What about self replicating robot factories ? You land one on a suitable asteroid. It eats the rock and grows in size slowly. Instead of sending a huge mining complex you grow one onsite with available resource.
Is that sort of thing possible or in the far future territory ?
NASA should bypass moon
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Sarevok
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Re: NASA should bypass moon
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
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Broomstick
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Re: NASA should bypass moon
It's possible but we're not there yet. How long it would take us to get there is debatable. Also, there's a difference between a wholly automated self-replicating robot and one that utilizes remote presence i.e. with a human directing the action from a distance. The latter will happen MUCH sooner than the former.
Also, remember that when you're delivering ore into a gravity well (presumably Earth but it could be the Moon or Mars) you don't require a powered delivery system. The space shuttle, after all, glides to a landing. There is no reason you can't program delivery drones to do the same, although probably wise to land them in somewhat remote areas just in case of accident. You might have to lift the control systems from Earth, but if you have metal you can refine and build the shells in space. If you can get a system up and running that requires very little input from Earth, that is, is mostly self-supplying, then the cost of extracting and transporting the raw materials drops.
Also, remember that when you're delivering ore into a gravity well (presumably Earth but it could be the Moon or Mars) you don't require a powered delivery system. The space shuttle, after all, glides to a landing. There is no reason you can't program delivery drones to do the same, although probably wise to land them in somewhat remote areas just in case of accident. You might have to lift the control systems from Earth, but if you have metal you can refine and build the shells in space. If you can get a system up and running that requires very little input from Earth, that is, is mostly self-supplying, then the cost of extracting and transporting the raw materials drops.
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Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Re: NASA should bypass moon
/agree with Broomstick
Self-replicating factories would be awesome technology for the practical end of scarcity in general, yet the most likely way of developing something that complex and astronomically advanced might be to have general AI first and the end of the human era in anything like its present form. Who knows when that'd occur.
Regular asteroid mining is doable with much closer to today's technology, such that no particular piece of it from rock-crushers to a mass driver or steam rocket can't be conceived and partially engineered in detail, even if economic conditions like the current lack of a rapid turnaround reusable launch system to put some major hardware into space aren't ripe for it today.
Self-replicating factories would be awesome technology for the practical end of scarcity in general, yet the most likely way of developing something that complex and astronomically advanced might be to have general AI first and the end of the human era in anything like its present form. Who knows when that'd occur.
Regular asteroid mining is doable with much closer to today's technology, such that no particular piece of it from rock-crushers to a mass driver or steam rocket can't be conceived and partially engineered in detail, even if economic conditions like the current lack of a rapid turnaround reusable launch system to put some major hardware into space aren't ripe for it today.