The economics of moon mining

Sommariva, Andrea; Gori, Leonella; Chizzolini, Barbara; Pianorsi, Mattia

doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2020.01.042

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Production rate (mT/year) 1,100 Acceptable IRR values for something as new and risky as lunar mining are difficult to predict with what we know today. Sommariva et al 19,20 discuss a range of 8%-20%, while Charania and DePasquale 21 use a value of 21.7%. The value of 8.8% for Scenario 1 is clearly marginal without other business enhancing measures (e.g., government guarantees or tax incentives), but both PPP scenarios are much better.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Business Case for Lunar Ice Mining

Sowers

2021

New Space

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The key to human expansion into space and space development, in general, is developing space activities that deliver value in an economic sense. In other words, the key to space development is making money in space, that is, profit. However, the search for money making space activities has proven elusive. We present a business case for a commercial company to mine lunar ice and process the ice into rocket propellant. We discuss the existing and future markets for propellant and an architecture for mining and processing propellant and the associated costs. We then examine 3 scenarios, 1 commercial stand-alone and 2 involving a public/private partnership (PPP) model with NASA. We provide a comparison with other similar analyses. Business returns are positive for all 3 scenarios, although the PPP models provide increased returns and share risk with the government. Once established, lunar-sourced propellant will dramatically reduce the cost of all beyond low Earth orbit space activities and potentially enable other profitable commercial ventures to emerge.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Business Case for Lunar Ice Mining

Sowers

2021

New Space

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“…Examples are laser melting [22], contour crafting [23] and strengthening by adding additives [24]. The construction of the massive infrastructure components from the locally available regolith leads to a significant reduction in the payloads to be transported from the earth and thus to considerable cost savings [25] (Chapter 1.1). At the same time, the flexibility of activities on site increases, since components can be manufactured or repaired as required.…”

Section: Natural Lunar Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel Approach for In-Situ Resource Utilization based Subtractive Manufacturing in Space

Seidel

Teicher

Ihlenfeldt

et al. 2023

Preprint

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In recent years, space agencies like NASA and ESA have expanded their research activities in the field of Manufacturing in Space. These measures serve to reduce limitations and costs through fairing size, launch mass capabilities or logistic missions. The objective, in turn, is to develop technologies and processes that enable on-demand manufacturing for long-term space missions and on other celestial bodies. Within these research activities, in-situ resources utilization (ISRU) and recycling are major topics. Consequently, this paper considers what is required on-demand in future space missions and provides a corresponding overview of the in-space manufacturing state of the art. The latter is significantly influenced by research activities in the field of additive manufacturing, with only a few results available in the field of subtractive processing. In conclusion, a novel approach for in-situ resource utilization based subtractive manufacturing in space is presented to supplement the existing processes. The approach presented is based on a water abrasive jet process, with regolith simulate being used as the abrasive to separate metal and glass.

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“…Beyond Oxygen, Hydrogen and water, other invaluable minerals such as Helium-3 and platinum are tracked for mineral mining purposes on the Moon's surface, asteroids and comets. An economic evaluation of non-terrestrial mineral mining can be found in [115]. Mineral mining on asteroids or comets is carried out by cutting-edge robots deploying mechanical, thermal and optical drilling operations.…”

Section: Miningmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of the Geomechanics Aspects in Space Exploration

Knez

Zamani

2021

Energies

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From the 2000s onwards, unprecedented space missions have brought about a wealth of novel investigations on the different aspects of space geomechanics. Such aspects are related to the exploratory activities such as drilling, sampling, coring, water extraction, anchoring, etc. So far, a whole range of constitutive research projects on the plate tectonics, morphology, volcanic activities and volatile content of planetary bodies have been implemented. Furthermore, various laboratory experiments on extraterrestrial samples and their artificial terrestrial simulants are continually conducted to obtain the physical and mechanical properties of the corresponding specimens. Today, with the space boom being steered by diverse space agencies, the incorporation of geomechanics into space exploration appreciably appears much needed. The primary objective of this article is to collate and integrate the up-to-date investigations related to the geomechanical applications in space technologies. Emphasis is given to the new and future applications such as planetary drilling and water extraction. The main impetus is to provide a comprehensive reference for geoscience scientists and astronauts to quickly become acquainted with the cutting-edge advancements in the area of space geomechanics. Moreover, this research study also elaborates on the operational constraints in space geomechanics which necessitate further scientific investigations.

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The economics of moon mining

Cited by 20 publications

References 1 publication

The Business Case for Lunar Ice Mining

The Business Case for Lunar Ice Mining

Novel Approach for In-Situ Resource Utilization based Subtractive Manufacturing in Space

A Review of the Geomechanics Aspects in Space Exploration

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