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HOW PLANETARY RESOURCES AND DEEP SPACE INDUSTRIES PLAN ON TAPPING A POTENTIAL $100 TRILLION MARKET FOR SPACE MINING

Who owns the asteroids in our solar system? It may seem strange, but Congress hopes to answer over the next few months with a new bill that is currently being reviewed by the Senate.

The SPACE Act bill, if passed, will allow private companies to mine asteroids and sell whatever they dig up.

“Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained such resources, which shall be entitled to all property rights thereto, consistent with applicable provisions of Federal law and existing international obligations.” -H.R. 1508

This is great news for companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries (DSI) who have already invested millions of dollars into this exact concept. Companies are particularly focused on asteroids that consist of metals that are rare to us on Earth or asteroids that contain large amounts of water which, with the right technology, can be converted to rocket fuel and oxygen.

There are some unbelievably valuable rocks flying around in our solar system. The website Asterank uses information about asteroid sizes and composition, along with current market prices to calculate the most valuable known asteroids. Some are estimated to be worth more 100 trillion dollars. It’s a number large enough to turn any potential investor’s head.

There is one caveat — these are estimates based on the limited data we currently have on asteroids. Beyond the limited data, many of these asteroids are far away and in undesirable orbits that would make them particularly difficult and costly to mine.

"We’re the first to admit this is a long term endeavor.— Chris Lewicki, President, Planetary Resources

Still, there are asteroids that may be well worth the effort. But they’re value is complicated by significant unknowns. Asteroids are relatively small and dark bodies in our solar system that are hard to analyze from the ground. We’ve only directly identified less than a million of the largest asteroids, but scientists estimate that our solar system contains over a 100 million smaller asteroids, giving companies plenty of potential real estate to choose from.

Both asteroid mining companies, Planetary Resources and DSI are currently focused on this exact aspect of the mission: prospecting asteroids to identify the most valuable interplanetary real estate.

Determining an asteroid’s value is an important first step because one of the challenges associated with rare metal focused asteroid mining is the fact that bringing back objects from space is an incredible technical and financial challenge.

This is why most space missions today are designed to collect all of the necessary scientific data at a given planetary body rather than bring coveted samples back to Earth. Scientists would generally prefer to have a sample in hand to analyze, but that’s not usually feasible. It’s just not worth the money it would take to do it. Obviously with rare metal focused asteroid mining bringing the material back to Earth is a necessary aspect of the mission. This means that identifying an asteroid with a sufficient amount of valuable metal is crucial.

With water focused asteroid mining, the return trip isn’t an issue because you want to keep the water in space. The idea with this strategy is to convert that water into rocket fuel and oxygen. By doing this one could develop interplanetary stops where traveling spacecraft fuel up and go farther into the solar system. Like rare metal focused mining, identifying the right asteroid with a sufficient amount of this valuable resource is critical.

Planetary Resources, led by President and Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki, was the first major asteroid mining company to release their ambitious plans. Behind that ambition was key expertise and deep pockets. Lewicki played a crucial role in successfully placing two NASA Rovers and a Lander on the surface of Mars and the company’s list of investors include Google CEO Larry Page, filmmaker James Cameron, and Sir Richard Branson.

Planetary Resources is working to perfect their Arkyd spacecraft that will eventually be launched as a fleet into the solar system to image and characterize promising asteroids. This will lead to a unique strategy in the space business. Rather than building a single highly customized spacecraft for only one mission, Planetary Resources hopes to eventually mass produce a swarm of these machines, reducing the per-spacecraft cost and time for development.

 

They first Arkyd spacecraft launched to the International Space Station earlier this year and it will be deployed into space to test its prospecting subsystems later this month. The spacecraft design will continue to be perfected over a series of launches in the next few years before Planetary Resources moves on to prospecting work.

Planetary Resources' Arkyd Spacecraft (Click Image To Enlarge)

Getting to the point of actually mining an asteroid is going to take over a decade. Lewicki has said,

“We’re the first to admit this is a long term endeavor.”

In the meantime, before the company has a chance to tap into the multi-trillion dollar asteroid mining market, it plans to make money from the Arkyd spacecraft itself. The prospecting spacecraft can be pointed back at the Earth which will enable Planetary Resources to sell scientific information to universities, business, and government. They’ve even said that the spacecraft itself will be on the market for private scientific work.

Planetary Resources’ competitor, DSI, plans to follow a similar business model. They have their own prospecting spacecraft called FireFly that they plan to launch later this year. Like Planetary Resources, DSI will launch FireFly as a fleet to identify valuable asteroids. Unlike Planetary Resources, DSI intends to send their first generation spacecraft directly on close fly-bys of promising asteroids, rather than keeping them in Earth’s orbit. Additionally, DSI intends to leverage the capabilities of FireFly to make money as they work their way toward the ultimate goal of mining asteroids.

 

The optimal way to mine an asteroid has been studied and debated for decades. In general, the technology required to mine an asteroid depends on the type of asteroid you’re working with. This is where the Arkyd and FireFly spacecraft play a pivotal role. The asteroid’s composition, mass, density, rate of rotation, and precise orbital trajectory will all be factors.

Deep Space Industries Firefly spacecraft will identify asteroids rich in valuable minerals and precious metals (Click Image To Enlarge)

Humans have successfully rendezvous robotic probes onto the surface of asteroids or comets only three times before (Japan’s Hayabusa mission, NASA’s NEAR-Shoemaker mission, Europe’s Rosetta Mission), and never to mine them. An asteroid rendezvous is technologically tricky for a number of reasons. Asteroids spin and they orbit the sun at thousands of miles per hour. They’re also relatively small in mass and won’t provide enough gravitational force to hold a spacecraft securely to its surface. Successfully rendezvousing and securing the spacecraft will be challenging enough without the additional requirement of mining, and processing materials in space.

For both Planetary Resources and DSI, bringing in sufficient revenue to develop these necessary asteroid mining technologies, and survive as a company long enough to test them out, will be key to their success.

Once the technology is ready, Congress will have more questions to answer. What happens when multiple companies want to mine the same asteroid? How should an influx of rare Earth metals affect their market price? How can we ensure the technology used to rendezvous and capture an asteroid won’t be used to divert that asteroid toward a location on the Earth?

For now, giving the “go ahead” to companies hoping to make money off of asteroids is the first step to furthering the technology necessary to tap into this new, potentially multi-trillion dollar industry.

COMMENTARY:  On March 15, 2015, NASA and Planetary Resources have announced a new desktop app that incorporates algorithms from a contest that challenged researchers to detect asteroids with greater accuracy.

The Asteroid Data Hunter app runs on Windows and Mac, with a Linux version coming soon.

Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company based in Redmond, Wash., says the contest resulted in an overall improvement of 15 percent in the positive identification of algorithms in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The results were released by NASA at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, over the weekend. The contest, part of NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, awarded a total of $55,000 in prizes to those who developed the algorithms.

NASA and Planetary Resources in a news release announcing the results, said. 

“The winning solutions of each piece of the contest combined to create an application using the best algorithm that increased the detection sensitivity, minimized the number of false positives, ignored imperfections in the data, and ran effectively on all computer systems.” 

