The Ocean bottom is the next frontier for both marine scientists and mineral miners. Since less than 15% of seabed have been mapped, we still have a great deal to learn about resources available deep underwater. But quite predictable environmental effects seem an obstacle.

In fact, we know more about Martian landscapes than about the floor of our Earth’s oceans. Water covers approximately 70% of the total Earth’s surface. The average depth of the world ocean of 3.7 km makes exploration of seabed technically challenging even in the 21st century. The Ocean waters protect deep sea treasures against greedy humans…

During the last decade, when the term “Gold Rush” having roots in the XIX century was appearing from time to time on the internet with regard to the upcoming seabed mining of “battery” minerals, the majority of observers could hardly take the term literally. It was an appropriate telling metaphor allowing to speculate about both the mineral treasures available on the ocean floor and hypothetical profits that mining companies could get from the actual seabed mining. Besides, the “Gold Rush” hinted at a certain anticipated contest which might occur between seabed mining companies.

The present post is not about an…

When engineers at Krypton Ocean Group are asked to describe their seabed mining technology in two words, they often smile delivering literally two words: “deepwater elevators”. This seemingly primitive definition reflects, nevertheless, the very meaning of what Krypton has been developing and sharpening since 2014. Today, the technology is in a few steps from an actual implementation when computer models are translated into titanium structures. Who and how will benefit from the deepwater elevators? And what arguments make Krypton’s leadership being so confident in a business direction the Company chooses?

“In fact, it is much simpler to grasp the deepwater…

There is a certain number of the economical, political, and environmental reasons for the current delay with a fully operational seabed mineral mining. Both mining professionals and outside observers follow different opinions why minerals from the ocean floor still remain unreachable at industrial scale.

Some emphasize a hypothetical environmental impact of seabed mining on the ocean biodiversity. The others claims that seabed mining is less feasible than the onshore one. Still others see a conspiracy of the world mining corporations whose ongoing interests hinder seabed mining being at the same time focused on the occupied continental deposits.

All of the…

WHAT PREVENTS SEABED MINING FROM BEING FULLY OPERATIONAL

We are living in strange times: on the one hand, the fanciest global trend implies shifting to the ultimately eco-friendly “green” economy where fossil fuels are to be rejected. On the other hand, we keep destroying our planet with the predatory onshore mineral mining to satisfy the needs of the new “green” economy in the so-called energy metals. Such an ambivalence can be accepted as a sign of a certain psychological immaturity along with some excessive enthusiasm of the current generations with regard to the new socio-economic paradigm where we’d prefer to…

THE OCEAN FLOOR: TERRA INCOGNITA OR ELDORADO?

The contemporary media environment represents a few core topics around which all media narratives start bouncing. The renewables constitute one of the most popular topics today. Such hashtags as #RenewableEnergy and #ElectricVehicles reflect how close the public discourse came to a paradigm shift from the obsolete oil-driven economy to the new world of a sustainable eco-friendly development.

In its turn, the “Renewables” topic itself contains some particular sub-topics that have different extents of acceptance and understanding. Their popularity depends on various factors determining how appropriate each news is for the mass awareness. For…

или почему “батарейный кризис” — экономическое кликушество

Некоторые наивно полагают, будто Илон Маск чуть ли не в одно лицо изобрёл целую индустрию электроавтопрома. На самом деле объективные социо-экономические предпосылки (политическая лихорадка с нефтью, ужесточение экологических норм в связи с глобальным потеплением) сделали возможным то, что ещё лет 15–20 назад казалось каким-то бредом как с экономической, так и с технологической точек зрения. В чем Илон действительно велик, так это в подходе к бизнесу — сначала он умудрился визионерски почуять тренд, а потом нонконформистски начхать на мнение «серьезных инвесторов». …

The first part of this conceptual explanation is devoted to describing the socio-economic rationale of the gamified investment platform we are going to create. In order to refresh the objectives of this project in the memory of our readers, we would like to list several key provisions of our concept such as:

• once software was the factor which has transformed an industrial economy into a post-industrial one, the future extractive industry should go in line with the digital transformation allowing to combine a real sector with a virtual environment quite organically;
• being one of the most progressive technologies of the…