Space and the asteroids in it belong to all of us in common, not to any one person
Well, we don't operate on that principle here on earth, it seems silly to think will operate by it in space. The only reason we have treaties like that is because few people thought it would ever happen in a reasonable period of time and they used it for diplomatic PR.
Um, no. Orbit was achieved by a simple satellite, and just over a decade later men were walking on the moon, with probes exploring the entire solar system. The space race was kinda over after that, but there was huge optimism about space travel back then, with moon bases being a pretty easy assumption given how quickly technology was improving. I can't say I know exactly why and how these treaties were put into place, but a lot of them were extremely practical and were meant to minimize tensions between the US and USSR. Space travel was anything but simple PR back in those days. It was the future, and it was arriving at breakneck speed.
Space and the asteroids in it belong to all of us in common, not to any one person
Well, we don't operate on that principle here on earth, it seems silly to think will operate by it in space. The only reason we have treaties like that is because few people thought it would ever happen in a reasonable period of time and they used it for diplomatic PR.
A friend of mine took a course in space law (yes, a few law schools offer such a thing). Property law in space is understandably primitive, but apparently it's modeled after maritime law. IIRC, that means that the first person to claim an asteroid in "international" space, as it were, has dibs on the asteroid.
Yeah, I read that it is based on the first person to establish a claim on a resource and to exploit it in a useful way. So if I see a lump of gold floating in space it's not mine, but if I land a digger robot on it and start shipping stuff home then it is.
Mars not having a magnetic core is only an issue on the geologic timescale. For colonization purposes having sufficient ozone in the upper atmosphere should be enough to deal with radiation.
As for actually moving the asteroids, the best way to do this is to grab them as they swing close to earth by slightly altering their orbits using the gravity of the probes to sent out of meet them. A probe pulls the asteroid towards it by a minute amount and then uses its thrusters to get away from it, then it does that again, and again and again until its traveling in the right direction to get into earth orbit.
But its physical properties mean it's much more like Earth: it's only slightly closer to the sun, it's large enough to support a dense atmosphere, it's rocky etc.
The problem with the Venus is it has too much atmosphere. There was a speculative proposal on the table from NASA that Venus could be terraformed by crashing asteroids into it to shear off the atmosphere to make it survivable. I think the other plan is you'd hit it with comets until there was enough water to make the acid and atmosphere condense out and short-circuit that run away greenhouse effect.
And then we crash one into a venusian underground megacity and start an interplanetary war!
No offense was intended, good sir, and the Grand Sweep of Destiny argument isn't as good at winning votes as the "make some fucking money" or "piss off the chinese" arguments would, but I take exception to your hand wringing over worrying about the third world over space as it smacks of "Those guys are wasting money up there when we've got problems down here!" which is a specious argument at best.
I don't think it's specious in principle, actually--although I won't get into it here, since it's largely speculative and hinges on a bunch of details I doubt any of us know (what's the expected return on a dollar spent on malaria nets versus a dollar spent on asteroid mining? The answer is complicated).
I think this also counts as a response @electricitylikesme . It's true that there are complicated social issues surrounding meeting the basic needs of marginalized populations, and these issues make it more complicated than 'I bought a bottle of water for thirsty person.' But that is not to say that it is somehow impossible to address these issues. It just might be more expensive and less straightforward than we naively thought. Aid agencies are engaged in this sort of strategizing all the time.
I do suspect that the calculations, if you actually carried them out, would tell you that malaria nets are a better return on investment. But I'm not prepared to argue for that here. I certainly don't pretend to know very much about how one would go about mining an asteroid.
What bothers me is the idea that what constitutes great human achievement, or the glory of man, or whatnot, is 'conquering' space. Conquering poverty is a greater achievement, in my book. I am not in general prone to endorsing language like that of glory, imagination, destiny, dreams, and so on, but if I were, it would be satisfying human needs that fit the bill, not putting someone on a blasted rock a million miles away.
The thing is, conquering poverty requires us to also conquer space, because if we raise the standard of living of all humans out of poverty, then we are putting an enormous strain on our planet. Right?
