombardment period some four billion years ago. We're essentially talking about going back to the source.
The three main asteroid types — carbonaceous (C-type), silicate (S-type), and metallic (M-type) — each offer distinct resources. Beyond metals, the abundance of water ice in the solar system could relieve pressure on Earth's increasingly stressed freshwater supply and fuel deep-space missions.
Philosophically, the implications are profound. Thomas More and Nietzsche both wrestled with why scarcity drives human value systems. Flood the market with space-borne metals and the entire economic architecture built on scarcity begins to crumble. Orwell saw it too — abundance erodes hierarchy. The first trillionaires born from asteroid mining might find their wealth meaningless almost immediately after making it.
But the darker scenarios deserve equal attention. Redistributing consumption off-world doesn't eliminate it. Space debris, environmental degradation beyond Earth, and the very real risk of exploitative labor structures in off-world operations — echoes of colonialism and indentured servitude — are not science fiction. They're logical extensions of human patterns.
The enthusiasm may ebb and flow, but asteroid mining remains an inevitable chapter in humanity's story. The real question is what kind of story we choose to write around it.
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
Asteroid Mining
[00:00:00] The authors acknowledged that this podcast was recorded on the
traditional unseated lands of the Lekwungen Peoples. Hello and welcome back
to Stories From Space. I'm your host, Matt Williams, and today we'll be talking
about asteroid mining. What is the deal with it? Is it something that enjoyed a
heyday a few years ago and is now completely cooled as a concept, or is it
something that we can look forward to?
What are the challenges involved in realizing this whole idea? How soon could
they be overcome? What are the ethical implications, and what about all those
promises that were made for a post scarcity future, a future of total abundance,
and of course, the prediction that the world's first trillionaires would make their
money off of this industry.
And speaking personally when it comes to asteroid mining, I am of the opinion
that it's right up there with a space [00:01:00] elevator settlements on the moon
and Mars in that these are concepts that seem to come around every few years.
They garner a lot of enthusiasm, and then they kind of cool down because
people realize that's not gonna be happening anytime soon, which is to say
within the space of a human attention span.
Which are admittedly very short these days. Nevertheless, the concept remains
and it is something that for many people is an inevitable development, and this
includes famed futurists like Peter Diamandis, scientists like Stephen Hawking
and financial firms like Goldman Sachs, and for no other reason than the fact
that it is something that at some point we will be able to do and therefore we
will.
The benefits are self-explanatory, near Earth Asteroids, number in the millions.
They contain enough precious metals to sustain Earth's economy almost
[00:02:00] indefinitely, and other vital resources that we will need in order to
expand further throughout the solar system. So in essence, asteroid mining is a
key part of any future human space infrastructure.
If we are, in fact going back to the moon, if we're going on to Mars, if we're
gonna build the infrastructure that's going to allow us to do this with a a certain
regularity, which is to say lots of follow emissions, not years apart, and in a way
that is sustainable, then yes, asteroid mining is likely very likely to be a part of
that.Now, before getting into the particulars of what this would look like. Of what
asteroid mining would entail from a technological standpoint or a logistical
standpoint. First of all, you need to understand exactly what kind of asteroids
there are within near earth space. So to put it simply, asteroids are basically
leftover material [00:03:00] from the formation of the solar system.
So after the sun was born of a stellar nebula, basically a large cloud of gas and
dust rich in hydrogen, helium, and trace metals, this underwent gravitational
collapse and boon. Our star was formed, and the rest of the material in that
nebula, according to this. Stellar formation model that is the most widely
accepted.
That settled into a broad disc around the sun, which began rotating and due to
the conservation of angular momentum, a lot of this dust in key places began to
swirl and coalesce and eventually formed large bodies. According to that same
model, asteroids are material that did in fact accumulate and glom on together,
but did not become part of a larger planet.
And planets are so defined because after accumulating enough material, they
[00:04:00] underwent what's known as hydrostatic equilibrium, where they
collapse under their own mass to form a spherical object. And in the case of
rocky planets like Earth. The same force of gravity. It pulled most of the heavier
elements that went into making it like iron a nickel into the core, and this left
the crust and mantle pretty much depleted of heavier elements.
