Eureka! Asteroid Mining

Take off for an asteroid with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Peter Diamandis, the co-founder of Planetary Resources and the man with the plan to mine asteroids for profit and progress.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, where I also serve as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium. My co-host this week is the one, the only Chuck Nice.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yes, for now. I plan on cloning myself.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that'd be good. Then you can sleep and work at the same time.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  I didn't even think of that. You're smart.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what this show, it's all about asteroid mining.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is. It so is.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I'm saying it's awesome, but what exactly is asteroid mining?

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we can like early get to our clip because I recently interviewed Peter Diamandis. And I don't know if you know his name. He gets around a bit in his circles. He's deeply known in his circles. He's the founder of the X Prize, which are public competitions, which challenges the world to see if they can come up with technological innovations that you might have thought were out of reach. But if you put a fat billfold in front of them, it's in reach.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Isn't it funny how it works like that? Fat billfold's the mother of invention.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mother of invention. So the most famous X Prize is the Ansari X Prize. What he does is he gets founders to help produce this billfold for the particular prize. And that one was related to spacecraft development. But he's coming up with X prizes that are for all manner of sort of achievements that we long for, for those who remain among us continuing to dream of a tomorrow. I've got a whole other StarTalk show on the X Prize with Peter Diamandis, but right now, we're talking about asteroid mining. You know why?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Peter Diamandis is one of the founders of Planetary Resources.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a few months back, there's a big announcement, and it's a company that has the goal of mining asteroids.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Mining asteroids.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out of control.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  That is, that's a little crazy.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I mean, the whole thought of the, I'm just looking forward to the day where we'll actually say, where'd you pull that out of? You're asteroid? And where we'll actually mean it. We'll actually mean it.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let us quickly go to clip.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's see, my first clip with Peter Diamandis, we ran into each other at a conference, and I said, "I'm not going to let this opportunity go." Let's see what he has to say about his new venture.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  We now have the ability privately to go out and begin to extract resources from asteroids. You know, much of humanity's exploration, much of humanity's growth has been a function of gaining access to resources. Whether it's the Silk Trail from Asia, whether it's Europeans looking to the New World for gold and spices, or American settlers looking to the West Coast for timber, land, gold, oil, that's what's driven us. It's driven us consistently. And so, as I-

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, think about it. Why are the 49ers called the 49ers? Because in 1849, there was the gold rush in San Francisco. There's people moving body and soul.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  And that drove the creation of the railroads. It drove different parts of the United States to be literally settled, Homestead Act and so forth. So, people were looking for resources that would create value and uplift humanity in that regard. The space program has been on again, off again. You know, it's been the ups and downs of Congress. A new administration comes in, they say, "Forget about the Moon and Mars, we're going here." Another administration comes in, they say, "Forget about, you know, there, we're going back to the Moon and Mars." And literally, we don't ever make consistent progress. So, my mission has been, how do we connect opening the space frontier to what I call an exothermic economic reaction? Meaning, how do we connect it to something that makes a profit that consistently drives us?

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exothermic, that is the release of energy-

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than what you put in.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  And as I think about this, space has tremendous value. Everything we fight wars over on Earth, metals, minerals, energy, real estate.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Those things are near infinite quantities in space. People look at the Earth as a very closed system, but the Earth is a crumb in a supermarket filled with resources. And if we can gain access to those resources, it uplifts everybody. It makes it possible that we can make use of what we call strategic or rare metals far more usefully. For example, I wrote this book, Abundance, and the cover is wrapped in aluminum because in 1840s aluminum was more precious than gold and platinum. Even though aluminum makes up 8.4% of the Earth by weight, all the aluminum-

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth's crust.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Earth's crust by weight. All of the aluminum is bound with oxygen and silicates to form bauxite. You don't go and find pure aluminum in the ground. But technology came along that was able to extract the aluminum from bauxite so cheaply that we make use of it with aluminum foil, aluminum cans, don't think about it.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we just throw it away when we're done.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  We throw it away. But in 1840, aluminum was so precious, they capped the top of the Washington Monument with aluminum because it was worth more than gold and platinum. So I think about technology liberating resources. And we now have the technology to gain access to asteroids which are rich in platinum group metals, PGMs, rubidium, palladium, platinum, things like that, that are very important for humanity, for batteries and electronics and medical-

