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Is Space Mining Feasible?
Roland Piquepaille writes "There is a large amount of precious minerals on the Moon and Mars. Would it be feasible to bring these valuable materials back on Earth? Space.com says that mining specialists and space engineers, who gathered at the latest Space Resources Roundtable, think the answer is yes. But there are many issues to solve. The first one is to build a permanent base. Then, you have to live on space resources. The article looks at other issues, such as strategic and economic potentials, before examining legal concerns about working conditions and extraterrestrial resource ownership. As the article says about lawyers, it 'turns out you can't leave Earth without them.' This summary contains more details and a rendering of a possible commercial Lunar base."
lots of information, run by 1 guy though
http://www.permanent.com/
sig: 6E8C 8721 B3D9 5269 5A9B 1122 00C3 C03D 99A7 1CFC
6E8C 8721 B3D9 5269 5A9B 1122 00C3 C03D 99A7 1CFC
That link should have pointed here
Whoops
Blaze a trail to the New World
Moderators, if someone provides a link which does not work properly, they are not being Informative. They are simply posting useless garbage.
Here's the correct link: http://www.permanent.com/.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Assume we remove 1/100th of 1% of this which should not matter for system stability.
This would still require us to remove 7,300,000 billion tons of material (that's 7 million billion tons).
So in short: No.
Earth's escape velocity is about 11km/sec, while the velocity required to go from the surface of the moon to the earth is only about 2.3km/sec. Energy is proportional to velocity squared, so it works out to take only about 1/21 of the energy. (leaving the Earth/moon system entirely from the surface of the moon is somewhat more expensive, but still only about 1/16 of the energy cost as that needed from the Earth's surface.)
Of all places for this concept to escape someone, I would never figure it to be /.
Hey genius, ever hear of multi-tasking? So since we haven't cured human nature, the astronauts should stay home and help out with that? What would they do? Meanwhile we could use the additional resources, give people more jobs, and benefit society more by moving forward instead of sitting at home with our tv trays wishing everyone "could just get along". Trust me, I know what you're saying, I have said it myself ( here ), but that doesn't mean we halt progress until idiots get smart.
ymmv
I took a class called "Resources From Space" at University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1998. It was taught by, among others, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, who was the only scientist and last man on the moon (Apollo 17 - he was a geologist). He's now a fusion researcher and teaches this class along with other professors from geology, economics, physics, and nuclear engineers from the fusion technology institute at UW.
The final impression left with me from that class was that, back in 1998, if we were to start up an initiative to mine the moon we would have to raise $215 billion and not see any return until the year 2015 (our focus was on He3, but I think this'll apply to most any moon mining operation). That's essentially a 20 year investment with huge risk, so finding either public or private funding to help launch the operation was the biggest obstacle. Technology was also obviouisly an issue, but the mantra "You can always count on technology to catch up to you" was definitely enforced since most of the profs were fusion researchers.
Also, back then there was little competition in the public eye. My professors were aware that China was ahead of us in the push since they had government funding, but the competition existed only within a few small, scientific circles. No public awareness at all. We were looking at long-term energy-crisis solution, and this was a feasible answer. Our hopes may have been lofty, yet the projections realistic, at the time given the current sentiment. Currently there may be more eagerness by potential investors to get involved, but I'm unaware of a project of these proportions of both scale and risk that's been executed in the present day.
BTW, the web site for the class (last offered fall -2001) is a very thorough and exciting read (esp. the Apollo 17 space mission from the second day). It's also a great resource for questions regarding everything involved in mining the moon.
We are still trying to figure out how to make money on the Internet. Some day it may be feasible to mine the moon, asteroids, or Mars but is it even possible at this point? The last time I heard the are having trouble just getting a few pounds of supplies to the space station. How could they possibly get tons of metal and rock back to Earth? I guess that's going the other way and they can just build a some sort of big barge type thing and just crash it in Earth and hope it lands in Nevada and not the bottom of the Pacific.
As usual geeks are getting ahead of themselves. Space travel is not routine and until it becomes routine and therefore way cheaper there is no point in discussing how to make money from outer space. No point at all, I declare this convseration over. Good day sir.
LoRider
Some very interesting stuff on the UN Office for Outer space affairs' website:
:p
here
Interesting blurbs:
1 Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means
The thinking being, "it's everybody's good, so the lunar and martian surface -and all other planets for that matter- can't be anybody's property".
I think they also ban the commercial appropriation (selling / buying) of land on outer space.
The UN body also states:
2 "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind"
Does that mean that if you start mining the moon, you have to redistribute your profit to all the other countries?
but also states:
3 "outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States"
so you *do* have a right to mine the moon...
and (interesting stuff):
4 "States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies."
Which means you're not supposed to pollute the planet you're mining (does that mean bringing back toxic waste on earth, or putting it in orbit?)
Hmm... the countries that signed these treaties are legally bound by them, so things could get messy
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!