The claims you make seem plausible, but I’d like to see some numbers crunched a bit more. For example:
The attraction of space mining is that we have access to immense resources; but what we need is access to resources at a cheap marginal cost. If space mining doesn’t offer that, then we just won’t use it, just as there are ways of getting resources on Earth (eg some forms of recycling, distilling resources from the sea, very deep mining) that we are just not using because they’re currently too expensive.
My gut tells me the fixed costs of space mining are huge, but once you pay them, the marginal costs will be tiny. Do you have reason to think this is not true? Also, outside view says there are various companies hoping to do some sort of extraterrestrial mining, so that means some experts must think it’ll be profitable. And surely they’ll have anticipated the objection that the prices will drop once they start producing.
My gut tells me the fixed costs of space mining are huge, but once you pay them, the marginal costs will be tiny.
This seems likely true for other sorts of mining as well; presumably finding oil and drilling to it is more expensive than operating the pump afterwards. This seems less obviously true for recycling or distillation.
My understanding is that ordinary mining suffers from increasing marginal costs as you have to dig deeper and deeper into the earth and/or process veins of ore which are less and less rich.
My gut tells me the fixed costs of space mining are huge, but once you pay them, the marginal costs will be tiny.
Yes, but is the demand huge enough to pay those fixed costs? If demand is not very eleastic, then no-one will pay them.
To develop the metaphor I used: given the glass a metre away, the lake a kilometre away, and the vast reservoir over the mountain. Suppose that, given a pipeline, the marginal cost for the reservoir is cheaper than the cost of filtering the lake water. That’s as may be, but if we’re a small village (or if we’re just me), it makes no sense to pay the immense cost of the pipeline.
This will change, of course, if space infrastructure can also serve other purposes (in the metaphor, if we have other reasons to build a pipeline or at least explore the mountains).
It’s currently hard to know with any certainty what the marginal costs of space mining might be. Currently, everything is manufactured on Earth and then must be launched into space. It’s not clear what the path(s) to escaping that constraint might be and how long they’ll require and at how much cost.
As just one possible cost that might remain relatively high indefinitely is protecting the Earth from ‘mis-delivery’ of mined resources. Being able to ‘land’ large masses on Earth is very powerful weapon! Defending against even accidental ‘attacks’ might remain prohibitively expensive indefinitely.
Also, outside view says there are various companies hoping to do some sort of extraterrestrial mining, so that means some experts must think it’ll be profitable. And surely they’ll have anticipated the objection that the prices will drop once they start producing.
This seems like slightly weaker evidence than it might otherwise be because I’d expect interest in extraterrestrial mining to be caused by much different motivations than terrestrial mining opportunities.
But yes, I’m sure they’re running the numbers for the scenarios in which their additional supply of whatever they’re able to mine causes the relevant prices to drop.
The claims you make seem plausible, but I’d like to see some numbers crunched a bit more. For example:
My gut tells me the fixed costs of space mining are huge, but once you pay them, the marginal costs will be tiny. Do you have reason to think this is not true? Also, outside view says there are various companies hoping to do some sort of extraterrestrial mining, so that means some experts must think it’ll be profitable. And surely they’ll have anticipated the objection that the prices will drop once they start producing.
This seems likely true for other sorts of mining as well; presumably finding oil and drilling to it is more expensive than operating the pump afterwards. This seems less obviously true for recycling or distillation.
My understanding is that ordinary mining suffers from increasing marginal costs as you have to dig deeper and deeper into the earth and/or process veins of ore which are less and less rich.
So would I ^_^
Yes, but is the demand huge enough to pay those fixed costs? If demand is not very eleastic, then no-one will pay them.
To develop the metaphor I used: given the glass a metre away, the lake a kilometre away, and the vast reservoir over the mountain. Suppose that, given a pipeline, the marginal cost for the reservoir is cheaper than the cost of filtering the lake water. That’s as may be, but if we’re a small village (or if we’re just me), it makes no sense to pay the immense cost of the pipeline.
This will change, of course, if space infrastructure can also serve other purposes (in the metaphor, if we have other reasons to build a pipeline or at least explore the mountains).
It’s currently hard to know with any certainty what the marginal costs of space mining might be. Currently, everything is manufactured on Earth and then must be launched into space. It’s not clear what the path(s) to escaping that constraint might be and how long they’ll require and at how much cost.
As just one possible cost that might remain relatively high indefinitely is protecting the Earth from ‘mis-delivery’ of mined resources. Being able to ‘land’ large masses on Earth is very powerful weapon! Defending against even accidental ‘attacks’ might remain prohibitively expensive indefinitely.
This seems like slightly weaker evidence than it might otherwise be because I’d expect interest in extraterrestrial mining to be caused by much different motivations than terrestrial mining opportunities.
But yes, I’m sure they’re running the numbers for the scenarios in which their additional supply of whatever they’re able to mine causes the relevant prices to drop.