How about showing them what they can do with a couple 4x4 rotation / projection matrices?
Heck, if we learn about matrices by 11th grade, and these kids are going to be polygon-loving gamers and coders... why wait to get to college to re-learn their linear algebra? They can program their first "Rotating 3D Borg Cube?" without much knowledge of a language.
If they don't want to code that, at least they can do a simple CGI-movie with their favorite videogame character, car design, gundam (hmmm, that'd be stepping over the line) or (ugh!) --pokemon!-- and post it on the web.
Hmm. You have good points there. One thing gets me, though. Why spend so much if the price of loading the minerals from orbit back to Earth would still be high, let alone even getting these "catapulted" so that they will not fall from their fixed orbits. There are already enough debris and shutdown satellites travelling at dangerous speeds up there to routinely put new stuff in orbit for short amounts of time since no one would keep good track of that.
I believe that it would be great for experimental minerals if the lesser gravity does make production cheaper. But if the actual trips and the overhead costs are still very high, this is going to take a long time. Just consider how long it is to get say, diamonds, when there's only one company owning about 90% of the world supply.
Now think about Nasa owning 100% of the moon's raw supply -- they're no good at mining! No, just kidding, I'm sure that a real company would eventually take over, but I believe that sending miners would take a lot of highly selective tests and expensive training--you can't just get a Joe Blow who works in a mine in orbit...
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Heck, if we learn about matrices by 11th grade, and these kids are going to be polygon-loving gamers and coders... why wait to get to college to re-learn their linear algebra? They can program their first "Rotating 3D Borg Cube?" without much knowledge of a language.
If they don't want to code that, at least they can do a simple CGI-movie with their favorite videogame character, car design, gundam (hmmm, that'd be stepping over the line) or (ugh!) --pokemon!-- and post it on the web.
I believe that it would be great for experimental minerals if the lesser gravity does make production cheaper. But if the actual trips and the overhead costs are still very high, this is going to take a long time. Just consider how long it is to get say, diamonds, when there's only one company owning about 90% of the world supply.
Now think about Nasa owning 100% of the moon's raw supply -- they're no good at mining! No, just kidding, I'm sure that a real company would eventually take over, but I believe that sending miners would take a lot of highly selective tests and expensive training--you can't just get a Joe Blow who works in a mine in orbit...
just my two cents, please give me feedback