Going in to space is an important step for our species because it opens up more territory, more resources, and potential scientific discoveries. Hell, maybe research in to how to live on Mars might teach us how to make really sustainable cities on Earth, and end up solving poverty accidentally. If there are people that are capable and passionate about solving problems in that area, I don't see why we need to nay-say or dissuade them from doing so.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Space and the asteroids in it belong to all of us in common, not to any one person
Well, we don't operate on that principle here on earth, it seems silly to think will operate by it in space. The only reason we have treaties like that is because few people thought it would ever happen in a reasonable period of time and they used it for diplomatic PR.
Um, no. Orbit was achieved by a simple satellite, and just over a decade later men were walking on the moon, with probes exploring the entire solar system. The space race was kinda over after that, but there was huge optimism about space travel back then, with moon bases being a pretty easy assumption given how quickly technology was improving. I can't say I know exactly why and how these treaties were put into place, but a lot of them were extremely practical and were meant to minimize tensions between the US and USSR. Space travel was anything but simple PR back in those days. It was the future, and it was arriving at breakneck speed.
Mostly because we were pissing in the Soviet's cheerios. The minute the Russians gave up on space we stopped going to the moon. NDT has a great speech on this somewhere on the youtubes.
Um, no. Orbit was achieved by a simple satellite, and just over a decade later men were walking on the moon, with probes exploring the entire solar system. The space race was kinda over after that, but there was huge optimism about space travel back then, with moon bases being a pretty easy assumption given how quickly technology was improving. I can't say I know exactly why and how these treaties were put into place, but a lot of them were extremely practical and were meant to minimize tensions between the US and USSR. Space travel was anything but simple PR back in those days. It was the future, and it was arriving at breakneck speed.
Mostly because we were pissing in the Soviet's cheerios. The minute the Russians gave up on space we stopped going to the moon. NDT has a great speech on this somewhere on the youtubes.
Space and the asteroids in it belong to all of us in common, not to any one person
Well, we don't operate on that principle here on earth, it seems silly to think will operate by it in space. The only reason we have treaties like that is because few people thought it would ever happen in a reasonable period of time and they used it for diplomatic PR.
Um, no. Orbit was achieved by a simple satellite, and just over a decade later men were walking on the moon, with probes exploring the entire solar system. The space race was kinda over after that, but there was huge optimism about space travel back then, with moon bases being a pretty easy assumption given how quickly technology was improving. I can't say I know exactly why and how these treaties were put into place, but a lot of them were extremely practical and were meant to minimize tensions between the US and USSR. Space travel was anything but simple PR back in those days. It was the future, and it was arriving at breakneck speed.
Mostly because we were pissing in the Soviet's cheerios. The minute the Russians gave up on space we stopped going to the moon. NDT has a great speech on this somewhere on the youtubes.
A more cynical and realistic answer is that the air force only funded the space program because it gave them better missile technology to use for ICBMs. That technology was pretty much perfected in the 70s, and there was no point developing it further.
I can't wait till we start hearing about space pirates, stealing gold shipments and sabotaging other mining operations.
Except the pirate will be robots. Imagine!
Space. Robot. Pirates.
More likely:
Firefly is good, I counter with this.
One Bender Bending Rodríguez was elected to the 2010 school board in Washington DC. A team of hackers from the University of Michigan got Bender elected as a write-in candidate who stole every vote from the real candidates.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Um, no. Orbit was achieved by a simple satellite, and just over a decade later men were walking on the moon, with probes exploring the entire solar system. The space race was kinda over after that, but there was huge optimism about space travel back then, with moon bases being a pretty easy assumption given how quickly technology was improving. I can't say I know exactly why and how these treaties were put into place, but a lot of them were extremely practical and were meant to minimize tensions between the US and USSR. Space travel was anything but simple PR back in those days. It was the future, and it was arriving at breakneck speed.
Mostly because we were pissing in the Soviet's cheerios. The minute the Russians gave up on space we stopped going to the moon. NDT has a great speech on this somewhere on the youtubes.
No, this isn't it. This one is about the impact on our society, the one I'm thinking of was where he explained how to convince voters and politicians and the military to actually fund the things we want to do in space. It was part of a lecture somewhere, but I can't remember where.
Query: Is the PayPal guy in on this? I seem to remember him talking about something on space the other week on the Daily Show.
Meatbags.
