A techno-economic analysis of asteroid mining

Abstract

Asteroid mining has been proposed as an approach to complement Earth-based supplies of rare earth metals and supplying resources in space, such as water. However, existing studies on the economic viability of asteroid mining have remained rather simplistic and do not provide much guidance on which technological improvements would be needed for increasing its economic viability. This paper develops a techno-economic analysis of asteroid mining with the objective of providing recommendations for future technology development and performance improvements. Both, in-space resource provision such as water and return of platinum to Earth are considered. Starting from first principles of techno-economic analysis, gradually additional economic and technological factors are added to the analysis model. Applied to mining missions involving spacecraft reuse, learning curve effect, and multiple spacecraft, their economic viability is assessed. A sensitivity analysis with respect to throughput rate, spacecraft mass, and resource price is performed. Furthermore, a sample asteroid volatile mining architecture based on small CubeSat-class spacecraft is presented. It is concluded that key technological drivers for asteroid mining missions are throughput rate, number of spacecraft per mission, and the rate in which successive missions are conducted.

Economic assessment of high-thrust and solar-sail propulsion for near-earth asteroid mining

“…To assess the economic viability of the asteroid mining mission concepts defined, the NPV has been adopted as a useful metric (Oxnevad, 1991;Sonter, 1997;Ross, 2001;Gerlach, 2005;Gertsch and Gertsch, 2005;Andrews et al, 2015;Hein et al, 2020;Bazzocchi and Emami, 2018;Dorrington and Olsen, 2018). Section 3.1 elaborates on the calculation of the NPV, which is the basis for the economic modelling.…”

“…in which R is the revenue, t mis is the total mission duration in years, C is the incurred cost and the discount rate (I) is taken as 10% (Ross, 2001;Hein et al, 2020). Substituting for the cost contributions, this results in the following NPV for the chemical propulsion mission:…”

“…Current work focuses on asteroid classification (Bus and Binzel, 2003), developing architectures and designing missions for asteroid mining (Andrews et al, 2015;Dorrington and Olsen, 2019), compiling sets of attainable target asteroids (Sanchez and McInnes, 2011;Yárnoz et al, 2013), trajectory optimization to NEAs (Tan et al, 2018;Peloni et al, 2016;Mingotti et al, 2014;Sánchez and Yárnoz, 2016), employing reusable launch vehicles (e.g., SpaceX BFR (Gargioni et al, 2019)) for asteroid mining missions or employing solar sails for sample return and mining missions (Dachwald and Seboldt, 2005;Hughes et al, 2006;McInnes, 2017;Peloni et al, 2016;Grundmann et al, 2019) and the economic modelling of asteroid mining ventures (Sonter, 1997;Ross, 2001;Hein et al, 2020;Gertsch and Gertsch, 2005;Andrews et al, 2015;Oxnevad, 1991;Dorrington and Olsen, 2019). While this addresses many issues important during the design of a profitable asteroid mining mission, little research has been done on integrating economical modelling into the optimization of trajectories to NEAs.…”

“…Trajectory design which maximizes economic profitability will be investigated as a key consideration for future commercial ventures. Following related work on the economic modelling of asteroid mining (Sonter, 1997;Ross, 2001;Hein et al, 2020;Gertsch and Gertsch, 2005;Andrews et al, 2015;Bazzocchi and Emami, 2018;Oxnevad, 1991;Dorrington and Olsen, 2019), this work aims to maximize the Net Present Value (NPV) for a resource-return trip. The business case explored in this paper is built on returning volatiles (e.g., propellant) to geostationary orbit, where it can be used to refuel geostationary satellites or be stored in a depot for use in other orbits.…”

Africa and the Artemis Accords: A Review of Space Regulations and Strategy for African Capacity Building in the New Space Economy

“…This language, while vague, has shaped more than 50 years of peaceful international collaborations in space with no nations or private companies making major efforts to exploit resources in space. Although asteroid mining is currently technologically difficult and expensive, 14 the majority of resources in our solar system are outside of Earth, and as technology improves, being able to access and exploit resources outside of Earth will grow in importance for nations.…”