Cover image of "Delta-V," a techno-thriller about asteroid mining

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Mars, Mars, Mars. It seems that NASA and the public can think of little else about space travel. There have been more than fifty missions to long-dead Mars but no more than a handful to all the ice moons of the gas giants. And a few of those moons show signs that life may be present there. Of course, the red planet is closest to Earth, while the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune orbit the sun hundreds of millions or billions of miles from us.

A techno-thriller about asteroid mining

Still, the greatest gain for humanity in the solar system may lie not on any of the eight planets and 219 moons but on some of the more than 800,000 asteroids. Not to establish colonies like those fantasized for Luna and Mars, but as rich sources of water, metals, and chemicals for our planet as we approach the limits of Earth’s resources. Dramatizing that potential, Daniel Suarez’s techno-thriller, Delta-V, brilliantly explores a near-future mission to mine the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu.


Delta-V by Daniel Suarez (2019) 447 pages ★★★★★ 


Image of he surface of the asteroid Ryugu, where this novel posits an asteroid mining mission in the near future
Image of the surface of the asteroid Ryugu taken by the Japanese probe Hayabusa-2 in 2018 or 2019. Image: space.com

A brash young billionaire entrepreneur

Delta-V chronicles the six-year odyssey of James Tighe and seven others chosen through rigorous elimination from a field of 400 prospects to pioneer asteroid mining on Ryugu. Their mission is the brainchild of the ultimate risk-taker, Nathan Joyce, a brash young billionaire who crashes into competition with Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson, all of whom appear in thin disguise in the tale. They’re focused on predictable operations on Mars, the Moon, and in low-Earth orbit. Joyce believes the only rational reason to risk billions in space travel is to mine the riches of the asteroids. Because that’s where the money is. And he will stop at nothing to gain his share of the wealth.

A cast of heroes

Suarez renders a fascinating portrait of his eight asteroid miners. James Tighe—pronounced “tie,” but he’s called “J.T.”—gained worldwide fame for rescuing most of his companions from the deepest cave in the world during an earthquake. The others include a legendary mountaineer and orthopedic surgeon, a former Chinese taikonaut, an African-American ex-soldier with carbon-steel prosthetic legs, an Indian roboticist and rock-climber, a Japanese-American metallurgist. and a Bangladeshi geologist. With one exception, they’re all in their mid-thirties to early forties. The exception is a twenty-something mathematical prodigy and virtuoso hacker from Nigeria. Four are men, four women.

The story Suarez tells is, for all its grounding in scientific reality, a thriller. It’s suspenseful to a fault and full of surprises. This is a tale that will keep you glued to your seat.

This is hard science fiction

The destination is real

Ryugu exists. In fact, in 2018 a Japanese spacecraft named Hayabusa2 visited it and took samples back to Earth in December 2020. (Results of the subsequent analysis are not publicly available as I write.) Ryugu is approximately one kilometer (0.62 mile) in diameter and weighs 450 million tons. Its eccentric orbit takes it to within 100,000 kilometers of Earth, and scientists follow it for its potential to wreak havoc here. In Delta-V, however, Suarez posits a mining mission dispatched to the asteroid at a distance of a million miles. If asteroid mining ever proves feasible and profitable, Ryugu might well be the place to start.

The journey is realistic

In the title, Delta-V, the “V” doesn’t connote the number five. It’s V for velocity. Delta-V is acceleration, the all-important number in space travel, where speed can accumulate to astronomical levels even with modest acceleration if it’s constantly applied long enough. Suarez has done the calculations to demonstrate how long a million-mile journey might take with delta-V at different levels. And the ship he has designed appears, at least to my untutored mind, to be workable.

The author did his homework

If you read this book, be sure to check out the Appendix. There, Suarez includes artists’ renderings of his designs for the spaceship Konstantin, an optical mining robot, the space tugs to propel mined resources back toward Earth, and smaller utility spacecraft the miners can use to move around the massive ship and on the surface of the asteroid. The care Suarez took to design all this reflects the seriousness of the effort he invested to ensure the story is realistic. You’ll get another hint of that in the Acknowledgments, where he credits the help he received from space travel experts at NASA and elsewhere.

About the author

Image of Daniel Suarez, author of this novel about asteroid mining

After a career as an information technology consultant, Daniel Suarez (1964-) turned to writing techno-thrillers. Delta-V is his sixth novel. He is American and lives in Los Angeles.

I’ve also reviewed the sequel to this novel, Critical Mass – Delta-V #2 (This is humanity’s future in space).

For another brilliant novel about asteroid mining, see Up Against It by Laura J. Mixon—Life, death, and politics in the asteroid belt.

I’ve also reviewed other novels by Daniel Suarez:

For more good reading, check out:

And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.