Elon Musk, and nope, he doesn't seem to be listed on their page, but given that he's been running SpaceX, he's probably going to end up involved in providing some rocketry for it, if he hasn't already booked all the available cargo space for the next few years. SpaceX has already successfully launched a couple of Falcon 9 rockets, one with its Dragon spacecraft, which successfully returned to Earth, and is going to have a mission to dock with the ISS coming up in a couple of weeks (May 7th), as a test flight for its upcoming resupply missions.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
SpaceX are going to do a launch next month. It's the trial run for them doing ISS supply runs.
Exciting times.
I'm waiting for some kind of reaction to this from India or China. Both of those have been tooting their space horns. I would have at least expected some kind of argument about who owns space metal.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
I am ridiculously stoked about this. I was actually arguing with some guys from Google a couple months back that space mining was the only way to eliminate resource creep in the future. They were adamant that there was no way to work it out, physics wise, because there wasn't enough fuel on earth to do it. Rubbing this in their faces so hard, this is so rad.
I am ridiculously stoked about this. I was actually arguing with some guys from Google a couple months back that space mining was the only way to eliminate resource creep in the future. They were adamant that there was no way to work it out, physics wise, because there wasn't enough fuel on earth to do it. Rubbing this in their faces so hard, this is so rad.
Yeah, it's got nothing to do with fuel. Even if there was almost zero fuel in space the limiting factor would be the application of patience and incredibly precise orbital insertion and asteroid survey. You can just attach a robotic solar sail to an asteroid and tack it VERY slowly towards earth. Fuel just lets you use rockets and do everything much quicker. Solar sails are actually a better idea though because (although I hate to be the first one to mention this) we don't want to use up all the easily accessible volatiles too quickly. Space Explorers of 2150 won't thank us for using up all the good space fuel!
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
I am ridiculously stoked about this. I was actually arguing with some guys from Google a couple months back that space mining was the only way to eliminate resource creep in the future. They were adamant that there was no way to work it out, physics wise, because there wasn't enough fuel on earth to do it. Rubbing this in their faces so hard, this is so rad.
Yeah, it's got nothing to do with fuel. Even if there was almost zero fuel in space the limiting factor would be the application of patience and incredibly precise orbital insertion and asteroid survey. You can just attach a robotic solar sail to an asteroid and tack it VERY slowly towards earth. Fuel just lets you use rockets and do everything much quicker. Solar sails are actually a better idea though because (although I hate to be the first one to mention this) we don't want to use up all the easily accessible volatiles too quickly. Space Explorers of 2150 won't thank us for using up all the good space fuel!
Nah man it's cool I'm sure our grandchildren's grandchildren will figure it out.
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Unfortunately they are also really expensive and really slow,
I am ridiculously stoked about this. I was actually arguing with some guys from Google a couple months back that space mining was the only way to eliminate resource creep in the future. They were adamant that there was no way to work it out, physics wise, because there wasn't enough fuel on earth to do it. Rubbing this in their faces so hard, this is so rad.
Yeah, it's got nothing to do with fuel. Even if there was almost zero fuel in space the limiting factor would be the application of patience and incredibly precise orbital insertion and asteroid survey. You can just attach a robotic solar sail to an asteroid and tack it VERY slowly towards earth. Fuel just lets you use rockets and do everything much quicker. Solar sails are actually a better idea though because (although I hate to be the first one to mention this) we don't want to use up all the easily accessible volatiles too quickly. Space Explorers of 2150 won't thank us for using up all the good space fuel!
Nah man it's cool I'm sure our grandchildren's grandchildren will figure it out.
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Unfortunately they are also really expensive and really slow,
Pi-r8, circa 100-200 years ago:
"hmmph! internal combustion engines you say? That could never work! Too expensive and dangerous!"
Pi-r8, circa whenever the internet was developed:
"hmmph! a huge network of computers spanning the globe you say? That could never work! Too expensive and no one would use it except highly trained engineers"
Pi-r8, circa whatever years the plane was invented:
"hmmph! a machine that can fly? That could never work! its too complicated and I'm sure there are physical laws preventing it! Its too expensive!"
thank god the development of mankind is not in the hands of Pi-r8
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Unfortunately they are also really expensive and really slow,
The methods I listed are not very expensive. A solar sail in particular is basically just a bunch of foil attached to a body. You are being quite the contrarian here but I don't think you know very much about space travel.