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Industry thrives on these elements.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  People write reports that say we only have 17 years left of rubidium. Well, if you've got a myopic focus of looking just down at the ground, but my God, there's tons of it in space.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the man is thinking future.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  That is way future.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is way future, but to him, it's like reachable future, and that's not even X Prize future. That's like, let's do, let's do this.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, the interesting thing is, we know how to get to asteroids. We've, we've sent, you know, robotic missions to asteroids, we've landed on asteroids, we've orbited asteroids. And so getting there is not the issue. It's now what are you going to do with this stuff? And that's really the future, you know, future shock right there.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Well, that and the fact that I've, I realized from listening to him that basically greed- Is what drives us as a race of people.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I didn't know until we researched, researched the show that the, the first transcontinental railroad was funded in part by gold rush money. I just didn't know that.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, 1848.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And, and so why do they call them the, the 49ers?

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, oh, it took a while to like that information to get out and for people to then rush the state.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  See, this is what happens when you don't have Twitter. It takes a whole year for the word to get out that there's gold in them, there are hills.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Them by our hills. And in fact, when you find gold, what's the first word that comes out of your mouth?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Eureka.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eureka. And in fact, that is the California state motto.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Really?

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  The state motto of California is a frickin' vacuum cleaner.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's eureka.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Eureka. That sounds great.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And, you know, of course that word, we attribute that to Archimedes when he first dipped himself in a bathtub. You know, he thought his brain was always thinking and he overfilled his bathtub before he stepped in.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what happens when that happens?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  You overflow the tub.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You overflow the tub. And he realized that his body volume must equal the volume of water that spills out of the tub, which in retrospect, sounds trivial, but this could be a way to measure the volume of irregular objects.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like kings' crowns.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you want to find out whether it's made of gold? That's the first step in that process. And I would have said eureka as well.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Eureka.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to end this segment. When we come back, more on asteroid mining with StarTalk.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson and this week my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be looking for you there.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we're featuring my interview with Peter Diamandis, who founded a brand new company called Planetary Resources. He wants to mine asteroids. Man is crazy fun just to hear about what he wants to do. Out there he is. And, and we left off talking about the word eureka because that was how they, it's the word you say when you find gold and they said it in California and the gold rush. Right. And we, we traced that to Archimedes when he figured out how to measure the volume of an irregular object. And when he dipped his body in, he spilled out. Spilled out. The amount of water that his body occupied. How else are you going to measure the volume of a human body? Yeah. That's an irregular object. Not that you're an irregular object, but looking at your volume, you seem to be a lot less voluminous, my friend. I have a little bit less body. I'm saying you do.

• 9:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm trimming down for a cosmos is actually what's, what's happening there. The TV show. A TV program. Yeah, yeah. It's just TV vanity pounds. Interesting that you mentioned this like on the radio. Yeah. Everyone see? Yes. Hey guys, look at Neil right now. He looks fantastic. Chuck, this is radio. This is the only time I look good, Neil.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's go back to my Peter Diamandis. I met up with him at a conference and I said, I gotta whip out my microphone and talk to this guy about his crazy ideas that are going to change the world. How's he going to do this? Let's find out.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Back about three and a half years ago, when we said, let's do this. Uh, we went out and pulled in some of the very best engineers and scientists. In fact, I have to confess, we raided JPL.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jet Propulsion Labs.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and four or five of the top people who built Curiosity that's now sitting on the Martian surface are now working for us. And we hope they'll have as much success with us as they did.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're mining people?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Mining people out of JPL. And so we are building the very super low cost, deep space satellites. Uh, satellites that can go beyond low earth orbit, millions of miles and consistently accurately operate out there. Communicate back by laser, have super high precision pointing, have big optics to look for asteroids. And hopefully go out to them, prospect them, understand what they're made of, put a beacon on them as the first step. And then be able to extract valuable resources.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So there's a whole process.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Prospectin' phase. There's a prospecting. How long is that? We're gonna be prospecting for decades, I'm sure. But we're launching our first of what we call the Arkid series of spacecraft within eighteen to twenty-four months. And these Arkid spacecraft are space telescopes. They're telescopes that, in low Earth orbit, are able to see asteroids coming whizzing by the Earth. Because there are thousands of them, of different size and shapes, that come very close to the Earth. Sometimes they hit the Earth. And that's not a good thing. But as they come by, they're relatively low from a, what we call a delta V, an energy standpoint. And the second iteration of the Arkid spacecraft are gonna have propulsion that you see it coming by,

