It would be even more expensive to lug Earthly water, iron, aluminum and hydrocarbons out of our gravity well when those things will be available "locally" for building colonies
Colonies aren't profitable either, so if we ignore those, what's the use case for expensive mining in space ?
sending asteroidal material back to Earth will be cheaper than underground mining for terrestrial uses
It's not trivial to send material back to Earth. You'd have to match Earth delta-v, and then manage to land it softly from orbit. Even for pure gold, that's a tough case. And in order to get pure gold, you'd have to launch and build an entire refinery. I'd like to see the price tag for that.
have read more than once that large wind turbines will be at an energy deficit for nearly 20 years before they are able to reach a net positive in terms of energy produced vs spent in production and transportation
On Mars you'd be stuck in a vault as well. Maybe above ground, and maybe the vault will have windows, but you're still stuck. And outside the vault is nothing but inhospitable wasteland as far as the eye can see. If you enjoy that kind of stuff, there's plenty of it here on Earth still.
There's still a lot of cheap oil with low extraction cost, but the market price of oil is determined by the most expensive barrel, not the average. As demand drops just a little bit, these expensive barrels are taken out of the equation, and price will drop quickly.
I don't expect there to be a sudden transition either. Even if demand for oil starts to drop, prices will drop even harder, and that makes it less attractive to switch to electric.
Life has survived billions of years of natural disasters. I'll take my chances. Besides, if we can't take care of one planet, there's no reason to assume we could take care of another, or that we would even be ready to invest trillions of dollars to colonize it.
what sort of sorry nutjob is going to lock themselves away from the world on the off-chance that it all comes tumbling down so fast that locking the doors after the fact might be too late?
The same kind of nutjob that is going to lock themselves away on Mars.
It's much easier to keep this one in a good condition than it is to find another one that's even remotely suitable for us. And face it, even if we can terraform Mars, and we have regular rocket service there, 99.9999% of all people will be doomed to die on Earth anyway.
I don't think it's a joke, really. There's been no lack of demand for oil, and it's doubtful that this is going to change any time soon. Peak oil may well hit us first.
That's why I use 3rd party servers only for disposable stuff. I use GitHub for a couple of open source projects that I created, but it's not the only copy, and I don't depend on it.
I trust Github enough to invest time in their free service.
Sure, but that doesn't require much trust. If at some point you no longer like their free service, you can take your projects off and find another place.
On the other hand, if you use their paid service, and put your proprietary code on there, you put yourself in a position that the code may be leaked, or get lost in a fire, or that the terms and conditions change.
Slashdot Mirror
They could also play by the rules, and avoid the fine while still making more money compared to not selling anything at all.
ALON is not aluminum, it's a ceramic. If you wanted a transparent ceramic, then we've had corundum for ages.
That still leaves people who have proper licenses for the copyrighted material
So they have roughly a helix of 14 billion kilometers worth of data. That's... not insignificant data.
If you'd take a boat, and go out on the ocean, you wouldn't be able to detect the tides by comparing two points on the boat.
If you want to make great unprofitable achievements, that's fine, but use your own money.
It would be even more expensive to lug Earthly water, iron, aluminum and hydrocarbons out of our gravity well when those things will be available "locally" for building colonies
Colonies aren't profitable either, so if we ignore those, what's the use case for expensive mining in space ?
sending asteroidal material back to Earth will be cheaper than underground mining for terrestrial uses
It's not trivial to send material back to Earth. You'd have to match Earth delta-v, and then manage to land it softly from orbit. Even for pure gold, that's a tough case. And in order to get pure gold, you'd have to launch and build an entire refinery. I'd like to see the price tag for that.
Asteroid mining isn't profitable, and neither is moon colonization. In fact, both of these are insanely expensive, with very little return.
If it ever becomes profitable, some private business will start doing it.
have read more than once that large wind turbines will be at an energy deficit for nearly 20 years before they are able to reach a net positive in terms of energy produced vs spent in production and transportation
I read it was 6 months on a good location.
World demand increased by 2.1%, resulting in carbon emissions rising by 1.7%, so that means that new renewable energy only contributed 0.4%?
Not necessarily. There could also be shifts in type of fossil fuels.
Volcanoes are already carbon neutral. That's why CO2 was just going up and up in the last million years.
More cores also waste power to heat.
On Mars you'd be stuck in a vault as well. Maybe above ground, and maybe the vault will have windows, but you're still stuck. And outside the vault is nothing but inhospitable wasteland as far as the eye can see. If you enjoy that kind of stuff, there's plenty of it here on Earth still.
Compatibility is a nice feature, and it's a testament to the design that they could remain compatible for so long.
There's still a lot of cheap oil with low extraction cost, but the market price of oil is determined by the most expensive barrel, not the average. As demand drops just a little bit, these expensive barrels are taken out of the equation, and price will drop quickly.
Which means a surplus of used ICE cars. Combined with cheaper oil, that makes it an attractive option for people with small budgets.
I don't expect there to be a sudden transition either. Even if demand for oil starts to drop, prices will drop even harder, and that makes it less attractive to switch to electric.
Life has survived billions of years of natural disasters. I'll take my chances. Besides, if we can't take care of one planet, there's no reason to assume we could take care of another, or that we would even be ready to invest trillions of dollars to colonize it.
what sort of sorry nutjob is going to lock themselves away from the world on the off-chance that it all comes tumbling down so fast that locking the doors after the fact might be too late?
The same kind of nutjob that is going to lock themselves away on Mars.
it's only one planet and planets are not forever.
It's much easier to keep this one in a good condition than it is to find another one that's even remotely suitable for us. And face it, even if we can terraform Mars, and we have regular rocket service there, 99.9999% of all people will be doomed to die on Earth anyway.
The sane thing to do is to provide aid to modernize these countries.
You can't modernize an old mindset of tribal warfare with aid.
I don't think it's a joke, really. There's been no lack of demand for oil, and it's doubtful that this is going to change any time soon. Peak oil may well hit us first.
Humans can do magically a lot more than apes, and pretty much all that happened is that our brains got bigger.
the current approach in my opinion is fatally flawed
And you have a better method ?
That's why I use 3rd party servers only for disposable stuff. I use GitHub for a couple of open source projects that I created, but it's not the only copy, and I don't depend on it.
I trust Github enough to invest time in their free service.
Sure, but that doesn't require much trust. If at some point you no longer like their free service, you can take your projects off and find another place.
On the other hand, if you use their paid service, and put your proprietary code on there, you put yourself in a position that the code may be leaked, or get lost in a fire, or that the terms and conditions change.