Will space mining ever be a thing or is it strictly science fiction? Is there anything in space worth mining or collecting?
ITT: Is / will space mining ever be a thing?
Ian Walker
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Brayden Kelly
Of course.
Consider the cost of getting things onto an asteroid/moving it into orbit.
Well estimate this at ~20billion USD.
Comet weighs several hundred million pounds
Composition percent gold/platinum/iridium/rubuim 5% which is pretty low for alot of them
5% of 500 million is 25 million pounds at $1000 per ounce is 400billion.
Not a bad profit
Gabriel Reyes
yeah good point. Thanks
Adam Williams
I always see this but every time I read it up I see a lot of things that counter my little understanding on econ 101.
It will become a thing once there's a need for it. As of now, there's nothing there that we couldn't find here (correct me if I am wrong??) in enough quantities to sustain our markets.
Easton Flores
Only if some kind of memetic drive is invented, and then it will only robots living there because human eyeballs deform in 0g and the amount of energy required to spin an asteroid sufficiently is more than the total generated on Earth right now for a century.
Charles Sullivan
Why? Refer to you can launch materials back to earth in disposable capsules because the asteroid will have such little gravity.
Tyler Sullivan
Yes and if Musk was legit and not a fucking memer he'd be focusing on that instead of populating a shit hole desert planet
>mfw I claim Anteros and become a space trillionaire
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Anthony Bailey
If the refining took place in space, it would overall be a more effective system.
Juan Carter
What the fuck are those approximations? 4 trillion to mine a 3 km wide asteroid?
>Mine asteroid, robots made of gold
>Disposable platinum rockets
>Burn cash for propellant
>Send 1/2 of mined materials into sun
>Guys we made 1 trillion profit
Isaac Mitchell
>Leave gravity well
>Create in-orbit facilities that can process resources
>Use space mining to get resources that dont have to move up a gravity well
Call me when we have a hollowed out Eros station and the Navoo is complete, senpai
Bentley King
It really wouldn't matter.
We could design a large hole filled with water that we launch raw materials at periodically. Water absorbs alot of the impact, then we can process materials left over.
If a single company were to undertake this venture they would most likely dominate space based operations for several generations. They could fund literally any space venture after mining this
Ethan Morgan
>If a single company were to undertake this venture they would most likely dominate space
In the next 100-200 years the first country to start mining asteroids and build up a space military force will literally rule the planet for the rest of human history. God I hope it's not the Chinese or Indians...
Sebastian Reed
The problem is that the public won't agree to find something like this because >muh taxes. So it will either be a large company or China/Russia.
Parker Carter
That would imply that dropping 25 million pounds worth of precious metals into the market wouldn't crash their prices
Jace Williams
Do you know anything about diamonds? Go learn instead of mindlessly posting like a common chimp.
Elijah Campbell
Do you know anything about economics?
Like anything?
Anthony Bailey
So are you implying that the first company to mine asteroids would pull a De Beers, stockpile their precious metals and try to cash it like that?
Michael Jenkins
Either bait or complete retard. Read about the diamond cartel.
Jackson Watson
So you dont. Ok thanks for the clarification.
Theres good books on the subject tho, most of this information is pretty basic and I am pretty sure it within the first 50 pages if you are not that patient to read a economics book.
Austin Torres
Space mining, in order to produce products meant for use in space, will happen LONG before any profitable means exists of mining and delivering resources to Earth.
That being said, even for-space space mining will help Earth in the sense that it will make developing space much cheaper to accomplish (fuel depots in space stocked by locally sourced propellants instead of shipments from Earth is a simple example of this). Of course, mineral resources like iron-nickel deposits from asteroids and rare metals would also be important for space colonies, along with more common materials like sulfurous minerals that can be used in bulk similarly to concrete on Earth. I would go so far as to say that colonizing any world would be impossible if we didn't perform any mining in situ at all, and that colonizing becomes easier and easier as we build up a colony's industrial base.
By colonizing space we would profit by transitioning into an interplanetary civilization as opposed to a single planet civilization. The benefits are similar to a single island or single continent civilization colonizing distant lands around the world. However, because of Earth's deep gravity well, we're essentially starting off much more isolated from nearly everything else than everything else is from each other. By colonizing a shallow gravity well (Mars, Moon) we can much more easily gain access to the rest of the solar system.
Dylan Peterson
ounce or troy oucne
baka use metric senpai
never use anything but metric
Xavier Gomez
If they are smart assholes, yes.
Leo Wilson