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Unfortunately they are also really expensive and really slow,
Pi-r8, circa 100-200 years ago:
"hmmph! internal combustion engines you say? That could never work! Too expensive and dangerous!"
Pi-r8, circa whenever the internet was developed:
"hmmph! a huge network of computers spanning the globe you say? That could never work! Too expensive and no one would use it except highly trained engineers"
Pi-r8, circa whatever years the plane was invented:
"hmmph! a machine that can fly? That could never work! its too complicated and I'm sure there are physical laws preventing it! Its too expensive!"
thank god the development of mankind is not in the hands of Pi-r8
Just because I think one particular speculative venture is misguided and doomed to fail, does not mean that I'm against every single technology that has ever existed. Like, I think this thing is bullshit- guess I might as well go be a caveman then, huh?
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Unfortunately they are also really expensive and really slow,
The methods I listed are not very expensive. A solar sail in particular is basically just a bunch of foil attached to a body. You are being quite the contrarian here but I don't think you know very much about space travel.
Granted I'm not an aerospace engineering expert, but I do know basic physics. So my judements are based on physics rather than science fiction and libertarian/corporate propaganda. I particularly like this website as an overview of just how friggen' hard a task this would be. On the solar sail:
Big mass, small force per unit area. We’re going to need a big sail. Let’s try to make it the area of the Earth! I’m not kidding around here. 1014 square meters, baby! At a thickness of 25 microns, the mylar would have a mass of about 1012 kg. Hmmm. If we had a way to get this much mass off the Earth, we wouldn’t need to mess around with solar sails in the first place. So let’s tone it down a bit: I’ll go with an Egypt-size sail 1012 m² in size—which is still 10,000 times the launch mass of a fully-loaded Saturn V rocket, to humble us.
The acceleration of our 1013 kg asteroid, using Newton’s F = ma comes to about 50 nano-g (g ≈ 10 m/s²) It takes 350 years to reach 5 km/s. At least it can do it, given great patience. But there are big problems. Even if we could conceive of an Egypt-sized solar sail (difficult for me to swallow), orbital maneuvers don’t generally have the luxury of time. As the asteroid approaches Earth, it needs to be slowed down during the fly-by, otherwise it will just, well, fly by.
So basically you're still stuck trying to create a space-elevator. And notice that the Planetary Resources website doesn't say anything at all about how they plan to mine these asteroids- their plan now, as far as I can tell, is to just make a telescope and figure out everything else later.
In all seriousness, there are two planets in our system that I would call "habitable"--Earth and Mars. Mars is marginally less habitable than the most inhospitable parts of Earth
lolwut
Mars is not remotely inhabitable by any terrestrial organism. There's not enough atmospheric pressure to keep water liquid and the soil is horrifically toxic (thanks to years of radiation bombardment), and because there's so little atmosphere respiration, even for extremely robust plants, is basically impossible.
There might be life on mars, but if there is it's robust in ways that defy any Earthly comparison and it's had time to adapt to the conditions of the planet.
We could probably terraform Mars, but it would be a multi-generational process and, frankly, we don't have the expertise at the moment to do it. It's not enough to just create an atmosphere, for example: you have to make an atmosphere with the appropriate chemical composition - and if you fuck it up, you'd have to shear it all off and start over again.
Granted I'm not an aerospace engineering expert, but I do know basic physics. So my judements are based on physics rather than science fiction and libertarian/corporate propaganda. I particularly like this website as an overview of just how friggen' hard a task this would be. On the solar sail:
...I don't know physics, so I'm completely ignorant of whether the fellow's math is right or not, but:
Our current model of how gravity works is incomplete. In fact, some of it is probably outright wrong.
Saying "This is impossible. Look at the math!" is rather stupid when you're working with an incomplete model (somewhat akin to saying that aircraft will never be feasible before our understanding of aerodynamics was made current).
I don't know that asteroid mining will ever be a thing, but the engineer's logic is fallacious.