• 11:26Speaker 02

  ignite the engines, and go on an intercept course. Okay, so first you see that they're out there. Now you chase 'em down. Chase 'em down. Bag 'em and tag 'em.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  I like, I think we're gonna call officially the Bag It and Tag It mission.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  I mean, we look at three phases. Phase one, Arkid 100, are spacecraft in orbit of the Earth trying to characterize and find these Earth approaching asteroids. That's the prospecting. Next? And next is, we go out, phase two, the Arkid 200 spacecraft are propulsion on them. They're going out to actually tap these spacecraft, put a beacon on them, dock with them, and be able to actually characterize them. What are they made of? How big are they? So one is telescopically, the next one is... So the next one actually has the same telescope onboard, because they're gonna be using these telescopes to actually look at them and point at them as you're going close. Because these things are moving at tens of thousands of miles per hour. And you need to be able to accurately track them down

• 12:25Speaker 02

  and go and dock with them. But once you dock with them, now you, you're there. Now we're putting a beacon on them. Then the third phase ultimately is going to be, as you said, bag them and extract the resources.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got this thought out, Chuck. He really does. Yeah, I mean... A little too thought out for my taste. You think he's gonna control the world? Yeah, exactly. This guy sounds like a Bond villain.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  He's talking about chasing down asteroids. We have a million asteroids.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's going on here, you realize that there's the asteroid belt in the solar system.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In orbit order, you have Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, an asteroid belt.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get over it.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no Pluto, right. But we're not talking about mining asteroids in the asteroid belt because they're just too far away. We have to pass Mars, and who's gonna want to pass Mars? You're gonna like want to visit Mars.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Well, you gotta visit Mars.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  It's like going to your mom. Can't just pass by, you gotta stop and say hello.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Mars found out, you went by and didn't stop by.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Exactly, that's not cool.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, those are too far away, needlessly far away for our needs. It turns out there are tens of thousands of asteroids that have rogue, I call them rogue orbits. But these are orbits that cross the orbits of the inner planets, that cross the orbit of Mars and of Earth. And those are a little closer to us to catch up with.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we don't have to go so far.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  They're coming to us.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're coming to us.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  They're making the trip.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're making the trip. And so those are a little easier to get to, and those form the repository of the asteroids he's talking about. And some of them, as he accurately said, hit us.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. So let's go to my next clip because how do you know which asteroid to pick?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  There are two different types of rocks out there we're going after. One is carbonaceous chondrites, and these are asteroids, rocks out there that have a high percentage of water and volatiles, methane, for example.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Volatiles are elements that would evaporate, but they're deeper within, so they're still there.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  And they're shaded from the sun. And so imagine these large carbonaceous chondrite asteroids have about 20% water weight in them. And you can extract the water, you can extract the methane, and you can break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen using the sunlight, which by the way is rocket fuel, right? A 50-meter, 100-meter size asteroid, something in that size. And these asteroids, if they have 20% water, which the average carbonaceous chondrite does, has more hydrogen and oxygen than was used to fuel every space shuttle launched from Earth from the beginning of the space shuttle program. So you can imagine extracting the hydrogen and oxygen and leaving it in space as fuel

• 15:09Speaker 02

  depots for the future missions going to the moon and Mars.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quick Mart. Fuel stations.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Because you think about it, if you were going to drive from LA to DC and carry all the gasoline in your car, I mean, you have a pretty big tanker you'd have to take with you. Same thing in space. If you could instead fly to orbit, refuel, go to the moon, refuel, go to Mars, refuel and come back, it allows you to do it much more economically with smaller vehicles. The other category of asteroids we're interested in is asteroids that have a high concentration of platinum group metals, PGMs. And it turns out that, you know, as you well know, these asteroids, many of them are leftover materials from the beginning of the solar system. And that, in fact, some of these are the core of a planet, if you would, that have

• 15:58Speaker 02

  broken up, in which these platinum group metals typically would sink to the center of...

