McC wrote:Damn, forgot this place didn't have an edit. Also this:
The albedo and other data coming off NEO 3554 Amun, a near-Earth type E asteroid, indicates that it could be composed of a good percentage of platinum.
And this "good percentage" is ...?
Particularly when factored against the work required to acquire it?
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"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
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McC wrote:He's not actually talking about a present-day endeavor, but rather something within the next 100 years.
Even 100 years from now, it won't make sense to consume enormous quantities of energy in order to acquire an asteroid for the sole purpose of mining materials from it that can also be found on Earth.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Darth Wong wrote:Particularly when factored against the work required to acquire it?
What about moon mining?
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Darth Wong wrote:Particularly when factored against the work required to acquire it?
What about moon mining?
Regolith, the stuff most abundent there, isn't useful for anything...
Well, anything yet. As I understand it, the one thing Regolith has lots of is some form of Hydrogen isotope useful in Fusion. So. If we have commercially viable fusion, the moon may become a useful fuel-extraction site.
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Darth Wong wrote:Even 100 years from now, it won't make sense to consume enormous quantities of energy in order to acquire an asteroid for the sole purpose of mining materials from it that can also be found on Earth.
He points out that if the asteroid Amun, at 2km diameter is composed of a mere 0.1% accessible platinum, it could be worth in excess of $4 trillion. Not his figures -- figures he's seen sighted. He's seen some upward of $20 million, but doesn't buy those.
$4 trillion sounds like a nice reason to me go mine an asteroid
Darth Wong wrote:Even 100 years from now, it won't make sense to consume enormous quantities of energy in order to acquire an asteroid for the sole purpose of mining materials from it that can also be found on Earth.
He points out that if the asteroid Amun, at 2km diameter is composed of a mere 0.1% accessible platinum, it could be worth in excess of $4 trillion. Not his figures -- figures he's seen sighted. He's seen some upward of $20 million, but doesn't buy those.
$4 trillion sounds like a nice reason to me go mine an asteroid
Not when each ounce costs more to mine than the value of the platinum. A 2km diameter asteroid is huge, and altering its velocity for intact capture would be a ridiculously difficult proposition.
Let me point out the fallacy of your argument by noting that the Sun contains a lot of helium, and helium has commercial value. Multiplying the value of helium by the quantity of helium currently in the Sun would produce an enormous figure. See the problem with the reasoning?
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
*nod* This is kinda hard since I'm relaying someone else's arguments. He's not talking about capturing (that was my introduction and mistake) it, he's talking about going to it, mining it, and then shipping it back and dropping the chunks down from orbit.
Presently, too hard. 100 years from now? *shrug* Who knows?
McC wrote:*nod* This is kinda hard since I'm relaying someone else's arguments. He's not talking about capturing (that was my introduction and mistake) it, he's talking about going to it, mining it, and then shipping it back and dropping the chunks down from orbit.
Presently, too hard. 100 years from now? *shrug* Who knows?
Appeal to Uncertainty fallacy. Using that logic, anything can be profitable. But logically, flying out to an asteroid is even worse. A spaceship would only have a limited payload, particularly with all of the mining equipment. And mining is difficult enough on Earth, never mind in space. Worse yet, this ship would have to carry its own refinery. The cost of this mobile self-contained sealed spaceworthy mining facility/ore processor would be ridiculous even if it were simply built on Earth, never mind flying it out to the asteroid belt and then matching velocities with an asteroid. And then you'd need shuttles to bring back the ore. Each shuttle would have limited payload, so you'd need lots and lots of trips, thus driving up the cost per ounce commensurately.
Alternatively, hauling back unrefined ore is idiotic because it is massive compared to the refined material; you might as well just haul back the whole asteroid, hence bringing us back to the capture problem.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:You can't, but they're getting there. This time 5 years ago tubes a few micrometres in length were amazing. Now we can do several orders of magnitude better and it's improving all the time.
The Discovery article had ribbon coming off at a few kilometres length, and it was supposedly very very close to Elevator grade, with certain non-fullerene related differences. It's getting better and better every day.
Interesting, did they give any number for the tensile strength of the thing? Last time I checked (which was several months ago) the strength of the overall ribbon was only about the same as high strength steel.
aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.
Darth Wong wrote:I also support sending boy bands into space, but only for the purpose of sending them hurtling into the Sun.
