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NASA Funded Project Could Mine Asteroids For Water With Sunlight
MarkWhittington writes: One of the more precious resources that asteroid miners are going after is water, something that is in abundance on Earth and, oddly enough, in space as well but not as easily be acquired. Iron, nickel and platinum group metals will certainly be valuable, but future space travelers will need water, not only for drinking, bathing, and agriculture but for rocket fuel. A story in Space.com reports on a new asteroid mining technique being funded by NASA that would use sunlight, concentrated by mirrors, to extract water out of excavated asteroids. The process is called "optical mining."
the water vapor will almost immediately rush outward from the location it is mined from, making it virtually impossible to collect
Maybe that's why the graphic shows a giant enclosure around the asteroid... you know, to capture the water vapor before it gets a way?
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So, once they bag and bake the asteroid to get the water out of it, why don't they use the solar collector to heat the water to make super (super!) heated steam. This can then be directed to propel the asteroid in the opposite direction. I believe a similar scheme has been proposed on earth to make laser (which are based on the ground) launched rockets using water as the working medium. If the water can't be heated enough to get a fast jet, you could always electrolyze it and just combust the oxygen and hydrogen like a normal chemical rocket.
I presume this scheme only is practical for small asteroids ( 100m?) because the "bag" must be big enough to fully enclose it. Otherwise it might be practical to use it for asteroid (self) deflection. Still, if there are a lot of these smaller asteroids available and if they are pretty "waterlogged" maybe this technique could be compared to almost having fuel tanks scattered around the outer solar system. A small spacecraft could approach one, wrap it, and then use the asteroid "jet" to scoot around the solar system. (As I mentioned by using the term "waterlogged" hopefully most of the asteroid is actually water, this would mean it wouldn't have to move around so much dead weight).
I see what you dig there...
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Someone's been reading John Ringo :)
Either way, it's terrible leaving all that energy go to waste. Let's start bootstrapping ourselves up the Kardashev scale.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
Sounds like this is the Martian way!
I've often wondered whether enclosing the mining location in an envelope of some sort was really the most effective way to collect material in space. Surely either giving the target a spin or taking advantage of its existing spin while melting a spot, followed by an "ice cream scoop" collector might be more efficient? Afterwards it might end up looking a little like Vesta.
The Shared Optical Local Ambient Radiation source is nuclear power. The largest such facility within currently attainable distance, in fact.
The headline should be "NASA wants to build solar-powered DEATHRAY !"
Now what was that you were about to say about cutting funding, Senator?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Surely either giving the target a spin or taking advantage of its existing spin while melting a spot, followed by an "ice cream scoop" collector might be more efficient?
You realize that spin won't generate a centrally directed gravitational field, right? That your mining operation will look rather like a wet dog shaking itself off in space, with stuff flying everywhere, and your mining equipment will have to be digging "upwards" towards the core? And that focusing light on the same spot of a rotating target (else goodbye efficiency) is much more difficult?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
space travelers will need water, not only for drinking, bathing, and agriculture but for rocket fuel.
...Convincing /. that bathing is the second most important item on that list.
Good points. And there are also some interesting possibilities with a multi-layer enclosure... You could inflate the space(s) between layers, providing rigidity. You could pump the "inflation fluid" through a mechanism to extract heat (or whatever). You could run electricity through the layers to use the Peltier effect for heat management. Even with a small amount of cooling, you could rapidly condense a lot of the water vapor, thus reducing the internal pressure of the enclosure. Lots of possibilities there...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
So breaking a mining mirror...is 7 years bad luck, or 7 year round trip to refit?
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My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
One of the more precious resources that asteroid miners are going after is water, something that is in abundance on Earth and, oddly enough, in space as well
Why is that so odd? Where do you think the water on Earth came from?