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Space is starting to look like the better mining operation
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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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.
I'll take the issue down the road over the one already in my doorstep any time of the week.
Atmospheric pollution is at least something that seems fixable with extraterrestrial resources. Ruined biospheres due to mining on earth seems less avoidable/fixable unless we go back to pre-industrial living standards.
How would it be fixable? The more stuff entering and exiting the atmosphere, the more particles. The particles aren’t from manufacturing on earth from what I read.
Particles we can bind with chemical reactions (like ad-blu for diesel engines), would be expensive and we would need to be careful to select chemical reactions that actually solve the problem but fundamentally it's a fixable problem.
Right, so by adding more chemicals, causing more unknown issues, we can fix an unknown issue. Which we would need to strip earth for even more to get to be able to use.
Makes total sense!
Adding chemicals to reduce pollution is how every internal combustion engine works, especially diesel engines.
Sodium reacts explosively with water, Chlorine is a lethal substance to humans yet when the two chemicals react they become a necessary part for our bodies. There are ways to turn toxic/harmful materials into harmless ones by adding more chemicals. The key part is making sure the result is actually harmless, which we can.
Edit: also in how far would we need to strip earth further for this solution? In this scenario we're already mining asteroids in space and there are (to my knowledge) no natural materials we can find only on earth, if anything there is stuff we can't find on earth but do in abundance in space (like Helium).
Just because it can reduce pollution in a combustion engine doesn’t mean it translates to removing metal particulates from the atmosphere. Those are wholefully different scenarios.
We still barely comprehend the dangers of what we put in the atmosphere 3 decades ago, let’s not be adding more. Especially so when it’s completely unproven to this date.
You claim it’s a fixable problem, yet there is no proven method. And how could there be, we just found out about this issue this bloody week lmfao.
it is though. We haven't found a solution, we haven't even started looking for one but it is fixable. There is nothing in the known laws of physics/chemistry inhibiting us from removing these particles from the atmosphere.
You claim removing particles from the atmosphere is completely different from removing them from exhaust gas. It isn't. The only differences here is that we need to filter the stuff in a less than accessible location. Chemistry doesn't suddenly stop working because we are in the atmosphere and not on ground level.
And we can figure out how that stuff is impacting the atmosphere, we simply haven't bothered running the numbers and experiments on it because there's no funding for it. This isn't some weird black magic nobody can/has figured out. What do you think the scientists will do with the newly acquired info on added particles into the atmosphere? Look at it and hum and hah? No they'll use the numbers to model long term impacts these materials will have and, if paid enough, even figure out ways to remove them again.
Fixable means that it doesn’t create another issue, which there is plenty of supporting evidence it would. We don’t even understand the future issues of removing the pollutants from ICE vehicles.
And yes it’s different, the particles they need to removes is different and chemistry is different when you lose atmosphere.
Hell water boils at a certain altitude, and you want to claim all chemical reactions would be the same…? Come on dude.
By your definition nothing is ever fixable because you can't ever fully remove the possibility that your choices have some unknown effect. A perfect solution never exists so looking for one is idiotic, we can only model the problem with our current knowledge and work on fixing it with that. Compared to other animal life I say we're even doing a good job at it, so far we haven't gone extinct despite being the predominant life form pretty much everywhere. Other animals would've ran into major problems sustaining themselves within two or three generations were they in our position. So unless you have some way to solve our problems that doesn't involve regressing back to the stone age I think the "fix it now, worry about the new ways we broke it later" approach is the only workable solution we have on hand right now.
Yes tell that to everyone dying of lead poising, with mesothelioma from asbestos and micro plastics in their brain….
Maybe instead of killing our future generations for the sake of “progress” we should think of our preserving what little is left before it’s too late since we tried fixing too many preventable issues?
Aight, do the first step then.
Ultimate solution to human pollution. My guess is, you won't like it though.
You mention all the people suffering from mesothelioma, from lead poisoning and micro plastics but you fail to mention the lives saved from penicillin, the people saved from starvation due to nitrate fertilizer and pesticides. The mothers saved because of X-Rays and other tests during pregnancy. You can't pick and choose all the bad stuff whilst ignoring the good that came from the same system. You can't have your cake and eat it too and so far innovating and worrying about the consequences later has worked out better than not doing that.
I didn’t fail to mention anything. I’m pointing out the fallacies in your arguments, I know there’s lots of good that have come from quite frankly atrocities when viewed from a certain viewpoint.
You lost all credibility when you claimed chemistry is the same even if the environment is different.
So you think it suddenly turns into some different science because the environment changes? That we can't apply it anymore just because the initial state is different? Not how that works. The rules stay the same even if the input changes. We can take the atmospheric composition and replicate it in a lab to see how something would react in the atmosphere. Unless some parameter is missed that will be exactly what would happen in the atmosphere. There is only one step where the laws of science suddenly change and it's not with the location of chemical substances.
How. Ruined biosphere from mining affects many discrete places that can be cleaned up, in theory. Messing up the atmosphere affects all biospheres, is much more vast, and we have to breathe in the meantime
Look at current mining - true crimes against the environment in specific places but do not directly impact most humans. Could you say that about messing up the atmosphere?
Isn't one of the current hot topics among environmentalists carbon capture, which is "cleaning up" the atmosphere as a whole?
The only thing carbon capture cleans up is CO2, and it's not remotely feasible because it would require orders of magnitude more energy than the entire planet consumes even if it were 100% efficient, which it isn't close to being.
the asteroid belt is like a protective barrier. if earth’s orbit was on a flat surface the belt would be on it too. this imaginary plane is where earth is most likely to collide with extraterrestrial objects. so if it was possible to reduce the asteroid belt to half its current mass, earth would technically be more vulnerable to collisions along our orbital path. it’s not the biggest threat but i felt the need to explain that.
Rocks ≠ ore. There are numerous materials (e.g. lithium) for the total known deposits on Earth won't cover more than a few decades' worth of projected demand, and even then, the mining process is an environmental disaster. Asteroid mining is a long-term project that will require huge advances in multiple fields, but it addresses a real need.
known deposits. There's functionally endless amounts of all elements we need on earth. And there is zero need to go mine asteroids at a truely astronomical cost of efficiency.
I said mostly the same thing as you in (my own words) elsewhere inside this post. Most people don't want to see this reality.
So, maybe this is a business opportunity : to attract investment and then face investors with hard facts. Of course we write the contract so that, after this, we just keep their stupid money.
Edit : Oops ! I just read your other comment :
And so I realize you were thinking along these lines already. (although my statement was much more cynical)
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
900 tons to orbit just this year isnt a scam.
Of those 900 tons, how many will be used to get humans to Mars?
What, you think one can just snap their fingers and be done with a project like that? Its something thats never been done before. No need to be so disingenuous.
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.