Planetary Resources was founded in November 2010.  Key individual investors include Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Founder and CEO of Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson, Perot Systems CEO Ross Perot, Jr., Charles Simonyi, PhD, real estate developer Rena Shulsky David and film producer and director James Cameron.  Key venture investment firms include I2BF, OS Fund and Sherpalo Ventures.

Deep Space Industries, or DSI, is a privately-held American company in the asteroid mining sector with plans to offer general utility commercial space services beginning in approximately 2016. The company was formally announced on January 22, 2013, nine months after the announcement of the first asteroid-mining firm, Planetary Resources. DSI's notional service offerings in the late-2010s and early 2020s include space-based  refueling, power, asteroid processing, and manufacturing.

The first spacecraft proposed by Deep Space Industries, the 25 kg (55 lb) FireFly, is designed to search for suitable asteroids for mining.  Constructed using inexpensive CubeSat components, FireFly is projected to fly in 2015, sharing rockets with much larger communications satellites in order to reduce costs. DSI's second planned satellite, known as the DragonFly, is predicted by the company to launch starting in 2016 to bring up to 150 kilograms (330 lb) of asteroid material to the surface of Earth. A third design was proposed in 2014: a DSI "mothership" that could carry up to a dozen nanosats to beyond Earth orbits. This larger craft would be approximately 0.91 m × 0.46 m (3 ft × 1.5 ft) and mass about 150 kilograms (330 lb). The smaller probe sats that could be carried would be approximately 15 cm (6 in) cubes. The mothership would provide deep space communication capability with Earth for the entire swarm of smallsats.

By 2023, DSI hopes to begin actively mining asteroids for their metals and water.

Courtesy of an article dated July 8, 2015 appearing in TechCrunch and an article dated March 16, 2015 appearing in GeekWire

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PLANETARY RESOURCES ANNOUNCES ASTEROID MINING VENTURE BACKED BY GOOGLE EXECS AND JAMES CAMERON

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

Click Image To Enlarge

Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids, They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

Planetary Resources is officially unveiling its asteroid-mining plans at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news conference at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

 

Precious metals and water

Two of the resources the company plans to mine are platinum-group metals and water, Anderson said. 

Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust, having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid impacts.

Anderson said.

"We're going to go to the source.  The platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's crust."

And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis said in a statement.

"When the availability of these metals increase[s], the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts.  And with the abundance of these metals, we’ll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells."

 

Click Image To Enlarge

Many asteroids are rich in water, too, another characteristic the company plans to exploit. Once extracted, this water would be sold in space, providing significant savings over water launched from the ground.

Asteroid water could help astronauts stay hydrated and grow food, provide radiation shielding for spaceships and be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel, Anderson said.

Planetary Resources hopes its mining efforts lead to the establishment of in-space "gas stations" that could help many spacecraft refuel, from Earth-orbiting satellites to Mars-bound vessels.

Anderson said.  

"We're really talking about enabling the exploration of deep space.  That's what really gets me excited." 

In addition to Page, Planetary Resources counts among its investors Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former presidential candidate; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google; K. Ram Shriram, Google board of directors founding member; and Charles Simonyi, chairman of Intentional Intentional Software Corp, who has taken two tourist flights to the International Space Station.

Cameron serves the company as an adviser, as does former NASA space shuttle astronaut Tom Jones.

The plan

The company is not ready to break ground on an asteroid just yet. Before that can happen, it needs to do some in-depth prospecting work.

Of the roughly 8,900 known near-Earth asteroids, perhaps 100 or 150 are water-rich and easier to reach than the surface of the moon, Anderson said. Planetary Resources wants to identify and characterize these top targets before it does anything else.

To that end, it has designed a high-performance, low-cost space telescope that Anderson said should launch to low-Earth orbit within the next 18 to 24 months. This telescope will make observations of its own but also serve as a model for future instruments that will journey near promising asteroids and peer at them in great detail.

The prospecting phase should take a couple of years or so, Anderson added.

"We will then, at that time, determine which of these objects to pursue first for resource extraction, and what mission we'll be facilitating," he said. "Before you decide where to put the gas station, you've got to understand where the trucks are going to be driving by."

Mining activities will be enabled by swarms of unmanned spacecraft, according to company materials. Planetary Resources will focus on near-Earth asteroids, with no immediate plans to extend its reach to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or to the surface of the moon, Anderson said.

He declined to estimate when Planetary Resources would begin extracting metals or water from space rocks, saying there are too many variables to lay out a firm timeline. But a recent study sponsored by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies estimated that a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid could be snagged and dragged to the moon's orbit by 2025, at a cost of about $2.6 billion.

Whatever Planetary Resources' exact schedule may be, Anderson said the company is already well on its way to making things happen.

Anderson said.  

"We're out there right now, talking to customers.  We are open for discussions with companies — aerospace companies, mining companies, prospecting companies, resource companies. We're out working in that field, to really open up the solar system for business."

COMMENTARY:     You know, I love big dreams, huge challenges, but this is just so much crock. Anderson makes it sound like all near-Earth asteroids are oozing with precious metals like platinum and gold ready to be mined.  That's just not the case.  Locating the right asteroids will take time, and finding those containing precious metals, and in sufficient quantities to make the venture economically feasible will take even longer.  "Snagging" an astroid is not going to be an easy thing either.   They rotate and wobble, and many of them are just plain huge.  Towing the "snagged" asteroid will be a challenge.  It is going to take a huge rocket.   The best asteroids will probably contain ice that could be converted into water and then into hydrogen that could be used to fuel rockets for towing and running mining operations.  We haven't returned to the Moon since the mid-1970's, so it's unlikely we will have the technology to tow an asteroid close to Earth by 2025.  What we have here are a bunch of greedy individuals who probably drank a little too much liquor during lunch.      

Courtesy of an article dated April 23, 2012 appearing in Space.com 

 

 

 

GOOGLE'S LARRY PAGE AND ERIC SCHMIDT JOIN FORCES WITH PLANETARY RESOURCES, INC. TO MINE ASTEROIDS FOR PLATINUM METALS

Artist rendition of a robotic mining mission to a near-Earth asteroid (Click Image To Enlarge)

There’s gold in them there hills. You know, those ones floating around in space. Asteroids contain many tons of precious metals, making them irresistible to scientists, aerospace engineers, futurists, fiction writers … and tech billionaires.

A group of wealthy, adventurous entrepreneurs will announce on Apr. 24 a new venture called Planetary Resources, Inc., which plans to send swarms of robots to space to scout asteroids for precious metals and set up mines to bring resources back to Earth, in the process adding trillions of dollars to the global GDP, helping ensure humanity’s prosperity and paving the way for the human settlement of space.

Eric Anderson, founder of commercial space tourism company Space Adventures, and co-founded a new company along with Peter Diamandis said.

“The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system.”

Diamandis started the X Prize foundation, which offers prize-based incentives for advanced technology development.

Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 150 feet in diameter orbit near the Earth. Some could contain as much platinum as is mined in an entire year on Earth, making them potentially worth several billion dollars each. The right kinds of investment could reap huge rewards for those willing to take the risk.