Actually, it's an elaborate part of my plan to exploit them and render them useless at the same time. Given that the average member of a boy band would not likely be in nearly as good shape as an astronaut and very likely will be less than diligent in their exercises. A month or so in free fail should be enough to put them into physical therapy for a long time, much longer than that their flash in the pan will last. In other words, they are sent up for the good of space and subsequently retired.
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"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
McC wrote:*nod* This is kinda hard since I'm relaying someone else's arguments. He's not talking about capturing (that was my introduction and mistake) it, he's talking about going to it, mining it, and then shipping it back and dropping the chunks down from orbit.
Presently, too hard. 100 years from now? *shrug* Who knows?
Why bother? Mars is closer if we are hard up for minerals. Build a space elevator on Mars (something that is much easier than on Earth), give packets of raw materials a good shove from the top and after a few years investment, you should have a steady stream of mineral resources from the Red Planet.
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Well, you're always going to run into transporting issues with extraterrestrial sources of raw materials. The question is whether or not the initial investment (which will be indisputably high) will pay for itself several times over with the ultimate net return you garner from the mining operation itself. Mars poses the same problem an asteroid does -- shipping the stuff back to Earth.
Mars is cheaper than mining the asteroid belt and it wouldn't be all that expensive if you were willing to wait a bit from them leaving Mars and when they arrive on Earth, especially with a space elevator.
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
That's why I'm trying to say that mining asteroids for minerals to send to Earth is crazy. You're wasting way too much in terms of fuel just to move raw materials around.
The initial cost of sending a fully equipped mining expedition to an asteroid is steep, yes. If you couple it with a manufacturing facility, say one that's limited to producing relatively simple (but bulky) structural products, then you have a workable situation. The material is mined, refined, and turned into building materials in situ.
Then all you have to do, say if you want to build a large space station at a Lagrange point, is to palletize the cargo, bundle it all together, affix ion thrusters and a rudimentary guidance system, and send it off to the Lagrange point for assembly.
Do this enough, and after a while the asteroid mining should pay for itself -- you will have a durable space station that will stay put, and you won't have to pay out the nose for materials sent up from Earth. Plus you're only moving absolutely essential material around, not a whole asteroid, chunks of ore, or ingots.
Of course, wouldn't the space station itself have to pay out in order to pay for asteroid mining? Or is this space station just a government-supported colony?
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Guardsman Bass wrote:Of course, wouldn't the space station itself have to pay out in order to pay for asteroid mining? Or is this space station just a government-supported colony?
Whatever, it could be a private hotel or a govt-sponsored "waystation" for that matter. But with materials supplied from space, size would not be as much of an issue for this hypothetical station as it is for, say, the ISS.
The Discover article said that a good many people would quickly step up to pay. The guy said hes gotten offers, people saying that 10 billion would be easy if they can get it to work safely.
Sì! Abbiamo un' anima! Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot.
What about solar sails, can they dramatically drop interplanetory transportation costs? Is there a direction limitation in sailing or can one can "sail into the wind?" (probably by gravity sling shot or something)
What about forming the raw material into a sail of some kind.
After all, minerals can wait a while before being delievered.
Light exerts very little preassure. Solar sails would need to be huge to create sufficient acceleratio. Even then they would be very slow and have a very small payload.
The best option for interplanetary travell would be fusion powered ion drives.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
evilcat4000 wrote:Light exerts very little preassure. Solar sails would need to be huge to create sufficient acceleratio. Even then they would be very slow and have a very small payload.
There is also this thing called solar wind too you know. (builds big magnet)
The thing is that bulky materials don't need high acceleration, just enough to that they get there eventually. Decent nuclear engines are expensive as hell, and fusion-electric drives is probably the most complicated thing on can build. It'd give good specific impulse and high delta V for mass to fuel ratio, but unless annoying humans are on it, why the rush?
Solar sails a few kilometres across would be fast enough to get a person from Earth to Mars in a matter of months, if the sailship first dropped orbit to around Mercury then opened sail there. Check out Mining the Sky and Islands in the Sky.
Sì! Abbiamo un' anima! Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot.
kojikun wrote:Solar sails a few kilometres across would be fast enough to get a person from Earth to Mars in a matter of months, if the sailship first dropped orbit to around Mercury then opened sail there. Check out Mining the Sky and Islands in the Sky.
Can you give that in mass to area to time-of-passage ratio?
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