However, by the late heavy bombardment period, which occurred between 4.1
and 3.8 billion years ago, a disproportionately high amount of asteroids were
being kicked around the solar system, and they collided with the planets in the
inner solar system and distributed metals throughout the crusted mantle of these
planets.
So in essence, all the mineral wealth we currently enjoy here on Earth that we
exploit for the sake of our economy and meeting some of our most basic needs.
These were delivered by asteroids, [00:05:00] metals like iron, nickel, gold,
cobalt, manganese, mully, denim, osmium, palladium, platinum, uranium,
rhodium, rium, and tungsten, and countless others on the periodic table that we
rely on.
These all came from space. So you can understand now why various people,
various prospectors, business tycoons, and of course futurists and scientists,
they look to the asteroid belt as the next great industrial boom, the next greatfrontier for building humanities, economy, and a key part for building beyond
Earth.
And within the solar system alone, there are an estimated 150 million asteroids,
and that is strictly the ones that measure a hundred meters or more in diameter
or 330 feet. And these can be divided into three main groups that correspond to
their composition. First, you have sea type asteroids, [00:06:00] which are
composed largely of clay and silicon minerals, and are rich in carbon.
You have the S type, which are rich in silicates and traces of metal like nickel
and iron and M type asteroids, which are almost exclusively composed of
metals. And about 75% of all of these asteroids fall into the C type category.
The stype account for about 17%, and the M types make up the remainder
roughly 8%.
And so while the metal rich asteroids are rare compared to the carbonaceous
carbon asteroids, all of them nevertheless possess resources that are vital to any
future that humanity hopes to have in space. For the metallic asteroids, we're
talking gold, platinum, cobalt, zinc, tin lead, silver, copper, iron, and rare earth
metals, all of which are sought after by manufacturing and electronics, and on
the whole asteroids are also rich in [00:07:00] water ices and other volatiles like
ammonia, methane.
So in addition to harvesting precious metals and rare earth metals, we would
have access to enough water to sustain humanity for generations to come
without having to rely on earth's depleted freshwater resources. In fact, in terms
of water alone, planetary resources and asteroid mining consortium, that has
become a front runner in the whole asteroid mining advocacy group.
They indicate that there are roughly 2.2 trillion short tons or 2 trillion metric,
tons of water, ice in the solar system. Now in comparison, earth has an
estimated 35 trillion tons, and that's its total fresh water volume. However, that
means all water sources located on the surface and deep underground add up to
an estimated 35 trillion tons.
However, 69% of that is locked up in glaciers and ice caps. [00:08:00] Roughly
30% of it is groundwater and only 0.3% of it is accessible in terms of lakes,
rivers, and glacial runoff. If you expand that to include atmospheric water
vapor, it's about 1.2%. So the water, ice that is accessible in the system meet in.
And meanwhile, the availability of such abundant metal and other resources.
This would fuel a surge in Earth's economy, and it would definitely lead to asituation where scarcity is no longer a key facet of our economy. And that's
something that has existed from the get go. Ever since human beings have
walked the earth and conducted trade, the basis of their economies has always
been scarcity.
Value has been determined based on how [00:09:00] scarce an item is. Utility is
also a factor. Of course, if something is useful, it will be valuable to whoever
needs it. However, the supply ultimately is the big determining factor. And for
social science and philosophy majors, they may recall how Thomas Moore
Nietzsche commented on this, on the conundrum of why gold would be held to
be valuable.
What's that say about humanity? And our societies, Thomas Moore chalked it
up to greed, whereas Nietzsche chalked it up to what he called the bestowing
virtue. That gold is valuable because we bestow that quality onto it because it is
scarce, and both philosophers agreed that iron was a far more valuable
commodity in terms of its usage, but because it is by comparison, plentiful, it
was not highly valued.
And so that's the essence [00:10:00] of a post scarcity economy. The idea that if
we were to flood the market with space borne metals, then the value of these
metals would decrease sharply simply because they become so much more
available. So the whole basis of wealth and the whole basis of having and not
having it would disappear.