Outside of NASA, Anderson and Diamandis are among the most likely candidates to realize such a dream. Space Adventures has sent seven private tourists to the International Space Station while the Ansari X Prize led to a spurt of non-governmental manned spaceships.

Diamandis said.

“We have a long track record of making large-scale space ventures real.” 

Despite the promise of astronomical profits, the long time-scales and uncertain return on asteroid mining has historically driven most investors away from such undertakings. But the new company is also backed by a number of other billionaire luminaries, including Google’s CEO Larry Page and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, former Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr. The venture also counts on filmmaker James Cameron, former astronaut Tom Jones, former JPL engineer Chris Lewicki, and planetary scientist Sara Seager as advisers.

Still, this new undertaking will be much larger and more ambitious than anything Anderson and Diamandis have attempted before. The hurdles are many and high. While the endeavor is technically feasible, the technology has not yet been developed. And beyond their initial steps, the details of Planetary Resources’ plans remain scarce.

The first hurdle will likely be ensuring that Planetary Resources has covered all its legal bases. While some have argued that governments need to set up specific property rights before investors will make use of space, the majority of space lawyers agree that this isn’t necessary to assure the opportunity for a return on investment, said space policy analyst Henry Hertzfeld at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Mining occurs in international seabeds — even without specific property rights — overseen by a special commission dedicated to the task, he said. A similar arrangement would likely work in space.

In terms of extraction, Planetary Resources hopes to go after the platinum-group metals — which include platinum, palladium, osmium, and iridium — highly valuable commodities used in medical devices, renewable energy products, catalytic converters, and potentially in automotive fuel cells.

Platinum alone is worth around $23,000 a pound — nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.

A mock-up of the Arkyd-101 Space Telescope will be used to identify asteroids with potentially valuables metals.   Courtesy of Planetary Resources (Click Image To Enlarge)

Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources’Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes will figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.

Within five to seven years, the company hopes to send out a small swarm of similar spacecraft for a more detailed prospecting mission, mapping out a valuable asteroid in detail and identifying rich resource veins. They estimate such a mission will cost between $25 and 30 million.

The next step — using robots to remotely mine, possibly refine ore, and return material to Earth safely — is probably the toughest phase, and Planetary Resources is still tight-lipped about its plans here.

 

This is an unprecedented challenge — the only asteroid material ever returned to Earth comes from the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa spacecraft, which successfully returned a few hundred dust particles from asteroid 25143 Itokawa in 2010.

One possibility might be to find a useful asteroid and push it closer to Earth. A fairly low-power solar-electric ion engine could nudge a hunk of rock into orbit around the Earth, effectively creating a small second moon that could be easily accessed.

A recent white paper (.pdf) written by a team of scientists and engineers for the Keck Institute for Space Studies looked at exactly this proposition in order to use an asteroid for scientific and manned exploration. The team concluded that the technology exists, though such a plan would need at least $2.6 billion in funding. If Planetary Resources went this route, it would rack up a large initial investment, which doesn’t include actually mining and returning material back to Earth, potentially adding many hundreds more millions of dollars.

JPL engineer John Brophy, who co-authored the paper said.

“It’s one thing to understand the mining and refining processes and another thing to actually build it.  And everything in space tends to be harder than you think it will be.”

Another option to simplify the process might be to bring the ore back to Earth for refining, though that presents its own set of challenges. Say for the sake of argument that you send a 5,500-pound robot (roughly the weight of a small car) to an asteroid and it can mine and carry back 100 times its own weight in asteroid material. On most asteroids, chopping up a one-ton chunk of regolith will generate less than an ounce of platinum. Even asteroids with the highest concentration of platinum yield only about two ounces of platinum per ton.

This means that with the current commodity prices, each of your robot miners will generate about $875,000, even on an asteroid with the highest platinum amounts. Given a mission cost that is at least hundreds of millions of dollars, it wouldn’t be advantageous to refine ore on Earth.

There are also unknown financial aspects of a successful asteroid mining operation. The sudden influx of hundreds of tons of platinum into Earth’s economy would certainly drive the commodity’s price down. Looking at historical analogues, the enormous gold and silver reserves the Spanish inherited from their New World conquests led to terrible inflation and possibly the decline of their empire.

But Planetary Resources sees a platinum price drop as one of its potential goals.

Anderson said.  

“I would be overjoyed as a company if we brought back so much platinum that the price fell by a factor of 20 or 50.”

Aluminum was incredibly expensive in the 1800s, before new technology allowed it to be easily separated from its ore, said Diamandis. Today, aluminum is used in hundreds of applications, something that Anderson and Diamandis would like to see happen to the platinum-group metals.

While mining platinum and other rare metals is Planetary Resource’s way of bringing wealth to Earth, the world still has ample reserves of such material — South African platinum mines alone are expected to produce for another 300 years.

Brophy said. 

“In my view, its questionable how the economics of asteroid-retrieval works if you’re going to bring it to the ground.  It makes more sense if you’re going to use the materials in space.”

Asteroids contain one substance that is of extremely high value for astronauts: water. Water can be used for drinking and it can be broken into its constituents. Oxygen is valuable for life support in space-based habitats, while liquid oxygen and hydrogen are both used to produce rocket fuel.

Rather than having to lug all the fuel for a mission out of Earth’s deep gravity well — an expensive proposition — having a “gas station” in space could help enable missions to Mars and beyond. Such a refueling depot might allow people to permanently live and work in space, another goal of Planetary Resources.

Of course, this creates a sort of chicken-and-egg problem. Do you generate tons of resources for your nonexistent space civilization first or do you get your space civilization started and then utilize the available resources?

Wired Science’s resident space historian David S. Portree thinks asteroid mining might make more sense when we have a more established space-based habitats with a different economy and better technology.

He said.

“Right now it would be like a big oil tanker dropping anchor off the coast of medieval England.  The medieval English might identify the oil as a useful commodity, but wouldn’t be able use enough to profit the tanker crew. Heck, they wouldn’t know how to get it off the tanker, except in wooden pails and rowboats.”

COMMENTARY:   The idea of sendiung robots to mine asteroids for their valuable metals like platinum and gold is complete and total science fiction, and the economics just don't seem to make any sense.   I wonder how Google CEO Larry Page and Eric Schmidt got suckered into financially backing Planetary Resources useless idea?    

Courtesy of an article dated April 23, 2012 appearing in Wired

'OBJECT' FOUND BURIED UNDER ANTARCTIC ICE CAP, COULD BE OF ALIEN ORIGIN AND CAUSE OF TIME VORTEX, FEDS DENY EVERYTHING

 

Disturbing news has been leaking out from the giant continent at the bottom of the world. Some scientists manning lonely outposts under the drifting and shifting aurora are nearly paralyzed with fear. Their clipped reports are being reviewed by astonished superiors back in the home countries.

Russian researchers posted near the giant South Pole sub-glacial Lake Vostok have reported eerie anomalies and incidents over the past few years that sometimes seem to border on the frayed edge of creeping madness. 

