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On Asteroid Mining
There's an article out in Feed Magazine that pans the Space Station, but then gets into some actually interesting matter, like the increasing ability to actually do asteroid mining. Asteroid mining has long been a staple of hard science fiction, but the benefits of being able to /really/ do it are immense - less pollution, really clean metals. There's just that nasty get-the-material to the factory issue. But that's why we need a space elevator, right?
You're forgetting the value of having the stuff in orbit, which effectively inflates its value by about $100K a pound. Use it to build satellites and space stations, in nice clean vacuum, and without having to withstand the stresses of launch.
And, moving stuff around in space is not very expensive compared to the cost of lifting stuff out of Earth's gravity well. If you're willing to move stuff over the course of a few months, ion propulsion and favorable orbital mechanics make it doable.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
For instance, you apparently missed READING THE ARTICLE. In it, it states that (for example) a recently discovered Near Earth Orbit (NEO) asteroid that is only about 2 kilometers in size but "At today's prices, the iron and nickel alone would be worth about eight trillion dollars, cobalt another six trillion dollars, and the platinum-group metals about the same."
Sure, but the article also says that launching about quart of water into orbit costs over a quarter million bucks according to the same article. Consider the cost of going farther, extracting the material, and applying the delta V to get it back down to earth. If the article's figure are correct, assuming two pounds of water costs about $300,000 to launch we get something over $9000 per ounce to launch. Assuming the cost to extract the material and get it back to earth is roughly on the same order of magnitude as the launch costs (a very generous assumption), then we aren't going to be mining asteroids for iron and nickel any time soon. Even iridium which is much more valuable goes for something like $400 per troy ounce -- you'd lose 8K$ on every ounce you brought back.
It'd be more economical to mine landfills for iron and nickel we've already thrown away.
I'm not saying asteroid won't happen eventually, but the technology has to develop a lot farter to make it economical. The ISS is a step towards developing more economical space technology.
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Okay...so....6 billion people...expanding geometrically...regressive regimes that refuse to curb birth rates or educate people...massive pollution...hmm...I'm sure everything will be fine for a few thousand more years...
Wrongo.
We either move the factories off this rock or we drown in our own wastes. We either crack the controlled fusion problem (maybe we should spend more money on that than...say...cosmetics? Nah...)
or we are going to bleed the planet dry of petrochemicals----and drown in more waste. Fusion too tough for 5 or 6 decades? Get powersats in orbit (constructed with asteroidal raw materials) or its going to be brownouts for the next hundred years. Not to mention the air is going to be brown anyway...
Look folks, all you general luddites, "its too expensive, we should worry about Social Security"-ers, "Mother Gaia will protect herself"-ers, and "well, uh, things won't be too bad for another hundred years or so"-ers need to shut the hell up. Either control birthrates and educate the starving billions or we are going to collapse under the mass of our waste and energy and resource consumption.
1. EDUCATE PEOPLE ENOUGH TO STOP OVER-REPRODUCING.
2. Distribute resources to feed the billions already on the planet.
3. Relocate highly pollutive industries to orbit or lagrange points. This obviously necessitates the acquisition of asteroid raw materials.
4. Pour HUGE amounts of money into research for fusion or powersat development. I'm not talking about 20 guys in Berkely zapping a molecule of tritium every 18 months. We need Manhattan Projecy importance attached to this.
Of course....NONE of this will get done. Only after the planet is a teeming desert where we all suck smog and eat krill steaks will anyone stop to think...gee...maybe we should have put some effort into orbital industries and Belt mining.
Oh well. Everybody get back to watching Survivor II. Bye now.
Plus, do you know for certain there isn't a kind of life there? Think back to real Star Trek and the horta, perhaps horta's live there and we;re about to destroy their habitat.
Repeat after me:
Star Trek is NOT a documentary.
Thank you
Can't be too complicated . . . shoot 'em once and they split in half, shoot 'em again and they split in half again. Repeat until they're pocket-sized.
Why not get the factory to the materials? Considering the size of most asteroids, it wouldn't take much to anchor a refinery to it, and just launch the refined metal back to the earth. Of course, we could also leave it in orbit and use it to build the structural components of (long-haul ships|space stations|satellites) outside of the gravity well, thus saving millions of dollars.
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