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're heavier.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  They're heavier, they sink to the center of the planet. And when it breaks up and forms all of these millions of asteroids, some of them are highly concentrated in platinum. And in fact, many of the platinum mines on Earth...

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to clarify, so these, these elements are rare in the universe, but the action of gravity in the formation of a protoplanet...

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Concentrated.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Concentrated down just, just for us. Just for you.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  For all of us. And, and in fact, if you think about the platinum mines on Earth that we mine, the platinum ore bodies are places where previous asteroids rich in platinum have hit the Earth. And now we're mining archeo-asteroid impact sites.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The man is into it.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think he's left one stone unturned.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  You're going to Cosby laugh for that one. It's kind of weird. It's kind of like a relationship in many respects.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know why.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Because he's like, you, first you got to see it, that's the telescope, you got to like it, that's the spectrometer, right? And then you chase her down, and finally you tap that asteroid.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  That's just the way my mind works.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why, that's why we have you on the show.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one point that he just blew by, but people might not know, the water you drink, and you just took a sip of water from the table now.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yes, I did.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We all know it has H2O, and it's very stable in that form. If you separated them, it takes a lot of energy to do so, but the act of bringing them back releases all that energy that it took you to separate them.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that, it's an exothermic reaction, and that released energy can be, can serve as rocket fuel, and the big orange tank on the shuttle.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has two tanks inside of it that you can't see. One twice as big as the other. The one that's twice as big has hydrogen. The one that's half the size has oxygen. It brings them together, and poof.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Poof.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It makes energy, and guess what the waste product is?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Um, let me guess, space poop.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, uh, water. It's water.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Water.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water is the exhaust.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Water vapor.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you spread these around the solar system, you've got filling stations all around. When we come back, more of my interview with Peter Diamandis, and how he's gonna become the Bond villain of the solar system.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice, my co-host.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're there.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  I am here.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we've been here, we've been listening to Peter Diamandis. You need one of these folks in every culture, right?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  I believe so.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who sees where you are, and says, "No, I, I, I'm not satisfied with what you've done."

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I want to take us someplace new."

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Someplace new, like, uh, I'm, like I own the world. Because I mined some stuff from asteroids, and now I own the world.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you don't obey me, I will redirect this asteroid into your... So, uh, so it's, I mean, the whole concept of planetary resources, which is the name of his company that he co-founded, is it's, it's very future. And, I mean, it's extraordinary. Oh, by the way, in the previous segment, we talked about water on some of these asteroids. It's not on, it's not in these asteroids the way you find water in a comet. And a comet is huge chunks of ice, and you can just carve out a piece and, you know, there it is.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  You got water.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boom. This is water sort of that is blended in with the minerals. So you actually have to extract it. You actually have to mine the water.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  So when you take whatever it is that you're mining, what's left is the water?

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the water is what you're mining because that's your rocket fuel.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For that kind of asteroid.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  For that kind of asteroid.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other kind of asteroids are the, the, the hea-, the heavy duty, the heavy ones that have platinum.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I got you. So it's either mined for precious metals, or, or a PGM, or mined for water.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen to you, PGM. So, but platinum group metals, yes, you remember your chemistry and, so, so it turns out, these asteroids, you know, there, there are millions of them in the solar system, and, and they're the size that, they're those that cross our orbit. And you could pick one of these asteroids, it, it, at an average sort of PGM asteroid,

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could have 30 million tons of nickel, one and a half million tons of cobalt, seven and a half thousand tons of platinum.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  No way.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At current value, that platinum comes out at $150 billion.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  $150 billion.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you own an asteroid, uh, do you own the world? Let's find out about asteroid owning. And we go back to my interview with Peter Diamandis.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  So there is the Outer Space Treaty, and there's the Moon Treaty, and we in the United States are not signatories to the Outer Space Treaty. And the Outer Space Treaty does speak to the fact that a government can't own a celestial object.

• 21:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is this a loophole? The government can't, but Peter Diamandis can?