Sector of erupting anomalies

Artificial structure found under two miles of ice

During April 2001 one of the world's great secrets was revealed:  an ancient structure or apparatus that lay encased miles under the hard Antarctic ice was detected by a roving spy satellite. The US military immediately moved to quash the reports and the mainstream news media dutifully complied.

Despite the news blackout, reports still surfaced that a secretive excavation project had commenced on the heels of the discovery. Some European countries formally protested the excavation by the US military.

Excavation deep into the ice...What's down there?

Nicole Fontaine, at the time he was the European Parliament's French president said,

"If it's something the US military has constructed down there, then they're violating the international Antarctic Treaty.  If not, then it's something that's at least 12,000 years old, which is how long ice has covered Antarctica. That would make it the oldest man-made structure on the planet. The Pentagon should heed the calls of Congress and release whatever it's hiding."

The federal government and the Pentagon ignored the calls.

High technology and strange events

US Air Force's incredible Subterrene giant earth borer.

Soon after, some military observers noted that robotic devices were being shipped to the South Pole and speculation erupted about the belief by some that the US Air Force had transported their mammoth nuclear-powered tunel boring machine, the Subterrene, on a C5-A to a secret Antarctic base.

The Subterrene--a cylindrical vessel that is said manned with a crew of four to six--is capable of subterranean travel and has undergone tests in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. Designed to bore through hard rock strata, drilling into the ice would be like a laser cutting through a marshmallow.

Earth borer: like a laser cutting through a marshmallow.

Following the frenzied events, of early 2001, the news broke of a mysterious medical emergency that forced an evacuation of unnamed personnel during the depths of the Antarctic winter--the first event of its kind during the dangerous South Pole winter season.  

Shortly after that the region was shaken by an unusual earthquake. Seismologists located the temblor at the epicenter of the buried structure in East Antarctica.

Yet still the military resisted making any comment.

A magnetic anomaly formed, intensified, and spread to the vicinity of the Russian Vostok base. Russian researchers were shocked and puzzled.

Meanwhile, the American military airfield buzzed with activity as flights came and went at a dizzying pace. Heavy machinery--some pretty exotic--appeared on the bleak Antarctic ice sheet. Unverified reports claimed that the nuclear-powered earth borer Subterrene arrived.

Subterrene sent to explore prehistoric machine?

 

Finally, the American and European media were pressing hard for some believable answers when 9-11 occured and the US was suddenly under terrorist attack. Domestic and international focus immediately shifted from the Antarctic to New York City and Washington, D.C.

The mysterious events in Antarctica were forgotten.

2002: TV crew disappears

A California TV crew filming in the Antarctic went missing in November 2002.

Supposedly, a video discovered among the crews' personal effects by a special U.S. Navy SEAL rescue team tasked to find the filmmakers confirmed earlier reports of a huge artifact buried under the ice--a prehistoric machine that may be of alien origin.

"The U.S. government said it will seek to block the airing of a video found by Navy rescuers in Antarctica that purportedly reveals that a massive archaeological dig is underway two miles beneath the ice," stated a press release that appeared briefly on the studio production's website.

Time vortex erupts

As one bizarre event followed another, a research team of US and UK scientists accidentally came across a mind-numbing discovery. While working on a joint weather research project, the team witnessed the creation of a spinning vortex of time.

US physicist Mariann McLein allegedly testified that she and her colleagues became aware of a "spinning gray fog" in the sky over their heads. They initially dismissed the phenomenon as merely part of a random polar storm.

The spiraling vortex, however, did not disperse. Stranger still, despite gusts of wind and briskly moving clouds overhead, the weird spinning gray fog remained stationary.

Intense magnetic anomaly.

Deciding to explore the odd phenomenon, the group took one of its weather balloons and attached a meteorological instrument to it that calibrated temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, windspeed and a scientific chronometer to record the times of the readings.

After attaching a cable to the balloon, and securing the other end to a winch, they released it. The balloon and instrument package soared upwards and were immediately sucked into the gaping maw of the swirling vortex.

The balloon and instruments disappeared.

Tunnel to the past

After a several minutes, they decided to retrieve the balloon. Despite some difficulty with the winch they succeeded in bringing the balloon back to earth and checked the instruments. McLein stated that everyone was stunned by the readout on the chronometer. It displayed a date decades in the past: January 27, 1965.

McLein claimed the experiment was repeated several times with the same result.

Later, she said, the entire episode was reported to military intelligence and passed on to the White House. Presumably the strange vortex phenomenon--a highly magnetic tunnel to the past--was code named The Time Gate by military intelligence.  

Magnetic time tunnel to the past?

As the phenomenon was generated in the same general vicinity as the discovery of the giant apparatus deep under the ice, it's thought the two may be related.

If indeed a magnetic time vortex is appearing and disappearing over Antarctica--and if the phenomena is not natural, but generated by some unknown technology deep under the icecap--it may reveal the physics of time and could potentially allow control of the past, and by implication the future.

If true, it's no wonder the military is so intensely interested and so closed-mouthed about it.

COMMENTARY:   The part that opened my eyes is the Freedom of Information Act release titled "Use Of The Subterrene For Military Drilling Applications" dated October 1974.

According to the release, the idea for the Subterrene earth boring machine, originated as part of the U.S. Army Engineer Wasterways Experiment Station (USAEWES) Explosive Excavation Research Laboratory (EERL) government program which evolved from the organization originally known as USAE Nuclear Cratering Grouop (NCG), which was established in 1962.   It's a rather lengthy document, but if you want to reach it in its entirety, here's the link.      

I just hope that the U.S. government will level with us.  If there is an "object" buried under the Antaractice ice cap, and the object is of alien origin, and a time vortex has opened over Antarctica, we should all know about it.   I want to go back into time when things were simpler, rock n roll was just starting, and there wasn't any internet or fucking iPads.   It is very disturbing why the government always clamps down and denies everyting.  Even the media has been put on notice. This discovery is just too big to hide forever.  WikiLeaks, where are you when we need you.  

If our discovery of the object is the cause of all those UFO sighings, the aliens must be really pissed off we found their condo under the Antarctice ice cap.  Just the same, I hope that these aliens are benevolent creatures and will help us get rid of all those mean Tea Partyers.   

Courtesy of an article dated April 12, 2011 appearing in Before It's News

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HOW THE U.S. COULD BREAK CHINA'S VIRTUAL MONOPOLY AND BLACKMAIL IN THE SUPPLY OF RARE EARTH METALS

These elements are the building blocks of a modern society, and China has all of them. Until now. The U.S. mining industry is starting to catch up.

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You may not know what rare earth metals are, but they probably feature prominently in your life: These 17 chemical elements, which are buried in the Earth's crust, are found in common electronics (lithium-ion batteries, laser pointers), and many clean technologies (electric car motors, solar panels, wind turbines). It's not surprising, then, to learn that our demand for dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, and the like have increased in recent years. As it stands, the Western hemisphere is almost entirely beholden to China for its supply of rare earths. And China is willing to play hardball with its mineral deposits, putting the U.S. in a dangerous position where a key part of our economy and society is controlled by a not altogether friendly country. But that may be about to change.

