Space Mining Operation Imagined

Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resouces want to mine asteroids and perhaps comets.  For years many people imagined that asteroids and comets were good for extracting minerals.  How would such an operation work in space?  We will look at what these small space bodies are made of, the scouts, the miners, and processors that are needed to extract the goods.

Stardust

To find out the content of comets and asteroids, NASA had some significant missions that provided answers.  Deep Impact spacecraft was successful in giving us analysis of the composition of comet Tempel 1 in 2005.  Stardust was a spacecraft that collected samples of comet Wild 2.  It finished its primary mission in 2006 and then had an add on mission to look at Temple 1 after Deep Impact's mission.   NEAR Shoemaker mission did some spectrography on an asteroid in 1997.  The findings of these missions are posted in the journal Science (membership required - a free one is available).  From what I read in Science articles, comets are full of water, carbon-dioxide, and hydrogen cyanide.  Asteroids seem to have elements to include iron, magnesium, silicon, and calcium, among others.  That's important because that is what is peaking the interest of companies to go and perform mining operations.

To really get a good understanding of what particular asteroids are made of, the companies will have to send out scouts.  Instead of a geologist, they will be remotely operated unmanned spacecraft.  Now, until recent history, unmanned exploration spacecraft either did flybys over specific routes, or went to orbit only one space body.  After their launch, which gave them the velocity they needed to get to their destination, they only had thrusters to steer themselves and no real main propulsion.  DAWN is the first unmanned spacecraft to have its own main propulsion via an ion drive.  Now its on its way to Ceres after orbiting and orbiting Vesta.  That's what you want in a scout.  It needs to orbit several asteroids by jumping from one to another.  Ion drives were first tested on NASA's Deep Space 1 mission with a mission manager that felt like Captain Kirk, Marc Rayman.  He also manages DAWN.



Marc is a pretty neat guy.  After the video interlude, let's get back to our topic.  As for finding the needed materials, and impactor and a spectrograph could be a quick way of determining the composition of asteroids or comets.  A scout could have several impactors.  This would be similar to the Deep Impact mission, but I imagine smaller and simpler impactors would be preferable.  Another way is to simply spectrograph the surfaces of the asteroids or comets.  I also would imagine marking the asteroids and comets by landing a small radio code transmitters.  This would be useful for the miners to come to them and find them.  Then on Earth, an automatic ground based system could track them without the need of an astronomer.

Deep Space 1

After marking the asteroids, miners come to extract the ore.  What would a robotic miner look like?  Now landing on an asteroid would seem tricky because of their irregular potato shape and the fact that they are spinning.  In 2005 Hayabusa landed on an asteroid and collected a sample.  A miner could do the same, but it must collect a lot of soil, do some preliminarily sifting (optional), and send the soil to a processing plant.  The container for the soil would have to be large and have its own service module (like a reusable space tug).  There should be several of these container ships going from the mining site to the processing plant.  They could be refueled at the processing plant and, if necessary, refuel the miner.

The processing plant should not be on Earth.  It should be in a place that is easily accessible from Earth and from deep space.  Earth-Moon, or Sun-Earth  L2 could be ideal places.  The processing plant would be a complex piece of machinery that perhaps would need humans to maintain it when it breaks.  Now such a plant would process the ore and have some material left over.  The waste material could be either sent to the moon or be collected next to the station, effectively making a ever growing pile of rubble that becomes an asteroid itself.

NEAR Schoemaker

After the ore is processed into some usable material, it could be sent to Earth, but why?  Well the simple answer is: that's where the factories are.  Yet, it seems rhetorical to get useful material in space to be only used on Earth where such material already exists.  That would be economically unsound.  An alternative is to take the material and make it usable for 3D printers to create whatever is needed for infrastructure in space and sell these items to other space companies for parts or new space structures.  These structures would use the elements from asteroids like iron, calcium, magnesium, and such.  The other types of product these processing plants could create would be consumables like water, oxygen, and hydrogen.  These consumables would be used by space stations, and even unmanned systems for fuel as well as the obvious.

Now, I've heard an alternate motivation for mining asteroids and that is for precious and rare minerals.  Whether such minerals exist in asteroids, I don't know nor have I read anything to that effect.  In such a case, bringing such material to Earth would be appropriate.  Such minerals could be sold in existing markets.

