- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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I’m so intrigued by the prospect of mining asteroids! The amounts of metals and other resources, including rarer things like platinum family metals is incredible. There are some serious challenges that would need to be overcome, but the first country or company which pulls it off would open the doors to a future where we don’t need to rip up earth to obtain all the rare stuff we need for high tech industry. And with huge amounts of asteroids being in the belts in our solar system, a practically inexhaustible supply too.
It is exciting but what’s the market? It’s hard to see this being at all a reasonable cost having to bring it back to Earth, especially unrefined, and it’s hard to imagine it not being worse than current mining, given the flight back to Earth, especially if refining is still on Earth
On the other hand I’m more excited over mining regolith and water. Such simple things, but will be a huge difference in cost to maintain any off-world presence. Shelter, radiation control, rocket fuel, drinking and bathing, growing food : water and dirt are pretty basic, but just think of the sheer tonnage of supply missions launching from Earth it could replace
I think the real value is amount of rare metals that could be harvested, scientists have found an asteroid that is comprised mostly of metals. Scientists think it may be the exposed core of a proto planet:
Metal asteroid Psyche has a ridiculously high ‘value.’ But what does that even mean?
So that kind of haul could potentially be worth it, but smelting, refinement and processing would probably be more cost effective in space. Who knows what the future will bring, mining the asteroid belt may only make sense once we have a much strong presence in space, I.E., colonies on Mars, the Moon, etc etc.
This is a lot of exciting words to say “instead of digging up the effectively limitless amount of rock under our feet we can go into space to do it in the least efficient and most expensive way”
It’s very cool, but I would rather we spend our time and resources on more pressing things, given we have the rocks right here.
I would agree if mining the rocks on earth didn’t cause ecological collapses and kill off animals and displace indigenous and exploit underprivileged ethnic classes in post colonial hellholes
I’m sure mining in space will have its own problems but at least it can’t kill our biosphere
There’s been studies that have found metal particles in the atmosphere, so anything entering and exiting are seemingly shedding particles.
So it’s likely to cause issues down the road unfortunately.
If it’s truly the “least efficient and most expensive way” of mining then you have no reason to be the slightest bit worried, it won’t get done in that case. Obviously.
This is true, but you’ll also see a lot of investment scams by internet famous people, like funding a space company on the lies of Mars colonies
SpaceX is a private company, it’s not taking investment from internet people.
Furthermore, its Mars goals are IMO the least revolutionary part of what the Starship program is working toward.
Investment scams from internet people. And I said scam like promising Mars colonization. I did not use the term revolutionary. Scam.
I can imagine a sort of a conveyor belt made of miniature cargo vessel with one robotized mining station at one end, cutting away an asteroid piece by piece, and a cargo dock at the Earth side.
With enough cargo vessels deployed, let’s say one would arrive at each end everyother day, the moment the conveyor belt was full, the mining operation would be swift.
Assuming a global deal between nations could be struck to have a refinery or at least a cargo dock placed on the moon, to organize large cargos to come to Earth at programmed intervals, it could prove to be a very interesting endeavour.
Raw matterials price could drop, given the sheer available volume.
At least it sounds like a diferent sci-fi plot
You could do that on earth
Which part?
All of it.
ROCK AND STONE
I sure hope we find a way to do this and spread the increase in wealth and prosperity mostly equally amongst all people.
I would hate it if one guy got super powerful and filthy rich off this and then monopolized the asteroid mining industry.
Spoiler, it’s definitely gonna be option 2.
If the movie Armageddon taught us anything it’s that it’ll be super easy to train miners for space.
Can we just get on with engineering a space elevator already? We’re going to want one if we’re serious about exploiting resources off planet.
You might as well ask: “Can we just get on with engineering an FTL drive?” as it is about as far beyond our capabilities as a space elevator is.
Well we’re gonna need one of those too might as well get to work
I’m in the middle of an MA in astrophysics…
Sure, if you can find a material strong enough
I’m thinking we’re going to want either really big spiders or a whole lot of goats now that we’ve spliced the spider silk genes into goats milk.
I don’t know why we have not been working out the kinks on the moon given how achievable its been for that for years.
💰💰💰
It hasn’t been profitable just yet.
Probably never will be.
My guess is that we won’t be doing any digging on asteroids at first. We will send a Spaceship (with 100tn of cargo capacity) and grab a whole small asteroid. Then the spaceship with the small asteroid Inside the cargo bay will return to earth. It sounds science fiction but don’t forget we have already collected material from asteroids twice (the Japanese returned with 5gr and tre US 250gr).
You don’t even have to go very far, there are hundreds of small asteroids between the moon and earth. I think we will be able to collect a whole small asteroid in 10 years max.
Fantastic ! Well, in the next millenia we could see some real progress in this field (if we are lucky). So, lets look forward to the next million years with joy !
I don’t think it will take a millenia. Rocket science is making good progress towards astroid stuff.
I certainly hope your guess is better than mine.
Did you notice how time and time again science fiction was overly optimistic concerning developments in future transportation capabilities ?
I can say that I’m very happy that we don’t have flying cars. That would be a nightmare.
YEAH, AWESOME! We’ve totally fucked up our own planet with excessive and unrestricted mining operations, let’s move on to others so a few people can get wealthy, and the masses can get their cheap shit from Amazon. Woohoo!
The equivalent of luddite thinking, right here.
Or just obvious sarcasm to bring to light how people are looking to bring MORE junk back to our planet instead of cleaning it up first.
Why are you wasting time and emitting carbon dioxide by using a computer to converse on the Fediverse when you could be out picking up trash from gutters right now?
You’re glossing over the obvious point to make a stupid one. 💨
Indeed. I sighed before I clicked on this post because I knew a comment exactly like this one was going to be a the top.
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Yay! Let’s continue our fucking up of everything into the solar system!
We did it, boys!!
STOP MINING. STOP EXPANDING. STOP BEING OBSESSED WITH “GROWTH”
b-b-but 8 billion people isn’t enough
YES IT IS
Well said from a chip made from rare minerals.
