Goldman Sachs Says Asteroid Mining Could Actually Happen

When Planetary Resources floated the idea of asteroid mining five years ago, the proposal was met with a heavy dose of skepticism. 
Despite the company’s high-profile backers — Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and James Cameron, to name a few — experts were quick to point out potential issues. Costs were expected to be high, the technology was underdeveloped and there was some concern that trying to maneuver asteroids could lead to catastrophe.
Since then asteroid mining has largely fallen from the spotlight, though Planetary Resources has continued to quietly make moves. So has Deep Space Industries, another big name in the (admittedly small) industry.
This week, however, life has been injected into the asteroid mining space once again. The reason? In a note to clients, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) analyst Noah Poponak said he sees the space economy becoming a multitrillion-dollar industry in the next two decades.
“While relatively small markets today, rapidly falling costs are lowering the barrier to participate in the space economy, making new industries like space tourism, asteroid mining and on-orbit manufacturing viable,” he says in the note.

“Space mining could be more realistic than perceived,” Poponak adds. “While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn.”
$2.6 billion is a hefty sum, but as Business Insider notes, it’s only about one-third the amount of money that has been invested in Uber. That means it’s “well within the reach of today’s VC funds.” The news outlet also points out that the amount of money it costs to build spacecraft is declining.
Of course, problems with asteroid mining do still remain. Perhaps most notably, a successful asteroid-mining mission could have a drastic effect on the resource space. Planetary Resources has said in the past that just one asteroid the size of a football field could contain $25 to $50 billion worth of platinum — enough to put Earth-based miners out of business.
For now, mining companies don’t have to worry. In a couple of decades that may not still be the case.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.