The use scouts, miners, and processing plants is the heart of my imagined space mining plan.  Now this little thought exercise is nice but is by no means the only way.  I just laid out a way that I thought would work.  It's fun to let you imagination run with a solution.  I even thought of an alternative which would make the miner and processor into one vehicle.  Yet, every plan will have different benefits and liabilities.  I'm sure you can come up with your own space mining operation plan.  It's a fun activity.

A Rocketless NASA?

SLS courtesy NASA

NASA is currently working on making the Space Launch System (SLS).  It's the latest rocket system that the government is working on to create.  The last one, was the Constellation program which failed.  Before that, the Space Transport System (Shuttle) was made in the 1970's by NASA.  Sure many companies were involved in these programs across the country, just like with the Apollo rockets.  This gives NASA full control and responsibility of success and failure with these systems.  Is this really the best thing that NASA could do?  Is NASA wasting their time?  I think NASA should get out of the rocket development business altogether.  Case in point, I found this article in Al.com (Alabama) by Lee Roop.  In it, some members of Congress state that SLS is too expensive.  Here we go again.  It's financial crunch just like in Constellation.  I'm starting to have doubts that SLS will ever fly.  NASA's strength is research for aerospace companies, and provide opportunity for scientific experiments off the planet.  They also do good in space exploration, manned and unmanned.  Why not have NASA major on these strengths rather than developing rockets while Congress refuses to fund NASA appropriately?  Much scientific experimentation is refused because of lack of money available.  Commercial Space can take over the development and responsibility for launches as they are demonstrating today.  They already are taking pressurized cargo to the ISS.  They are slated to take astronauts to ISS as well.  Let's see what we got as far as rockets and what a rocketless NASA would look like where it comes to space exploration.

So far, the major commercial players to launch NASA assets into orbit are ULA, Orbital Sciences, and SpaceX.  These guys represent the current launch might of the United States.  The rockets are:

ULA

• Delta II
• Delta IV
• Delta IV Heavy
• Atlas V (in all its configurations)

Orbital Sciences

• Pegasus
• Taurus
• Minotaur I, IV, and V
• Antares (yet to fly)

SpaceX

• Falcon 1
• Falcon 9
• Falcon Heavy (yet to fly)

Atlas V is being upgraded to be human rated to compete with Falcon 9.  Antares is also competing with Falcon 9 but in the pressurized cargo area.  ULA is a cooperation between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  Before SpaceX, only Atlas V, the Delta family and Oribtal's rockets (not Antares) were the launchers plus NASA had Shuttle (STS).  Shuttle is gone.  You see that the commercial companies are responding to NASA's need and challenge to assist in the manned exploration effort already.

If NASA never gets SLS, how could it explore asteroids and Mars?  SLS represents an approach that was used for Apollo.  That approach was to put all your assets on one BIG ROCKET and go for your target.  Man has never been manlier (that's a joke).  There is another theoretical approach but it's never been tried.  That approach requires the use of medium size rockets (Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9).  The idea is to use more than one launch to Earth orbit and put together your stack that goes to your target in orbit.  That stack would have a rocket big enough to leave Earth orbit, carry all the assets needed for the mission including a capsule to return the crew back to earth.  This would give commercial companies contracts and responsibility for launches.  Plus the old axiom is put to use that says "don't put all your eggs in one basket".  Launch from Earth represents the most risk to hardware and crew on any mission apart from landing.  Does this seem inefficient?  Perhaps to a rocket scientist, but it just may very well be more economically feasible than the alternative.

What about Orion?  The Orion capsule is the only asset to come out of the Constellation program to survive, albeit modified.  It is slated to launch on a Delta IV Heavy for its first space test run and return at high speed through the atmosphere.  That tells me it doesn't need SLS to get to orbit.  Delta IV or Falcon Heavy are capable of handling the job.

What could this stack look like?  If you look at SLS, the stack could be the upper stage that uses the J-2X engine, whatever space module needed form the mission, and the Orion Command Module.  2 or 3 launches should do the trick.  Later, they could make the J-2X booster into a reusable booster that comes back to Earth orbit ready to be refueled for another mission.

SLS is based on old idea of space operations.  This is a new century.  NASA has bigger plans for exploration than is SLS can economically provide.  SLS is really putting money in a rocket that is seldom going to be used.  That makes no economic sense.  NASA should stop reinventing the rocket.

NASA without its own rocket could open up the architecture of a mission to become more economically feasible, more reliable, and more evolvable.  I say let commercial companies lift NASA to orbit.  Then NASA can take care of exploration from there.