And we would have a society in which precious metals and all other resources
exist in abundance, and therefore no one is going without. And this is something
that George Orwell also commented in in 1984, where he said if it once became
general wealth, would confer no distinction. And redistribution of wealth,
however, accidental thanks to automation and production, it began to erode.
So you can see the appeal here, both from the [00:11:00] point of view of, of
economists and also philosophers and scholars, those who are hardcore
democratic and distributed thinkers, which is to say, people who believe in
distributed systems of economics and politics in order to maximize human
freedom. So in an ironic way.
While the first trillionaires might be born of the asteroid mining industry, their
wealth would mean very little shortly thereafter. The very thing that would be
making them stinking rich would be completely devaluing the very basis of that
wealth.So what exactly does it entail? What are the details when it comes to asteroid
mining and what would it look like?
Well simply put, it would involve space stations initially in low earth orbit or
rather platforms where robotic vehicles are assembled, which then travel to near
Earth asteroids, which would've been [00:12:00] already prospected in advance.
In addition, carbonaceous asteroids, they're rich in carbon compounds, which
also could be utilized given graphenes explosive entry into the world market.
And its many, many applications. And you also have other miracle materials
like carbine and carbon nanotubes, all of these things, these could be facilitated
and made a lot more prolific by harvesting carbon directly from space. In
addition, it has been speculated for some time that with the proper equipment,
carbon couldn't be compressed in order to create artificial diamonds.
And this can be used to create diamond OID materials, the super material that
could allow for all manner of space exploration, extreme temperature and
pressure resistant probes that could study deeply within planet cores. And also
within.[00:13:00]
Within its Corona and possibly even deeper, and within the gas giants.
And on the whole asteroids are also rich in water, ice, and other and other
volatiles like ammonia and methane. So in addition to harvesting precious
metals and rare earth metals, we would have access to enough water to sustain
humanity.
Sustain humanity for generations to come without having to rely on earth's
depleted freshwater resources. In fact, in terms of water alone, planetary
resources and asteroid mining consortium, that has become a front runner in the
whole asteroid mining advocacy group, they indicate that there are roughly 2.2
trillion short tons or 2 trillion metric, tons of water, ice in the solar system.
Has an estimated 35, 35 tons. [00:14:00] However, 69% of that is locked up in
glaciers and ice caps. Roughly 30% of it is groundwater and only 0.3% of it is
accessible in terms of lakes, rivers, and glacial runoff. If you expand that to
include atmospheric water vapor, it's about 1.2%. So the water, ice that is
accessible in the solar system is more than enough to meet future needs in a way
that would take stress off of Earth's limited freshwater stocks.And meanwhile, the availability of such abundant metal and other resources.
This would fuel a surgeon Earth's economy, and it would definitely lead to a
situation where scarcity is no longer. A key facet of our economy, and that's
something that has existed from the get go. Ever since human beings have
walked the earth and conducted trade, the basis of their economies has
[00:15:00] always been scarcity.
Value has been determined based on how scarce an item is. Utility is also a
factor. Of course, if something is useful, it will be valuable to whoever needs it.
However, the supply ultimately is the big determiner, the big determining
factor, and this is something that human beings have understood for just as long.
And for social science and philosophy majors, they may recall how Thomas
Moore Nietzsche commented on this, on the conundrum of why gold would be
held to be valuable. What's that say about humanity and our societies, Thomas
Moore likened it. Thomas Moore chalked it up to greed, whereas his Nietzsche
chalked it up to what he called the bestowing virtue.
That gold is valuable because we bestow that quality onto it because it is scarce.
And both philosophers agreed that iron was a [00:16:00] far more valuable
commodity in terms of its usage, but because it is by comparison, plentiful, it
was not highly valued. And so that's the essence of a post scarcity economy.
The idea that if we were to flood the market with space borne metals, then the
value of these metals would decrease sharply simply because they become so
much more available. So the whole basis of wealth and the whole basis of
having and not having it would disappear. And we would have a society in
which precious metals and all other resources exist in abundance, and therefore
no one is going without.
And this is something that George Orwell also commented in in 1984, where he
said, if it once became general wealth, would confer no distinction and how the
redistribution of [00:17:00] wealth, however accidental thanks to automation
and machine production. It began to erode the very basis of a hierarchical
society.