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Rare earth metals, paradoxically, are actually not that rare at all--in fact, many rare earths are more common than gold. But up until now, the economic incentives to mine them just haven't been there. Recently, however, China started to curb exports and raise prices of these previously cheap metals, realizing both that they need a large domestic supply and that much of the world is dependent on them. Outside of China, rare earth metals are seen in high concentrations in select sites in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. And that's creating a burgeoning rare earth industry in the U.S.

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In the 1960s and 1970s, the USGS flew over the U.S., using airborne magnetometers to find anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field that could signify big rare earth deposits. In recent years, mining companies have taken it upon themselves to confirm the presence of these deposits. They use everything from satellite technology to "almost old-fashioned prospecting. They go out in the field looking for interesting rocks and minerals, and indications of spots of interest," says Gareth Hatch, Founding Principal of Technology Metals Research.

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There are hurdles for ambitious companies to jump through. The U.S. used to produce rare earth metals at the Mountain Pass Mine in California, but it was shut down in 2002 largely because of lack of demand and environmental issues (the mine spilled a large amount of radioactive water into a neighboring lake). In 2008, Chevron sold the site to Molycorp, a company interested in reviving the old mine. Molycorp is currently expanding and modernizing the mine--a process that will yield 40,000 metric tons of rare earths by 2013, or 25% of the world's supply.

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The company, which is spending $2.4 million a year on environmental compliance and monitoring, says it plans to keep the process as clean as possible. Hatch says.

"If what they say is what they do, you're looking at a much more environmentally friendly process than in China, with the recycling of water and reducing effluent into the environment. But at the end of the day, you're still messing around with some pretty nasty chemicals, and you still have waste piles of rock and radioactive material." 

Fast Company's calls to Molycorp have not been returned.

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In China, rare earth mines are often responsible for egregious environmental violations, including air pollution and the production of wastewater that contains large amounts of radioactive material and acid. The pollution makes people sick, and it destroys local farmland and waterways.

California's Mountain Pass is huge, but it isn't enough to supply all of America's rare earth metals. This is partially because it will produce mainly light rare earths instead of heavy rare earths, a group of chemicals that are often found in smaller concentrations. We need both types to manufacture the electronics and gadgets we enjoy so much.

There is hope for American independence in the heavy rare earth arena, however. The Pea Ridge iron mine in Missouri has a known deposit, and Quest Rare Minerals is exploring some major heavy rare earth mines in Quebec, a place that probably isn't as likely as China to cut off the U.S. from imports or jack up prices impossibly high.

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And the U.S. may soon have another major rare earth mine to count on in Nebraska, where Quantum Rare Earths is working on what may be the biggest untapped rare earths deposit in the world. But there's a catch: Actually mining this deposit may not happen for a while. "It needs to be further explored and defined," says Scott Wescott, a corporate communications representative for Quantum Rare Earths. That means it will take at least two to three years just to figure out the economics of mining and work on gathering permits for construction.

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The permitting process is a major hurdle for U.S. companies. "The time it takes to get through the red tape is mind-boggling," says Hatch. One DOE report claims that it will take 15 years to break dependence on Chinese rare earth metals (Hatch believes it's more like eight to 10 years).

But we don't necessarily have to wait for companies outside of China to get moving on their rare earth projects. In the meantime, it's worth paying attention to companies like Nanosys, which manufactures more sustainable replacements for some of the rare earths found in LED backlighting.

Even with multiple mines and creative companies working on replacements, the U.S. will likely remain at least partially dependent on China for rare earths. It's the classic problem of competing with China: Multiple layers of red tape may do some good in protecting the environment, but they really slow things down.

COMMENTARY:   I have covered China's goal to control the supply or rare earth metals in a blog posts dated February 7, 2011 which contains a complete list of the 17 rare earth metals and their uses in industrial applications, and a blog dated May 26, 2011 which covers Pike's Research on rare earth metals.  China is essentially using its advantage in rare earth metals to blackmail Western industrialized nations.  I encourage you to read both blog posts to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and present situation.

Courtesy of an article dated 

 

 

WILL THE RUSH TO ELECTRIC CARS PUT AUTOMAKERS AT THE MERCY OF GREEDY LITHIUM ORE PRODUCERS AND DICTATORS?

In the latest installment of the Butterfly Effect we look at how mining the key ingredient in electric cars could end up enriching potential enemies of America, and force another round of innovation to build an even newer kind of battery.

1. Revenge Of The Electric Car

One day in late 2005, after losing yet another bruising political battle to the bean counters inside General Motors, then-vice chairman “Maximum” Bob Lutz heard of a startup called Tesla Motors intending to bring an all-electric sports car to market. Enraged that a bunch of Silicon Valley gearheads could do what he couldn’t, Lutz, in his own words, “just lost it.” He rallied his fellow car guys within GM to develop the prototype of what became the Chevrolet Volt--the “moon shot” justifying the company’s survival and the first in a new wave of electric vehicles just beginning to break on dealers’ showrooms. And while the Volt uses just a tiny bit of gas, it's still powered by a material that is in short supply and controlled by some of the most hard to deal with governments in the world. Its lithium battery might just create a new geopolitical calculus that is just as problematic as the gas-based one electric cars are supposed to extricate us from.

In his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters, a triumphant Lutz mockingly recalls Toyota’s reaction to the Volt’s unveiling in January 2007. “Toyota immediately labeled Volt a clever but meaningless PR exercise, using a battery chemistry, lithium-ion, which was dangerous, unreliable, and far from ready for automotive use. How much sounder, they trumpeted, was their own homely little Prius using (now eclipsed) nickel metal hydride batteries.”

Toyota was wrong. The lithium at the heart of the Volt’s battery is now the gold standard for new electric cars everywhere. But is there enough of the silvery soft metal to eventually power a billion automobiles, and can we mine it fast enough? Or are we trading one finite resource for another? And in doing so, will we also trade our allegiance from OPEC to OLEC--the “Organization of Lithium Exporting Countries?”

2. Peak Lithium?

A month before the Volt announcement, an energy analyst named William Tahil published a paper titled “The Trouble With Lithium.” There simply isn’t enough cheap lithium to go around, he argued, and 80% of the world’s accessible reserves are located in the so-called “Lithium Triangle” of the Chilean, Argentine, and Bolivian Andes (pictured above). “If the world was to exchange oil for Li-ion based battery propulsion,” Tahil wrote, “South America would become the new Middle East. Bolivia would become far more of a focus of world attention than Saudi Arabia ever was.” Even then, we would run out of lithium long before we’d finished electrifying our cars.

Tahil’s paper immediately came under fire for his overly pessimistic predictions. (And hisgeneral credibility.) Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago--a hotbed of lithium battery innovation--estimate worldwide demand will eventually top out at 8 million metric tons, total. (The Volt’s massive battery array only requires about nine pounds.) That’s well within the U.S. Geological Survey’s conservative estimate of 12 million tons of recoverable reserves. As refining improves and new deposits are discovered, that figure will only go up. And unlike oil, lithium can be recycled; once you get it out of the ground, it’s yours.