Learjet In Chahokia

This story made the national news.  A Learjet had landing gear trouble and took it's time to figure out how to land at St Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia, Illinois.   The plane ended up making a safe landing at Lambert Airport at the pilots request for a wider landing strip.  The front gear was the one the pilot was concerned about.  Apparently it could come down and retract, but it was 30 degrees tilted off center.  That was revealed to the pilot after a flyby of the tower at the St Louis Downtown Airport.  The crew and eight passengers were aboard.  I'll comment about the aircraft and the landing.

Learjet 45

Learjet is the maker of business jet aircraft that have better speed than airliners.  The Learjet in the story was a model 45.  It has a cruise speed of 500 mph and a range of 1968 mi.  It was developed in the early 1990's so it's not a new aircraft.  In fact, there was an upgrade to this model called the model 45XR.

With nose gear problems, a pilot might try keeping the nose in the air while landing and slowing the plane to a near stop.  I've seen this maneuver done by F-15 pilots.  Apparently they like to see who can keep the nose up the longest.  I don't think a Learjet could do such a stunt.  The pilot might have preferred to let the nose down as slow as possible.  The Grimli Glider had a nose gear that didn't want to lock as one of its problems.  The gear collapsed on landing and the front part of the fuselage halted the aircraft.  The pilot of the Learjet took a long time to land apparently figuring out the best way to minimize damage to the plane and injury to the passengers.  He tried a couple of times to land but aborted before landing at Lambert.  To his credit, he succeeded without incident.

As to emergency landings, this one ended on a good note.  Too often they don't end well.  I suppose it made the national news because the pilot requested the main airport rather than the smaller one.  The story was covered by Fox 2 News. 

Looking At AugustaWestland

Growing up making model aircraft and learning about all kinds of craft, I bought a book on helicopters.  It documented all the helicopters up to that time, 1980's.  The designs were interesting and varied.  I did notice a brand of helicopter that seemed pretty fancy and yet I hadn't heard of.  It was the Augusta helicopters.  They seem to rival high end VIP helicopters of Bell.  Recently I was saddened to hear that AugustaWestland had some serious allegations against them in their deal with selling some helicopters to India.  Westland was a British aircraft firm.  Augusta and Westland were merged in 2000.  Both companies have a good history in making high quality helicopters.  Let's check out a couple of these beauties.

Westland Lynx

The Lynx was originally developed by Westland for the British military.  Westland shared its production with the french company Aerospatiale, now a part of Eurocopter.  This helicopter has had long history with British, French, and many other countries' military.  Whether with wheels or skids it has had a lot of different configurations for multiple roles.  It's popularity is not surprising, since it set the speed record for helicopters in 1986.  I've seen footage where this very capable craft has even done the unimaginable for rotary wing, barrel roles.  It's a great air platform.  The updated version of the Lynx is called the AugustaWestland AW159 Wildcat.  It made an appearance in the movie Skyfall.  The Wildcat has a max speed of 296 kph (183.9 mph), and a range of 787.3 km (489.2 mi).  It can take 2 crew and 6 passengers.

AW101

The AW101 was originally a joint effort by Westland and Augusta under the name of EH101.  They call it Merlin.  It's a medium lift craft that replaces the S-61's role with many modern features.  Troop carrier, sub hunter, search and rescue, this craft can do it all and in all weather conditions.  Looking at the specs, it can hold 2 crew members and 30 passengers.  It has a range of 1058 km (657.4 mi).  It has a cruising speed of 278 kph (172.7 mph). 

AW 609

The AW609 was developed by Augusta and Bell and it's being produced by AugustaWestland.  The tiltrotor technology was developed by Bell in a project called XV-15.  Out of it came V-22 Osprey.  You can say that the AW609 is the civilian version of the tiltrotor tech.  It has a cruise speed of 465 kph (299 mph).  It has a range of 1390 km (852 mi).  It up to 9 passengers with a crew of 2.  This exceeds the speed and range of the AW101 and the Wildcat.  This is the purpose of the tiltrotor, to have a VTOL aircraft that can fly longer and faster than a helicopter.  Sikorsky's X-2 and Carter Copter's Slowed Rotor techs are competing for similar markets as the tiltrotor tech.

If you haven't heard of AugustaWestland before, now you have.  It happens to be a mainstay company in the rotary wing craft business just like Boeing, Sikorsky, and others.  They have an impressive presence in Europe but do business world-wide.  They are bold enough to try to market the tiltrotor in the commercial markets when no other company will.  I'd keep an eye on these guys see what they will do next.