So you can see the appeal here, both from the point of view of, of economists
and also philosophers and scholars, those who are hardcore democratic and
distributed thinkers, which is to say, people who believe in distributed systems
of economics and politics in order to maximize human freedom. So in an ironic
way.While the first trillionaires might be born of the asteroid mining industry, their
wealth would mean very little shortly thereafter. The very thing that would be
making them stinking rich would be completely devaluing the very basis of that
wealth.
It could effectively become like a nature preserve where all of our needs, a lot
of our economic needs are met [00:18:00] by off world resources and humans
are able to live in a almost entirely untouched, pristine environment with all the
contrivances, all the modern amenities, and were no longer causing a serious
impact to other species and their biospheres.
And destroying their habitats in order to ensure our own growth and sustenance.
Of course, no discussion on asteroid mining or any other prospect of this nature
would be complete without mentioning the downsides, which is to say the
ethical implications, the possible consequences, et cetera. And I kind of left a
clue in there when I said that.
By relocating all our industries off World Earth would be able to recover
environmentally from many, many, many generations of humans, from catalyst
generations of human habitation and the multiplication of our species, and how
we've just spread [00:19:00] all across the planet and occupied just about every
niche system available and buried within all.
That is the notion that, well, we're not disposing of our bad habits or our
consumption. We're just redistributing it. We're just sending it off to, into space
or to, and sort of the hidden message and all that is that, well, we're not actually
addressing these consumption related behaviors, this overburdening of the
natural resource environment in order to suit our needs.
We're just redistributing it. We're sending it elsewhere. And so you can see with
relative ease here, um. And so you can see a familiar kind of trope in this, a
common science fiction trope where off world colonies have been established in
the future and people live and work there and they are essentially a off world
labor class that are providing for earth at the point of a gun or just [00:20:00] by
means of force.
And this is a familiar sort of dystopian trope, however. One can see the seeds of
that there in this thinking. And when talking about establishing a self-sustaining
city on Mars, Elon Musk once said that people could enter into a sort of
indentured servitude where they would be working off the the price of a one-way ticket to Mars by essentially working for free when they got there, until
they paid off their debt.
And several critics were quick to point out, oh, there's another word for that,
indentured servitude. It's called slavery. And this is not entirely unrealistic. Of
course, others would counter that by saying, well, by enabling a post scarcity
future, the entire basis of slavery and debt and so forth would be eliminated.
But then again, that depends on how the wealth that is generated in the system,
how it is distributed. [00:21:00] And to quote Orwell, once again, it's by means
of a system where it was impossible not to redistribute some of the wealth. And
he is using early industrialization as an example. Even though industry was not
intended for the purpose of alleviating poverty, it was impossible that the
general fortunes, the standard of living, of the working peoples, that it wouldn't
be elevated because wealth was becoming more general.
So there is that. However, it is not farfetched to think that human beings would
find a way to monopolize the wealth and control its distribution in a way that
left certain people out, and it would be a safe bet that those people would be
those living off world. In addition, there are the environmental concerns.
And it has been pointed out, certain researchers have published papers in which
they argued that just because we're mining in space, that doesn't mean we're not
spoiling a natural environment. Earth [00:22:00] is a part of space, and
everything that is out there is directly tied to what is down here. So mucking
around with asteroids.
This would present immense material benefits. It would even have the benefit of
asteroid defense if we are aware of all the asteroids within the inner solar
system and beyond. If we are able to monitor them up close, the odds of any of
them posing a risk to earth in the future would be significantly reduced.
But we still run the risk of just toxifying the space environment. If we mine out
all the near earth asteroids and leave debris everywhere, that could become a
very serious problem for space travel itself, for space travel itself. And that in
turn could pose something of a risk to earth. You think of all the satellites that
litter low Earth orbit right now, which we absolutely have to do something
about in the near future.
And then extend that to [00:23:00] include asteroid related debris and defunct
machines used in asteroid mining and how those could end up littering the
Earth's orbit, which these asteroids currently share. This Earth could in thefuture, be routinely passing through debris fields, if left unmitigated. That
would cause all kinds of havoc to our atmosphere and to anything operating in
our lower earth orbit.
