Will asteroid mining ever be profitable? originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Sophia de Tricht, Co-founder and CEO of Pleiades Aerospace Services, on Quora:
Will asteroid mining ever be profitable? Sure. Near-term, in fact.
So let’s talk about satellites requiring propellant. Satellite lifespans are determined in large part by the amount of fuel they carry onboard. Being able to refuel the spacecraft on-orbit will initially be expensive, but it can be worked into the spacecraft operations budget, and so amortized over the extended life of the spacecraft, making the additional cost to the spacecraft operator insignificant if not negative (“negative cost” is savings).
[NOTE: I am hugely simplifying a hugely complicated issue by picking numbers out of thin air and ignoring a number of variables here, to prove a mathematical point.]
So let’s say your comms satellite costs $30,000,000.00 and can stay on station for 30 years. So you have to amortize spacecraft costs of about $83,333.33/month over the life of the spacecraft. If the spacecraft could transmit over 3 media (phone, internet, TV) to 4,000,000 people (conservative), it’s something like $0.06 per person per month to maintain the satellite. That’s already not a lot.
So let’s say that the refueling apparatus and plumbing requires half a million dollars per satellite to install and the refueling contract is $1,500,000.00 and that will extend the lifespan of the spacecraft out to 45 years. So you’ve got a spacecraft that now costs $32,000,000.00 amortized over 45 years is $59,259.26/month in satellite costs. That’s a savings of $24,074.07/month on the cost of the satellite. Now, the new cost per person per month of the satellite is about half a cent.
So no company would dare actually drop the prices if they could save that much, they’d pocket the difference and use it toward capital acquisition (in this case, more satellites). So 5.5 cents per person over the spacecraft life (45 years) is over $356,000,000.
And that’s with almost no new tech or infrastructure created.
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