Ask HN: How to start a risky space mining business with out capital? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to start a risky space mining business with out capital?

8 pointsgremlinsinc10 comments

So there was a post today about an asteroid worth 10 quintillion dollars. Give or take.

Given the hypothetical, starting a moon-shot business like the many that are researching fusion; how would a lay-person get funding to even start something like this, or is this only accessible to billionaires like Elon Musk, or those with Ivy League connections?

This could apply though to any moon-shot business, for example: Fusion, Space Elevators, Fixing Climate Change, etc.

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In the exact same manner you'd raise capital for any business: a very well put together, thoughtfully researched plan coupled with the beginnings of a team that clearly have the skills and knowledge required to execute that plan. From there, it's a sales process... build a list of 1000 or so investors you think might give you a meeting, start door knocking, try to sell them your plan.

I don't know if you read this guy

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/

but he has written great stuff about the prospects for space industrialization, particularly the difficulties with moving a manufactured product from where it is made to where there is a demand.

Myself I think those metal asteroids are overrated (if you 1000x the supply of gold you will just get shot by Goldfinger) and that this is the best scenario for space colonization yet

https://www.livescience.com/megasatellite-colony-ceres-oneil...

I have thought a lot about a scenario for making plastic solar shares and sunshades on a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid and sailing them back to the Earth-Sun L1 to do something about global warming while everybody else makes excuses. Look up my profile and send me an email.

> if you 1000x the supply of gold you will just get shot by Goldfinger

Not necessarily. The biggest diamond mining company has warehouses of diamonds, to basically control the supply/demand. I.e. they're still scarce if you control the market. I imagine, miners would probably do the same.

Unless your hypothetical lay-person is bringing his just-patented discovery of a SciFi drive for spaceships to the table, there is no reason for a professional investor to back him in such a venture. Huge, established mining firms are already far ahead of Mr. Lay-Person in many deep specialties that would be needed for asteroid mining. Transporting many tons of stuff to & from deep space is a requirement for asteroid mining, and Mr. Must is enormously far ahead of Mr. Lay-Person on that front.

Vs. he is ahead in no way at all. The real world isn't a Hollywood script, where being the protagonist means that he'll somehow succeed.

I dont know about funding overall, but my idea was to have many small "miners" that would go to an asteroid and then (maybe electrolytically) gather up a ball of high grade metallic ore, maybe 1kg and then lob them onto the Nullabour plain in Australia, where there are no native rocks and almost no people.

So, I know so many problems there - safety, reentry control, shielding, etc etc, but I am just exploring the granularity, eg in the range of one big one or many small ones. Because I think many small ones might be better, but also easier to fund because no single failure totals the project.

Many small ones might mean, less up front funding for proof of concept, though not much less engineering.

But reduced risk, not all your eggs are in one basket, so maybe the engineering can be of a little less rigor because the loss of any one miner is not that great.

Probably they lob multiple payloads over time, but in the end get abandoned in place.

There is plenty of holes that can be poked, I am sure, but the point is the granularity model you have might vary your ability to get funding substantially.

If they have a "fixing climate change" solution, they go to one of the dozens of incubators and funds and government innovation grant programmes that specialise in funding climate change-related innovation, both practical and moonshot

If their ideas involve space travel, their funding options are probably restricted to NASA (or ESA or the local equivalent) who will expect there to be a consortium of partners with legitimate relevant experience involved.

I dunno, "10 quintillion dollars" kind of assumes that market prices would not drop in response to vastly increased supply, doesn't it ?

the space mining industry will need a lot of specialized work to function, one could focus on less (relatively) capital intensive sector like consultacy, mapping, software, simulations, training, specialized tech patents (mining gear, transportation solutions,...) etc...

More specifically for moonshot projects the funding is decided on the plan, the urgency of the problem and or the team. You have to have at least two of those three things on your side.

One can go the venture route, or the adventure route.

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