That’s easier said than done. Worldwide lithium production was 120,000 tons in 2009, roughly a quarter of which was bound for batteries. But if electric cars achieve just a 5% penetration rate by 2020, according to the British research firm Roskill, the 60,000 tons required for batteries will outstrip the available supply. The bottleneck isn’t “peak lithium,” it’s how fast and how badly we want our electric cars.

3. From Petro-Dictators To Electro-Dictators?

Fortunately for GM and Toyota, Chile’s and Argentina’s lithium deposits are open for business. But the largest lies across the border in Bolivia, containing anywhere from 9 million (the official U.S. estimate) to a credulity-straining 100 million tons of lithium. Bolivia’s president Evo Morales (left) is no friend of the U.S., however; he pals around with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He once expelled the U.S. ambassador and likes to end speeches with the rallying cry, “Death to the Yankees!”

But Bolivia has had no shortage of supplicants. Representatives from China, France, Sumitomo, Mitsubishi and LG Chem--which supplies the Volt’s battery--have all made entreaties. What would happen if Morales gave in and went with a Chinese consortium, or picked a fight with Chile? If the Carter Doctrine was necessary to secure Middle East oil, will there someday be an Obama Doctrine for South American lithium?

“Chile is the one we can rely on," says Steve LeVine, a contributing editor to Foreign Policyand an energy security expert at Georgetown. "But I just got back from Kazakhstan, and they have a lot of lithium, and it’s cheap.” Then again, Kazakhstan is a virtual autocracy ruled for 20 years by the opposition-less President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Afghanistan may also be rich in lithium if reports of a trillion dollars in mineral wealth are accurate. But America’s relationship with president Hamid Karzai is complicated, to say the least.

After Bolivia and Chile, the nation with the largest reserves is China, which knows how to play hard ball with minerals--witness the recent fights over rare earth metal prices when China restricted their exports. While there is no OLEC looming on the horizon, the U.S. once again finds itself staking its way of life on a substance with very complicated geo-politics.

There are four lithium companies currently producing lithium on the world market that can be labelled, essentially, the BIG FOUR.  They are:

1. SQM de Chile S.A. (NYSE-SQM)
2. Talison Lithium (TSE:TLH)*
3. Rockwood Holdings (Chemetell) (NYSE:ROC)
4. FMC Corp (NYSE:FMC)

 

Currently, the top four companies produce 85% of the worlds lithium.

The other 15% is spread among smaller producers and junior miners.

Here is a list of most of those companies, in order, which may or may not be on your radar screen as investors in this sector, but should be.

5.  Rodinia Lithium (formerly Rodinia minerals)  (TSX V:RM)
6.  Western Lithium (TSX V:WLC)
7.  TNR Gold Corp (TSX V:TNR)*
8.  Galaxy Resources (ASX:GXY)
9.  Orocobre (ASX:ORE)
10. Canada Lithium (TSX V:CLQ)
11. First Lithium (TSX V:MCI)*
12. Reed Resources (ASX:RDR)
13. Linear Metals (TSX:LRM
14. Electric Metal Inc (TSX.EMI)
15. Lomiko Metals Inc. (TSX.LMR)

The above lists contain the largest producers of the "electric metal" and the go getters in the junior mining sector that are charging ahead, full speed, with projects of their own, in lithium rich regions of the world, and plan on either becoming large producers, or getting swallowed in the M and A activity that will (and already has) surrounded the sector in the coming year.

As this second leg of the lithium bull market gets into full swing, it is theelectric car market that has all the cache, so to speak, as every auto maker (eg: Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, Daimler,BYD, Hyundai, VW, Tesla) ramps up to enter the electric vehicle market with it's own version of either an EV, HEV or both.

In that light it is timely to review the other, wide and varied uses for lithium and lithium carbonate.  Currently, aluminum production usurps the majority of lithium produced today, followed by batteries (every kind of battery from your cell phone and laptop, to your EV), glass and ceramic production, airconditioning, lubrications, and more.

Projected Lithium consumption will soar.

4. If It's Not Lithium, It's Something Else

There are two alternatives to entrusting the bulk of America’s lithium supply to Chile, Bolivia, or even Afghanistan--discover new sources closer to home, or innovate our way out. In Bottled Lightning, author Seth Fletcher pays a visit to Western Lithium’s stake in the Nevada foothills where it hopes to mine lithium from clay deposits. A spin-off from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory called Simbol Mining (a company I profiled in myblog) believes it can meet nearly a fifth of the world’s needs by mining California’s (chemical-rich) Salton Sea.

The other option is to treat Li-ion batteries as a bridge technology on the way to something lighter, cheaper, and better. “We need something with the energy density of gasoline,” says LeVine. “We need the new technology--sulfur-air, zinc-air, lithium-air.” Other teams are working on a battery made of molten melts and salts.

One startup that had eschewed lithium for zinc-air is the Easton, Pennsylvania-based Eos Energy Storage, which is in talks to license its proprietary battery to the automakers. “Zinc is energy dense, safe, and stable,” says Eos CEO Michael Oster. “The U.S. is one of the top five producers in the world, along with Canada and Australia. So, in terms of energy independence, that’s one way to get there.”

Of course, there is always the possibility that lithium isn’t the real bottleneck at all. What keeps LeVine up at night is phosphorous, which is used in the Li-ion chemistry used by A123 Systems and Chinese battery makers. It is also vital to food production and is rapidlyrunning out. (The U.S. doesn’t have much it, either.) And then there are the rare earth metals essential to an electric car’s permanent magnets, 97% of which are found in China. In perhaps a taste of what’s to come, Chinese officials have drastically cut exports since the beginning of the year, causing prices to soar as high as 475%. If this keeps up, oil prices may start to seem like a bargain. 

COMMENTARY:   It's a scary thought knowing how little Lithium ore the U.S. and other industrialized and developed nations have at their disposal.  A lot of that ore is produced in countries run by dictators and people not very friendly to the U.S. and West.  In previous blog posts dated February 7, 2011 and May 26, 2011, I wrote about even something more sinister:  the virtual monopoly that China has in the top rare earth metals and minerals.    

Courtesy of an article dated June 30, 2011 appearing in Fast Company 

 

PIKE'S RESEARCH: CHINA CONTROLS 97% OF RARE EARTH METALS, DECREASING EXPORTS, INFLICTING ECONOMIC BLACKMAIL ON U.S. AND THE WEST

If the clean energy economy takes off, then access to rare earth metals needed for electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines is critical. And China is the primary source.

A new report, Pike Research’s “Rare Earth Metals in the Cleantech Industry,” examines some key issues related to the materials, which the Chinese appear to have a stranglehold on current world supply.

While segments of the clean energy industry object to trade practices that have led to a formal complaint before the World Trade Organization, the rare earth metals issues has gotten less attention. That may not be the case much longer, as demand for the materials is expected to skyrocket and access may be constrained.

China’s monopoly over the global rare earth metals market has come under increased international scrutiny following recent efforts on the part of the Chinese government aimed at consolidating its domestic rare earth metal industry.  Accounting for 97 percent of worldwide rare earth metal production, China’s new export quotas, introduced in July 2010, have seen prices for rare earths skyrocket, the report says.