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't say a person can't own it. It doesn't say it. I don't see it in the Article 5, Section 3.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Well, so the question is, can a private company own it? And ultimately, what is a celestial object? You know, not owning the moon, I can buy. But, you know.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't say I can buy. Use a different phrase. Not only moon you can agree with.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, owning the moon I can agree with, but owning a 10-meter rock in space? I mean, where do you draw the line? And if you can't own the asteroid, can you own the materials you extract from the asteroid? Just like, you know, you don't own the ocean, but when you pull the fish out of it, you own the fish. So somewhere in there is a structure that will be defined over this next decade because we're going to drive it to be defined in a way that ultimately allows for business to exist. Because if you can't have ownership, no one's going to go out there and extract the materials. And the loser is humanity. Because the fact of the matter is, once you can extract these resources, everybody wins.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Because it becomes cheaper. That drives new battery technology, medical technology, electronic technology that we all benefit from.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like that's the frontier of the new trillionaires.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  I think it is. I think that the first trillionaires will be made in space. But as a result, it's upping the economic growth of humanity, not just any one individual.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spoken like a pure capitalist.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  I was about to say. Yeah, everybody wins. Some of us just win a hell of a lot more.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody wins, but I have a trillion dollars.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think that the analogy with the fish in the ocean on the surface sounds, you know, good. Because I take out the fish, more fish show up, right? I mean, that's an ecosystem.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Because they're making each other.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. That's what life does.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, what's that song from Cole Porter?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Birds do it.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even educated fleas do it. So, yeah, they make more of themselves. But if you start mining an asteroid and say, no, I don't have to own it, but maybe I can extract the resources. One day, there's no asteroid left because you just extracted the whole damn thing.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  And what do I care, though? I got fifty trillion dollars now.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he makes a good point. Do you care who owns a rock? You know, a rock in space of which there are countless millions of them. That's, I mean, that's a whole other frontier of space law, for example. Maybe one day we'll do a show on space law and find out, you know, what the leading thinking is all about.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And something tells me, no matter what it is, Dick Cheney will own a piece of it. I'm just saying, I'm not being political.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just saying.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  That guy's into everything.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, only if it could be, like, wielded in, in, in, in war scenarios, you know? You know, I mean, it, it does bring the question, Carl Sagan posed one of the original questions. Uh, if you could deflect an asteroid, and we get to more of that in the last segment, uh, might you be able to, if you deflect it out of harm's way, might you deflect it into harm's way? And so, yeah, I mean, there's a whole, the law, legal aspect of this and what would constitute a crime. You know, if you have access to things that could then become a weapon.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  A space crime. I love it. Space law, oh my god, that, that's awesome.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, uh, you might have to put them in one of those, uh, two-dimensional jails that flitters through space like they did in Superman.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Okay, you're giving me a chubby right now.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  I'm telling you that right now.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. More on mining asteroids when we come back.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Joining me is Chuck Nice.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Hey, hey.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a nice guy. And we've been commenting on my interview with Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize and co-founder of the Asteroid Mining Enterprise Planetary Resources. And he's up there in that last clip talking about, everybody benefits, but I've become a trillionaire.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  I've become a trillionaire.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't, I put those words in his mouth, but he agreed that that would be the consequence.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And let me tell you, not only did he agree, he agreed gleefully.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gleefully. Now, but if there are that many asteroids, maybe everyone can become a trillionaire.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Just, and we'll have, we'll have inspation instead of inflation.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it a new Chuck word of the day?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, inspation. You know, it's just be like, it'll be a billion dollars for like a double Frappuccino.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if you're a trillionaire, you can't count your billions.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Is that the rule?

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the rule.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  See, Neil, I don't have those problems.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who was it? John Rockefeller? One of those big fat cats from the 100 years ago.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Billionaire, you can't count your millions.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't count your millions. And one day I had a thousand dollars, just like all at once. And I said, if this is just a factor of a thousand rule, if I have a thousand, would it matter if I dropped a dollar on the street and it actually didn't?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was an interesting fact.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like the plenty left, here, you can take that. I'm not even gonna bend down. And so just imagine that at the billion or trillion dollar level. Oh, a billion dollars slipped out of my pocket.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Look at that. I just dropped a billion dollars. Someone get that for me.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let the homeless folks pick it up.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  That's what you're doing. You put like 450 billion dollars in a homeless dude's cup.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, a few weeks ago, where were you when the asteroid hit Russia? Chelyabinsk in, in the Urals.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I was being fascinated by the entire thing online.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't it amazing?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  I thought it was just absolutely incredible.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was fascinated that everyone had a forward pointing camera to check everything out.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  It's so cool because everybody in Russia is such an awful driver that they all have dash cams. And so like 50,000 people caught this on tape.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I was thinking that Rodney King incident would have been discovered 20 years earlier. You know, we could have like been through that.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out about, if you're gonna be mining asteroids, you might also be able to deflect them. Let's see what we can say about that.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While you're on the asteroid, you ever thought about maybe deflecting one?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that is a...

