ah casually watching a video on YouTube on a computer more powerful than anything Humanity
could build a few decades ago this progress and all the wonderful machines you take for granted
are built on a few rare and precious materials with names like terbium neodymium or tantalum
neodymium I have a relationship with that element because uh I was going to do my honesty if you
know what that is in physics over at otago in New Zealand and we were going to look at this [ __ ]
annoying medal a rare earth metal it's called even though that it's not very rare and we're
going to see if it had some cool applications for Quantum Computing and more specifically
like the stuff that connects quantum computers and for the stuff that you know you could one
day call a Quantum Internet but uh this shitty little material was uh annoyed the [ __ ] out of
me it's not that rare it's just sort of uh it's very dispersed this stuff and that's why we tend
to call it rare uh anyway getting these rare materials from the ground into your devices is
ugly the mining industry is responsible for air and water pollution and the destruction
of entire Landscapes dangerous chemicals like cyanide sulfuric acid or chlorine are used to
extract the resources harming biodiversity workers and locals and rare resources are
also political tools when countries restrict access to them to get their way but what if we
could replace the mining industry on Earth with a clean process that can't harm anyone well we can
speaking of something that can't harm anyone you should come get my new kind of VPN a postcard of
VPN that can protect you from quantum computers and no one will ever be able to harm you again
don't quote me on that that's not a official statement but um yeah come get it I built this
it's got post Quantum cryptographic algorithms in it and the beta is out it looks just like
this and it's got a trial you get 30 days free so please come help me support me support the YouTube
trying to get us all to Venus I want to colonize Venus one day so yeah join the club anyway let's
get back into the video all we need to do is look up asteroids are millions of trillions of tons of
rocks metals and Ice leftovers from the cloud that became the planet's 4.5 billion years ago they can
be as small as a meter all protoplanets the size of entire countries most of them are concentrated
in the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt while hundreds of thousands more do their own thing
between the planets as space travel is becoming more feasible scientists and economists have begun
looking at the resources found in these asteroids even relatively small metallic asteroids may
contain trillions worth of enriquezoid streel and precious metals like platinum and bigger asteroids
like 16 psyche could contain enough iron nickel to cover the world's metal needs for millions
of years at current market price speaking of that specific asteroid I believe that's the
one where NASA is about to send a probe to which is a quadrillion dollar no it was even more than
that wasn't it was it like a multi-quadrillion dollar NASA will launch psych mission to explore
asteroid worth more than the global economy 10 000 quadrillion that's insane so when is that
being launched launched in 2023 October 10th that's going to be pretty cool the psych team
they're going to launch it and be like psych that's the wrong number
prices the rare raw materials alone would be worth quadrillions of dollars well not
really but technically for example there are more than 20 million tons of gold in the ocean's water
worth roughly 750 trillion US Dollars sorry BRB I'm going to um make a boat gonna create a big
magnet and I'm gonna go get this gold so I'll see you guys tomorrow that's going to be the end of
the stream today but filtering out the gold would be so expensive that you'd lose money selling it
right challenge accepted now asteroid mining has exactly this problem it's too expensive to
replace mining on Earth billions of dollars worth of valuable resources in space are
worthless if it costs trillions to get them what makes it so hard the principles behind
mining an asteroid are simple the basic idea is to choose an asteroid move it to a place where
it's easy to process and then take it apart to turn into useful products unfortunately all of
this collides with fundamental problems humans have yet to solve going to space is expensive
it costs it's actually I don't think there's any fundamental problems right I think the
real issues are in principle all solvable the problems are that all the tech required to do
all this doesn't exist so you're going to have to innovate it every step trying to create a company
that innovates like a hundred different things all at once that doesn't really happen um so
that's kind of the problem we need uh there needs to be levels to this where we keep innovating in
different companies to keep innovating so it's going to take a little while however we could
LeapFrog that I think SpaceX could do this very soon um you know I'm kind of optimistic
this this could happen within the next 10 years and I've seen some startups trying to actually
that are eyeing this off now thousands of dollars in rocket fuel for each kilogram just to reach a
low earth orbit going further out into deep space costs thousands more we need cheaper space travel
to make asteroid Mining Profitable one solution is to it would be our space industry essentially
it's a whole sort of separate industry switch from classical rocket to what's up will electric
spaceships we already use electrical rocket engines for many of the space probes on science
missions in principle we only need to build bigger ones while electrical engines are not
powerful enough to fly to space they require only a tiny amount of fuel to go very far once they're
in space this means we don't need to spend a lot of money on fuel only to transport fuel into space
and you know you could imagine with uh you know Elon running both Tesla and SpaceX that's going to
be a pretty solvable problem for the SpaceX right you know with all the Innovations coming through
in electric stuff yes you're going to argue that's not the same as Rocket electric engines but look I
would wager a bet that probably you know favorites to be able to do something like this this doesn't
solve the whole cost problem but it makes it easier to start our first mission now that we
have an electric asteroid mining spaceship we need to find the right asteroid and get it there we've