These could pose, yeah, this could pose a threat to our atmosphere and to
anything operating in low earth orbit or C lunar space, because of course, with
every cycle, every year we are passing through some of what we've left out
there. And of course, there are those who argue that nature preserves should be
established in space because the potential for scalability and exponential
growth, it is undeniable.
But what happens when you reach the very edge of that? What happens when
you have tapped [00:24:00] every single resource in the solar system and you're
actively consuming it? What happens when your numbers multiply to the extent
that you can no longer meet the demand based on the the resource space? And
this is something that human history has shown repeatedly Every time our
numbers grow with the latest technological advances.
With the latest technological advances and a increase in food production and a
resulting increase in food production and the numbers of people that we can
sustain, we eventually hit a point of inflection or crisis where we can no longer
produce enough to sustain those numbers. And we either see a civilization
recede or collapse as a result, or they're saved by a technological innovation that
allows for them to carry on.
Keep multiplying. And so like everything else, when we're talking about the
future of humanity and our future in [00:25:00] space and all these ambitious
projects that we hope to realize someday, we have to address the ethical
implications first as well as the legal ramifications. If we're operating in space,
who is jurisdiction?
How do we adjudicate things? How do we deal with offenses and transgressions
of various kinds? I mean, there's going to have to be a legal code for how
everyone operates in space so that no one person, one entity, one faction, or
nation or planet, is doing unnecessary harm to others. And as usual with my and
in what is typical for me, I look at that with a sense of optimism or the very
least cautious optimism in the sense that.
I do believe that human beings are capable of doing that and we certainly have a
track record for addressing problems in advance or, and there is a precedent
[00:26:00] for that. If you look at the outer space treaty, you look at the articleson anti proliferation of nuclear weapons of disarmament and environmental
regulations and laws.
We do have it within us to anticipate problems and to address existing problems
before they become a complete and total nightmare, and whether or not that is
what we will do in the future, in part to avert climate change catastrophe. But
also to avert any potential disasters that would wait for us beyond a climate
related existential crisis.
Right? If we do survive climate change in this century, then yes, we'll be
looking at a new set of challenges as we embark on new journeys and, uh, enter
into future frontiers. I do believe that this is something that will have to happen,
so it's likely to. And that [00:27:00] at the very least, it'll all be very, very
interesting to see.
And like many, I hope that I'm around to see at least the beginnings of it to be
there when we get in on the ground floor. In any case, to address something I
brought up earlier, it does seem as though. Enthusiasm has sort of cooled when
it comes to asteroid mining, much like it's cooled with regards to us establishing
a permanent human settlement on Mars.
Things have sort of gone from a high point in the mid 2010s to a much more
tepid response today, but the prospect of these things remains, and it is natural.
That enthusiasm sort of goes in cycles. Something attracts attention. A lot of
people jump on board and then they slowly peel off when they realize that this
is not happening right now or in the near future, which is to say the next few
[00:28:00] years.
But much like sending humans to Mars, much like establishing outpost on the
moon and everything else, these are dreams that have been around for
generations and they're certainly not going away simply because they're not
attracting the same amount of attention that they were a few years ago. And as
is pretty much always the case in my experience.
As long as there is the prospect for doing something, there are people who will
commit themselves, their resources and their energies to doing it. And the more
possible it seems, the more people will be getting on board and given the
payoffs, given the payoff of a space elevator of off world settlement of asteroid
mining, there will always be proponents of that.
There will always be people looking to make it happen. The [00:29:00] May
very well succeed and we will see the very beginnings.Tune in next time when we'll be looking at the subject of Agenesis. The idea
that life spontaneously arises from chemical reactions in our natural
environment, and where we'll be looking at recent research that shows that the
building blocks of life actually do this in space, which has tremendous
implications in the search for life beyond Earth in the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence.
And in our ongoing research, no. And the ongoing study of how the building
blocks of life are distributed throughout the universe. AKA panspermia, which
is a subject I've been promising to do for some time now. We'll get into all of
that and then [00:30:00] some in the meantime. Thank you for listening. I'm
Matt Williams, and this has been Stories from Space.