“The short term picture for rare earth metals in the clean technology industry will be characterized by a significant supply risk brought about by China’s strict new export quotas,” says research analyst Euan Sadden.  “This will almost certainly influence the adoption and commercialization of certain technologies across the cleantech industry.  That said, there are a number of positive initiatives that offer the potential for alleviation of this risk in the longer term.”

Rare earth metals have been identified as a troubling area of potential risk for a number of prominent clean energy technologies including wind turbines, electric vehicles, fuel cells, and energy efficient lighting.

According to the Pike Research report, demand for rare earths in the cleantech industry will reach 12,920 tons per year by 2017, up from approximately 9,000 tons annually in 2011, which could place an increased strain on global supply for these emerging applications.

Rare earth metals demand will be the highest for utilization in the manufacture of nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries for hybrid vehicles, followed by wind turbines.  Among the eight rare earth metals covered in the study, Pike forecasts that by 2017 demand will be greatest for:  

• Yttrium - 6,088 tons annually 
• Cerium - 2,441 tons annually 
• Lanthanum - 1,867 tons annually  
• Others - The need for other rare earth metals such as neodymium, praseodymium, europium, terbium, and dysprosium will be somewhat smaller, but still significant portions of the overall mix.

Potential sources of alternative supplies do exist and markets are responding to the high price climate. Mining projects outside of China, like in Mountain pass, California, are coming online. Other companies, particularly in Japan, are exploring the viability of recycling rare earth materials and developing technologies that require less of them.

At any rate, the supply risks are real and the cleantech industry needs to find ways to respond.

COMMENTARY:  I have no doubt that China has sinister designs on controlling rare earth metals for their economic benefit, and said so much in a blog post dated February 7, 2011.  When I did the research on rare earth metals for that blog post, I could not believe what I was reading   If you haven't read that post, I highly recommend it, so that you can draw your own conclusions.  

I believe that you can only come one conclusion--economic blackmail--a deliberate attempt by China to use their control over rare earth metals as a way to inflict economic damage on America and the West.  

In the above blog post, I cited a Forbes magazine article that China has raised prices dramatically and limiting exports of rare earth metals the U.S. and the West, in order to force them to open plants in China.  It's economic blackmail. It's very similar to the way the Middle East has driven prices of oil to such heights that this cannot but hurt the American economy, just when we are showing signs of improvements.    

Courtesy of an article dated  May 26, 2011 appearing in RenewablesBiz  

CHINA'S SINISTER PLOT TO CONTROL RARE EARTH METAL PRODUCTION AND HOW THIS AFFECTS THE U.S. AND GLOBAL ECONOMIES

 

China’s influence over the global rare earth metals (REM) markets has come under increased international scrutiny following recent measures by the Chinese Government aimed at strengthening control over its fragmented REM industry.

China currently accounts for 36 percent of REM reserves and 97 percent of worldwide production. These metals, comprised of 17 rare elements, each possess unique chemical and physical properties. They are considered critical to a host of high-tech applications from consumer electronics to missiles and other military applications.

Clean technology applications are also heavily reliant on REMs with elements like neodymium, lanthanum, and dysprosium fundamental to the production of hybrid and full-electric vehicles in addition to the critical components utilized in wind and tidal turbines.

Beijing has articulated several reasons for this sudden push. Illegal mining and smuggling has been a dominant feature of the Chinese REM industry in recent years, accounting for 20,000 tonnes or one-third of China’s total REM exports in 2008. According to Beijing, unregulated and excessive REM production above given quotas have contributed to an undervalued global REM market which has failed to reflect the true commercial value of these metals. Chinese officials have additionally invoked concerns surrounding China’s burgeoning domestic REM demand in addition to the history of environmental damage resulting from unregulated industry practices.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has subsequently sought to consolidate the industry by reducing export quotas and imposing strict new standards and regulations upon domestic refineries. In July Beijing announced that it would cut REM export quotas by 72 percent for the second half of 2010 while shipments will be capped at 7,976 tonnes, down from 28,417 tons for the same period in 2009.

At the same time, Beijing also plans to stockpile 300,000 tonnes of REM concentrates by 2013 as a means of further ensuring its own future supplies. China’s attempts to acquire greater control over REM are likely to present clear consequences for a wide range of these prominent global clean tech applications.

According to Reuters, global sales of hybrid electric cars are forecast to reach 3 million units in 2015 with a total REM requirement of 33,000 tonnes.

However, China has recently reduced its quota of rare earth element exports, sending countries such as the U.S. and Japan into a panic. Due in part to its control over most of the world’s rare earth element supply, China’s own cleantech industry is booming. In order for other countries to stay in the game, rather than handing over almost all production of electronics and cleantech products over to China, they must find ways to loosen China’s stronghold over these materials.

Drill, baby, drill or resource recovery?

One solution that many countries are pursuing is local mining. But while there are other sources of rare earth element ores, such as in the United States, Canada, and Australia, more test drilling and economic feasibility studies must be conducted before mining can begin. Even then, it may take years before any of these mines would be ready for production. The bureaucracy involved in obtaining the proper permits in the U.S. and the valid protection of endangered species that have also made utility-scale PV installations and transmission lines a not-so-simple endeavor are also obstacles to domestic mining of rare earth elements.

Another possible solution to this problem is to recover these elements from the waste created in the manufacturing process. As a leading exporter of the world’s electronics, and major consumer of rare earth elements, Japan has begun to develop various recovery methods, ranging from chemical to biotechnological processes. Teams from the University of Tokyo and Osaka Prefecture University, and from Hitachi in the private sector, have succeeded in metal separation and recovery. However, these processes are not more cost-effective than importing from China, even at higher import rates. The work and research taking place in Japan is important, but has not yet proven to be a viable replacement for Chinese imports. In order to reduce dependency on China, more efficient recovery methods must be developed.

One way to recover rare earth metals that is being developed in the U.S. is through the proven wastewater treatment method of flash vacuum distillation, which separates clean water from pollutants in a controlled atmosphere chamber. With this technology, industrial wastewater can be treated, while recovering valuable rare earth elements.

Rare earth and transition metal salts can be concentrated effectively using this wastewater treatment method because they have extremely high vaporization temperatures, typically in the thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. Flash vacuum distillation systems typically operate at temperatures of 120 degrees to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, therefore ensuring that rare earth elements are not damaged or vaporized. The applied vacuum depresses the boiling point of the liquid to be treated, and under these negative pressure conditions, water boils at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, thereby leaving behind the metals in the distillation bottoms. Wastewater containing rare earth metals can therefore be concentrated by a factor of 50 to 100. In most cases, the highly concentrated solution can then be recycled back into the refining process. The distillated water collected from the distillation process is of high purity and can also be recycled back into the process.

Increased efficiency, lower costs

Wastewater treatment solutions can also be used to make existing chemically based metal recovery systems more efficient and less costly. In a case study conducted on an Oregon-based rare earth recovery facility, it was found that flash vacuum distillation was able to optimize the metal recovery process, as the chemical solution used in the recovery process was recaptured and used again, thus limiting the facility’s waste and increasing the lifespan of necessary materials. The new wastewater treatment system used much less water and energy than the company’s previous method of treatment, successfully recycling the chemical solvent back into the rare earth element recovery process.

