Space is starting to look like the better mining operation
Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.
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.
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.
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
Launch costs are coming way down. Once we get enough people into space to get industry going this will be great. Give adventureous people something to do and not destroy our planet. Asteriods are airless lumps of rock and metal just hanging around.
Give adventureous people something to do and not destroy our planet
Space Mining, Deep Rock Galactic style
yeah rocket launches are excellent for the planet.
We launch a few rockets to bring starter ewuipment and from then on everything gets mined from NEAs (Near Earth Asteroids) or the moon. Then no more rocket launches needed except to refresh crew as we already do with ISS.
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.
Harry Stamper never never misses a depth that he aims for.
Also love how this movie stuck up for Mom and pop oil companies
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.
It really isn't. We know it's possible, we roughly know how to build one, it's only our material science that isn't there yet. But there are promising leads in that direction and with the right investments that problem looks solvable.
https://youtu.be/lldv_u4R6BU?si=65llxa5uHygOlT3K
With FTL our current science is saying that it's probably impossible and will never happen. We might be wrong about that, but if we are it's not going to be cracked anytime soon.
Sure, if you can find a material strong enough
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Z5aHMB4Tje4?si=Q1Qe2Muj3wCltWGq
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.
Can't wait for them to try and redirect an asteroid into orbit, fuck it up, and cause it to crash into earth
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For instance, a study by Ian Lange of the Colorado School of Mines considers the potential—and challenges—for a fledgling industry that might reach a significant scale in the next several decades, driven by the demand for critical metals used in electronics, solar and wind power, and electric car components, particularly batteries.
While other companies are exploring the controversial idea of scooping cobalt, nickel, and platinum from the seafloor, some asteroids could harbor the same minerals in abundance—and have no wildlife that could be harmed during their extraction.
Lange’s study, coauthored with a researcher at the International Monetary Fund, models the growth of space mining relative to Earth mining, depending on trends in the clean energy transition, mineral prices, space launch prices, and how much capital investment and R&D grow.
By their assessment, metallic asteroids contain more than a thousand times as much nickel as the Earth’s crust, in terms of grams per metric ton.
Electric vehicles and their batteries need about six times the minerals conventional cars do, and they require both nickel and cobalt in significant quantities.
The Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for 70 percent of cobalt production, for example, while nickel primarily comes from Indonesia and the Philippines, and Russia and South Africa have most of the global supply of platinum-group metals.
The original article contains 701 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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 !
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.
Yay! Let’s continue our fucking up of everything into the solar system!
We did it, boys!!
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!
In all seriousness, what do you think is going to happen if we strip mine Asteroids? Unlike earth there is no life on Asteroids, there is nothing to destroy. Even the other planets are lifeless and sterile, holding back from mining them is just stupid. We are sitting on the only known rock in the solar system we can't indiscriminately strip mine, I say we switch our mining operations to one of the many rocks we can harvest without issues as soon as possible.
Where do you think all our current junk is going right now? We don't even have a handle on that at local levels, let alone globally. Bringing more junk to our planet isn't fixing shit for anyone except the wealthy people and corporations who want more money and can afford to mine asteroids.
What do you find it to be solving, exactly?
Asteroids are basically piles of rock, it's not like we're going to be destroying lush ecosystems.
The equivalent of luddite thinking, right here.