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, why don't you make yourself useful for a change?

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Right. You know, that is a side benefit of what Planetary Resources is doing because...

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're only going to the asteroids that come nearby, right?

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Anyway, which are the dangerous ones, if you might think about it. So...

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, once every hundred million years, data shows we get a dinosaur extincting event.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's pretty...

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's bad.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  That's bad news. But every hundred years, we also get hit by an asteroid large enough to survive atmospheric re-entry and big enough to wipe out, sort of, say, a city.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, as what happened in Tunguska in 1908.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  And Tunguska was in the middle of no place. Had it been, you know, Moscow or New York, there would have been millions of people dead. Can we see that asteroid coming towards the Earth and deflect it just a tiny bit? Ultimately, that'd be pretty important.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so he's thought about this problem.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, deflection, you know, you've got the military guys who say, "Blow the sucker out of the sky."

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, and I've said this many times, you know, in America, we're really good at blowing stuff up, and we're just less good at knowing where the pieces will land.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, that was treated in Armageddon and Deep Impact, those two movies from the 1990s.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where they wanted to blow the sucker out of the sky, and what happened? They just had two pieces that just came down again.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  And, you know, we suffered for that.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, whereas I think a deflection movie just would not have been interesting, perhaps.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Right. Because everyone looks at it as it goes by, and they go, "Wow, that was pretty," and then that's it.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  End of movie, yes.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  End of movie.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and who's, who's the president?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Morgan Freeman.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morgan Freeman!

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. He's been on this, friend of this show.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a bit of a remember.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he was, he was on our show. And I was just, I was just impressed that he was like, a black president, and he got to give, then the end of the world is coming with an asteroid. They got it. Is that what happened? Every time a black president takes office, bad stuff happens.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  We got to destroy the Earth now. There's a brother in office, we got to destroy the Earth. It's that simple.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have any creative ways you might want to deflect an asteroid?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  You know, I've thought about this, and...

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somehow I knew you had, and I was a little scared to ask you, because I'm afraid what the answer will be.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  I have two theories.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  One I don't think will work is what I call the bowling theory, and that's where I just...

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Wave my arms very violently, like, please move.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it listens to you. Yes, okay, yeah, okay. The other. Next idea?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  The other is, why couldn't you just attach a rocket to the asteroid? Fire the rocket in a vector that pushes the asteroid while it's still going in the same direction? And just make it veer a little bit off course?

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I mean, I love your usage of the word vector there. That's very geeky of you. That betrayed the fact that somewhere in your life, you had a physics class, all right?

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I mean, deflection is essentially that. That's one variant of a deflection. You detach some propulsion mechanism to it. By the way, you could try to speed it up, too. Then it will cross where Earth was before Earth gets there.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Oh, see, now you're thinking way outside the box, mister.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can do that. We're coming up to our last segment of StarTalk Radio. We're talking about asteroid mining, deflection, and all the ways the solar system can serve our greedy needs.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, here with Chuck Nice.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been listening to my interview with Peter Diamandis, founder of Planetary Resources. And I bumped into him at a conference, and I said, I whipped out my microphone and I said, "Sit down."

• 30:59Speaker 01

  So you did?

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  So you ambushed this dude?

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, totally. Actually, he wanted me to give a talk at his conference, so he owed me one big time.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, all right.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that quid pro quo works. Anyhow, so one of the issues was, is the economics of such a thing. He wants to lasso an asteroid, mine it for its resources that are otherwise rare on Earth.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happens when the rare becomes abundant?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yes, he ruins my 401K. That's what happens.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine, let's find out.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Technology is a scarcity liberating force, right? And it's always been that case. Technology allows us to take that which was scarce and make it abundant. And the same thing here. So will I buy puts on the platinum market before I go out to capture an asteroid?