COMMENTARY:  I thought my previous article on the Peak Oil Crisis was a shocker, but now I find that there is a shortage of rare metals or elements, and that fucking China controls 97% of the production of these metals.  

Thanks to WikiPedia, here's a list of the 17 rare metals, including the atomic symbol, name, etymology and industrial uses for each metal:

Z	Symbol	Name	Etymology	Selected Industrial Usages
21	Sc	Scandium	from Latin Scandia(Scandinavia), where the first rare earth ore was discovered.	Light Aluminium-scandium alloy for aerospace components, additive in Mercury-vapor lamps.
39	Y	Yttrium	for the village of Ytterby, Sweden, where the first rare earth ore was discovered.	Yttrium-aluminum garnet (YAG) laser, YBCO high-temperature superconductors, yttrium iron garnet (YIG) microwave filters.[4]
57	La	Lanthanum	from the Greek "lanthanein", meaning to be hidden.	High refractive index glass, flint, hydrogen storage, battery-electrodes,camera lenses, fluid catalytic cracking catalyst for oil refineries
58	Ce	Cerium	for the dwarf planet Ceres.	Chemical oxidizing agent, polishing powder, yellow colors in glass and ceramics, catalyst for self-cleaning ovens, fluid catalytic cracking catalyst for oil refineries
59	Pr	Praseodymium	from the Greek "prasios", meaning leek-green, and "didymos", meaning twin.	Rare-earth magnets, lasers, core material for carbon arc lighting, colourant inglasses and enamels, additive in Didymium glass used in welding goggles,[4]ferrocerium firesteel (flint) products.
60	Nd	Neodymium	from the Greek "neos", meaning new, and "didymos", meaning twin.	Rare-earth magnets, lasers, violet colors in glass and ceramics, ceramic capacitors
61	Pm	Promethium	for the Titan Prometheus, who brought fire to mortals.	Nuclear batteries
62	Sm	Samarium	for Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets, who discovered the rare earth ore samarskite.	Rare-earth magnets, lasers, neutron capture, masers
63	Eu	Europium	for the continent of Europe.	Red and blue phosphors, lasers, mercury-vapor lamps, NMR relaxation agent
64	Gd	Gadolinium	for Johan Gadolin (1760–1852), to honor his investigation of rare earths.	Rare-earth magnets, high refractive index glass or garnets, lasers, x-ray tubes, computer memories, neutron capture, MRI contrast agent, NMRrelaxation agent
65	Tb	Terbium	for the village of Ytterby, Sweden.	Green phosphors, lasers, fluorescent lamps
66	Dy	Dysprosium	from the Greek "dysprositos", meaning hard to get.	Rare-earth magnets, lasers
67	Ho	Holmium	for Stockholm (in Latin, "Holmia"), native city of one of its discoverers.	Lasers
68	Er	Erbium	for the village of Ytterby, Sweden.	Lasers, vanadium steel
69	Tm	Thulium	for the mythological northern land of Thule.	Portable X-ray machines
70	Yb	Ytterbium	for the village of Ytterby, Sweden.	Infrared lasers, chemical reducing agent
71	Lu	Lutetium	for Lutetia, the city which later became Paris.	PET Scan detectors, high refractive index glass

So why is China cutting back exportation of these rare metals?   Forbes wrote an excellent piece that sheds some light on China's motives for reducing exports of rare metals.   According to Forbes, China has a sinister plan to force foreign countries that currently depend on their rare metals, to move their production plants to China and partner with Chinese companies who can then export the finished products, further increasing the trade imbalances. Basically, they want to develop their own manufacturing capabilities. and eventually dominate in just about every major industry that depends on these rare earth metals, namely consumer electronics, automotive and military hardware. 

China is well aware that other countries will respond by reopening vacant mines and producing their own rare metals, but they also know that those rare metals will be much more costly, could take years to mine, and the amount of rare metals produced will still be insufficient to meet local needs.   You talk about a racket.   That's evil shit, people.

So just how expensive are these rare earth metals.  Below are the quoted prices as of February 1, 2011 on the Shanghai Metals Market and you can use the currency covertor to calculate their cost in U.S. dollars.

 

Chinese RMB Currency Converter

Currency Converter

  

 

Products	Standard	Origin	Prices	DD/MM
Rare Earth Carbonate	REO 42.0-45.0%	China	22000-23000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Lanthanum Oxides	La2O3/TREO 99.0-99.9%	China	28000-30000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Cerium Oxides	CeO2/TREO 99.0-99.5%	China	34500-36500 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Neodymium Oxides	Nd2O3/TREO 99.0-99.9%	China	300000-320000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Praseodymium Oxides	Pr6O11/TREO 99.0-99.5%	China	245000-255000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Terbium Oxides	99.9-99.99%	China	2900-3100 (RMB/kg)	01/02
Dysprosium Oxides	99.5-99.9%	China	1750-1900 (RMB/kg)	01/02
Europium Oxides	99.9-99.99%	China	3050-3150 (RMB/kg)	01/02
Yttrium Oxides	99.99-99.999%	China	49000-52000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Praseodymium-Neodymium Oxides	(Nd2O3+Pr6O11)/TREO≥75.0%	China	240000-255000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Samarium Oxides	≥99.5%	China	18000-19000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Lanthanum Metal	La/TREM≥99.0%	China	51000-53000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Praseodymium Metal	Pr/TREM 96.0-99.0%	China	310000-330000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Neodymium Metal	Nd/TREM 99.0-99.9%	China	380000-390000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Cerium Metal	Ce/TREM≥99.0%	China	50000-54000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Terbium Metal	≥99.9%	China	3750-4000 (RMB/kg)	01/02
Dysprosium Metal	≥99%	China	2200-2300 (RMB/kg)	01/02
Praseodymium-Neodymium Alloys	Pr≥20-25%	China	310000-330000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Praseodymium-Neodymium-Dysprosium Alloys	≥99%	China	280000-290000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Yttrium Metal	Y/TREM 99.9-99.95%	China	280-330 (RMB/kg)	01/02
Misch Metal	TREM≥99.0% Nd/TREM≥10%	China	58000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Misch Metal	TREM≥99.0% Nd/TREM≥15%	China	60000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Battery Grade Misch Metal	TREM≥99.0% Nd/TREM≥15%	China	84000-86000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Lanthanum-Rich Metal	La/TREM≥50.0% TREM≥98.5%	China	48000-52000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Cerium-Rich Metal	Ce/TREM≥65.0% TREM≥98.5%	China	45000-48000 (RMB/mt)	01/02
Dy-Fe Alloys	≥99.5%	China	1850000-1950000 (RMB/mt)	01/02

 

Courtesy of an article dated December 19, 2010 appearing in CleanTechies, an article dated January 3, 2011 appearing in Forbes, an article dated February 7, 2011 appearing in GreenTechMedia, an

article in Geology.com,