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We Need To Build Industrial Zones In Space In Order To Save Earth, Says Jeff Bezos (cnbc.com)
Onstage at the Code Conference, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said that we have to start bringing parts of the industrial economy to space in order to "save Earth." Bezos also said that we must protect our planet, adding that we don't want to live in a retrograde world where "we have to freeze population growth." From the report: Bezos says tasks that require lots of energy shouldn't be handled on Earth. Instead, we should perform them in space, and that will happen within the next few hundred years. "Energy is limited here. In at least a few hundred years... all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet," Bezos added. "Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial. You shouldn't be doing heavy energy on earth. We can build gigantic chip factories in space." Solar energy, for instance, is more practical for factories in space, he said. "We don't have to actually build them here," he said. "The Earth shades itself, [whereas] in space you can get solar power 24/7. ... The problem with other planets ... people will visit Mars, and we will settle Mars, and people should because it's cool, but for heavy industry, I would actually put it in space."
Raw materials.
You've just increased their costs hundred-fold, even if manufacturing were "free", power were "free" and delivery back to Earth comes free courtesy of gravity.
It's costs millions to put a few hundred kilos into orbit. Let alone getting it somewhere useful. And capturing, refining and using material already in space is basically 100% unproven at the moment - we've literally never done it and have no idea of the associated costs.
His ignorance of how solar works is pretty apparent from what he's saying. The flux of photons in space is about 1/3 more than than on earth (1366W/sq. meter in space vs 1000W/sq. meter on earth). Woopee. So you'd be willing to build factories and solar farms IN SPACE to get slightly more power? Nevermind that it will be thousands of times more expensive to put them in space; the radiation in space quickly renders all but the most expensive solar options non-functional in less than a year. This is a very stupid idea.
In the 1960s rockets landing on their tail and being reused was science fiction, unproven, and its associated costs unknown. 50 years later its doable and its costs known and its the less expensive tech.
... We already know how to mine the water and do quite useful stuff with it (drinking, breathing O2, H2+O2 for fuel, ...). Other simple and available organic compounds also have quite well known processes and uses.
Bezos specified he's talking about a hundred or more years in the future. In fifty years we went from aircraft that were little more than wooden/canvas structures with engines to landing on the moon. We are already landing on asteroids, already doing long range commercial analysis,
The missing pieces are largely matters of engineering not scientific understanding, and the engineering often not far removed from today's capabilities. And the economics of it all is largely a matter of scale. Apollo 11 bringing back a bag of rocks is like building Intel's i7 CPU fab and only building 100 CPUs. Those CPUs are awfully damn expensive. Now start doing things at scale and quantity as Bezos is talking about. And also as Bezos discusses, be sure to factor in the external costs of that earth bound manufacturing, particular health and environmental costs when your make comparisons, not simply the cost of the goods sold.
Actually population growth freezes itself when you educate people. Look at Japan. Low immigration and low birthrate has lead to population decline.
> Thought experiment: you use nice pretty reflectors to smelt aluminium. You now have a ball (or, more likely, an expanding cloud) of +/- 700C molten metal.
Actually, extracting Aluminum is more complicated than just heating, since most of that metal everywhere (Earth and space) is in the form of oxide minerals. However Iron in the form of metallic asteroids *is* available already reduced to metal, so I will substitute that in my discussion. You build a rotating circular crucible and throw chunks of metallic asteroid into it. Focus enough sunlight on it to melt the batch. Bits of rocky inclusions will float to the "top" (center) because they are less dense, and the molten iron will sink to the "bottom" (rim). Throw in a bit of carbon from the C-type asteroids, since Iron + Carbon = steel. The bottom of your crucible has a hole that you tap to extrude the molten metal, which then passes through cooled rollers to provide a final shape. On Earth this is called "continuous casting". The rollers can form an "H" shape for structural beams, flat sheet, or whatever else you need, by just choosing roller positions. Cooling water goes through the rollers, and out to radiator pipes. They don't have to cool to room temperature, just enough to keep the rollers from deforming. Since the radiators will be rejecting heat at a pretty high temperature, they don't have to be very large.
> I'm not saying we should shitcan the whole idea, but the "Futurist" camp really has to stop talking about how trivial things are once we get most of the way out of the gravity well,
Actual space systems engineers like myself don't trivialize the tasks. Most space enthusiasts don't even know what materials are available to work with, or what the solar flux is, or the realities of working in the space environment. But some of us do know all that stuff, collectively. I don't know everything, either, and I work in the field. Generally you need teams of specialists in different subjects to complete a project. So you won't get a complete answer in a forum comment. You get it in a study report that lots of people contributed to.