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  There was announced recently, I don't know if you saw this, a ceramic of, I think it was palladium, that was the highest strength to weight ratio material ever created. You can't possibly do something with palladium or platinum or rubidium in volume because it's way too expensive and way too rare. So you make this stuff abundant. So the question is, what could we do if these rare earth metals, if these platinum group metals were in fact abundant in nature? You know, we're going to go out and dock with these asteroids, characterize them, tag them, begin to prospect them. And we'll probably do the prospecting on the asteroid as it's in orbit around the sun.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  And then we'll extract the materials and just bring those materials, which might represent just a few percent of the weight of those asteroids, and bring those back to the earth.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so in summary, it will have an effect on the free market trade, but that's not a bad thing.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  No, it's a great thing. In fact, that's the way science works. You know, genome sequencing used to cost a billion dollars. Today, it's a thousand dollars and dropping. Energy, over the last hundred years, the cost of food has decreased thirteenfold, the cost of energy has decreased twentyfold, the cost of transportation...

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're spending a smaller fraction of our paycheck on food than ever before.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Ever before. And, you know, the cost of transportation...

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's not hurting our calorie input either, apparently.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  But, you know, think about it, the cost of communications has dropped a thousandfold. So that's what technology does. And hopefully, if we do our job right, these metals that are valuable for society will get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, he's right. I mean, can't argue that.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  But he didn't answer your question. What are the economic ramifications? And I say they're disastrous.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, here's what happens. Because you're thinking myopically on this.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  I probably am.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here's your 401K. You've got investments in platinum. And Diamandis boy brings back a gazillion tons of platinum. Platinum is now 50 cents a pound.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  A ton.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's fifty cents a ton, but what happens is at that price, people find more things to do with platinum that previously would not have been needed, or thought of, or dreamt of.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now, the demand for platinum rises. And so, yes, the per pound is less, but it's not a finite resource anymore.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's essentially unlimited. Think about, uh, suppose you were in the battery business and you said, "I don't wanna make a more efficient battery, they'll last longer."

• 34:21Speaker 01

  And people won't buy my batteries.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They won't buy my battery enough. But what happens, you make a more efficient battery, and all of a sudden, everything runs on batteries now.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  You just, you just put out why I am no longer in the battery business.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's just that, so the, the demand for batteries has gone up, because every, every portable device was conceived knowing you can get an inexpensive battery to put in it, that will last a long time.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  So the proliferation of the element will cause more use for it?

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I, we can't guarantee it, but history shows that that's what goes on with it, alright? That people get inventive, because these materials have interesting properties, that in some cases, unique properties, and you have to go to them for that property. Then you have creative people say, "Oh, this has good conductivity, or insulation, or, or it works in circuit boards." Now we'll have a whole other generation of circuit boards that are cheap. You buy, oh, you need a computer for this morning, and then you toss it, alright? Do you realize there was a day when few people had cameras, and those who did, it was a major investment?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  True.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now, like-

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Everybody has one in their phone.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody has one in their phone, and they, sometimes they don't even use it, or they even know how to use it.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and we went through a phase where cameras were disposable, alright?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, yes, things can get cheap, but that doesn't mean that they leave us.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They proliferate, and that, I think the history of this has been good, not bad.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Well, because you settled it, I'm putting all my money in unobtainium.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unobtainium, and it turns out, science fiction- Science fiction writers, however, they never say nice things about the future. Ever noticed that?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They always think science is gonna like, technology's gonna go out of, you know, oh my god.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  It always goes haywire.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The nanobot, the virus, the, I guess that's what makes the good storytelling. But in fact, these discoveries make for beautiful futures, not for miserable ones.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  That is true, because I would hate to live in a time where there was no cellphone. Or Twitter.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Way back.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I mean, just look at things that have transformed, like the printing press, light bulbs, automobile, refrigeration, computers. These are things made available by materials never before exploited in the ways that they had. Chuck, we gotta call this to an end.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. Parting is always such sweet sorrow.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson with Chuck Nice. We've been talking about mining asteroids in an interview with Peter Diamandis. I tweet at Neil Tyson. You can find me there and love to have you as a follower. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.