already successfully visited Equity pass yeah give me give me just 0.5 equity and if we get
one of those quadrillion dollar asteroids you're still speaking more like millions of dollars is it
asteroids with space probes and even collected samples still to make it easier and cheaper
our first targets will probably be near Earth asteroids asteroids that orbit well near Earth
after a few months of travel our spaceship finally arrives at our asteroid weirdly formed littered
with small impact craters it hasn't changed much for billions of years the first thing that needs
to be done is to secure the asteroid and stop it from spinning there are multiple ways to
do this like Vapor man this would be so hard Rising material you have a good day Nick with
a laser or stopping the rotation with thrusters once we have a stable asteroid we need to wait
orbital mechanics are complicated but if you push something in the right direction at exactly
the right moment you can move very big things with very little Force so we wait for exactly the right
moment our ship fires its thrusters and nudges the asteroid into a trajectory that takes it near our
Moon the Moon is useful because we can borrow its gravitational pull to put the asteroid in
a stable orbit around Earth which saves even more fuel again the trip takes months but all the time
since our ship was launched has not been wasted it all sounds fairly reasonable and I'm sure we
can do all of this the first space mining and processing equipment has been installed in orbit
and is now carefully moving towards the asteroid the processor works very differently than on Earth
giant mirrors Focus sunlight and heat up asteroid Rock to boil out the gases Grinders break up the
dried rocks into gravel and dust and centrifuges separate dents from Light Elements even if we
only extract zero so obviously that bit is yeah this whole process lots of engineering
um this bit's quite interesting did you say large mirrors and mirrors Focus sunlight and heat up
asteroid Rock to boil out the gases Grinders break up the dryer sure I surely would need a bit more
than just some large mirrors like obviously you can you know get quite a bit of energy
out out of that but box into gravel and dust and centrifuges separate dents from Light Elements
maybe if you've got electric engines and you know you're funneling some of the energy because you
know some of these uh asteroids right it's got all kinds of hard elements you're trying to get
even if we only extract 0.01 of the asteroids mass in Precious Metals this is still several times
more than you'd get from the same amount of ore on the ground but what now how do we get our precious
metals safely back to ground there are a few ways like loading it into reusable rockets that return
to Earth from space I think once we do this for the first time it might open like the floodgates
to space travel I think if a company can manage to do this somehow I think there'll be a huge boom
and things will change rapidly getting to this point might be really hard because think about
it as soon as someone demonstrates or even gets close maybe but I think until someone demonstrates
just how much value can be brought in they might have to regulate this as well somehow
if someone does manage this because what's going to make their company worth a lot of
money very quickly I think if someone can do this companies will realize the big companies
in the world okay [ __ ] let's let's do this and then space travel exploration will expand rapidly
so that'll be an exciting time to be alive and hopefully this doesn't take too much longer from
where we are maybe 20 years maybe 10 years and then at that point there might be an explosion
so that's kind of exciting to think about or if our processor contains 3D printers I didn't really
explain why because you know investors people have the money will be like hey we can go make some
money now do it you know they formed companies just like Jeff Bezos did with blue origin because
he saw what Elon was doing he's like hey give me that do that anyway we can print a faster
and cheaper delivery system heat shielded capsules filled with gas bubbles these can just be dropped
into the oceans where ships tow them away this could be the starting point of Humanity's first
real steps towards colonizing the solar system as our infrastructure and just launching these
little mini asteroids back at Earth I calculated uh so they land in certain places there would be
some uncertainty right so I'm just imagining some picturing some sci-fi story you'd write about you
know some cowboys you know tracking asteroids from this quadrillion dollar company and they
launch you know these gold little at these little gold asteroids it's like futuristic gold mining
right where you track these little asteroids that this this company is launching back at Earth and
then the first one to get it you know gets gets a little chip of the gold off or something that
would be a fun story no experience grows our missions get more and more sophisticated parts
and fuel produced on asteroids don't have to be launched from Earth at all the first mining
operation makes the second one easier and so on while the space industry grows and precious
materials become cheaper eventually we could stop mining on Earth even the idea I've really
never considered that to that degree like why did I never but that wouldn't really matter too
much you sure we would stop mining to the degree of finding like expensive materials but unless
we've switched over to sustainable energy we're still going to have to keep mining fossil fuels
but no more mining uh metals and stuff like that would be great I wonder you know it's interesting
to think about toxic mining down here might become something weird and anachronistic like having an
open fire in your living room Landscapes ravaged by pollution will heal while the technological
wonders we're used to get cheaper and less toxic to make none of this is science fiction we don't
need fancy materials or new physics to make asteroid mining happen we could start building
this future today maybe everyone in the future like 50 years is going to be walking around with
like gold cars and gold and everything that'd be pretty cool all we need is an initial push
another great video I really enjoyed that would you guys think I thought that was a pretty fun I
like how close that one is to you know what we're currently capable of it's exciting it's exciting