The Ender on
With Love and Courage
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
In all seriousness, there are two planets in our system that I would call "habitable"--Earth and Mars. Mars is marginally less habitable than the most inhospitable parts of Earth
lolwut
Mars is not remotely inhabitable by any terrestrial organism. There's not enough atmospheric pressure to keep water liquid and the soil is horrifically toxic (thanks to years of radiation bombardment), and because there's so little atmosphere respiration, even for extremely robust plants, is basically impossible.
There might be life on mars, but if there is it's robust in ways that defy any Earthly comparison and it's had time to adapt to the conditions of the planet.
We could probably terraform Mars, but it would be a multi-generational process and, frankly, we don't have the expertise at the moment to do it. It's not enough to just create an atmosphere, for example: you have to make an atmosphere with the appropriate chemical composition - and if you fuck it up, you'd have to shear it all off and start over again.
Step 1: Land robots and pitch a massive Air-tight tent structure. Large enough to drive buggies into
Step 2: Set the robots to digging. Dig an underground network of caves; build braces, set up basic structure. Set Airlocks at cave entrance.
Step 3: Pressurize cave.
All this talk about establishing a presence on the surface of ANY planet is folly; we should be aiming underground. If we can mine asteroid remotely, we can dig a mine remotely.
This mine can be turned into a habitat.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Granted I'm not an aerospace engineering expert, but I do know basic physics. So my judements are based on physics rather than science fiction and libertarian/corporate propaganda. I particularly like this website as an overview of just how friggen' hard a task this would be. On the solar sail:
...I don't know physics, so I'm completely ignorant of whether the fellow's math is right or not, but:
Our current model of how gravity works is incomplete. In fact, some of it is probably outright wrong.
Saying "This is impossible. Look at the math!" is rather stupid when you're working with an incomplete model (somewhat akin to saying that aircraft will never be feasible before our understanding of aerodynamics was made current).
I don't know that asteroid mining will ever be a thing, but the engineer's logic is fallacious.
Hmm several possible responses I could make to this. I could remind you that General Relativity has been tested for almost 100 years now, and we still haven't found any flaws with it. But mainly it seems strange to use lack of scientific knowledge to justify faith in technology. Not knowing science doesn't make it easier to create a spaceship. Maybe there is a way to do it that we don't know of right now- but by the same token, since don't know about it we can't do it.
I have to agree with Pi-r8 here. I know our current knowledge on the universe is far from complete, but we have more than enough to calculate how a gravity well of an asteroid would work.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Hmm several possible responses I could make to this. I could remind you that General Relativity has been tested for almost 100 years now, and we still haven't found any flaws with it.
How about General Relativity's current total incompatibility with Quantum Mechanics? How about General Relativity's inability to accurately predict the behavior of large celestial bodies & complex celestial structures (the movement of galaxies, for example)?
We have the ability to predict the motion of most objects within a gravitational field. We still have an incomplete understanding of how this works, and we still have to posit some ridiculous concepts like dark matter and dark energy because our math often simply doesn't work out.
But mainly it seems strange to use lack of scientific knowledge to justify faith in technology. Not knowing science doesn't make it easier to create a spaceship. Maybe there is a way to do it that we don't know of right now- but by the same token, since don't know about it we can't do it.
You'll note that I said, "I don't know that mining asteroids will ever be a thing."
You're right - it's also stupid to claim that it will work because we don't have a complete picture of stellar mechanics yet.
But that doesn't change the fact that it's still stupid to claim "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! HERE'S THE MATH!" when we don't even have a good mathematical model yet.
Doing things out of line of sight, particularly in twisting underground passageways will not work well with current technology.
The robot miners would need to be smart enough to navigate, prospect and then mine/dig. They'd need to be robust enough to survive temperature extremes, massive amounts of dirt and environmental hazards (like radiation) while remaining active. They'd need reliable power sources and be capable of their own maintenance (otherwise one robot gets stuck in a tunnel. This is, of course, assuming you solve line-of-sight problems with some sort of transmitter capable of being reliably routed through your underground complex so that people on Earth can control/update the process.
Actual asteriod open pit mining wouldn't be nearly as difficult. Then you can prospect via orbiting satellite, send the robots in and pick up everything you want. There are still environmental hazards, but you can (somewhat more reliably) use solar power and have more immediate contact with the controller on Earth.
So I wouldn't put my money on robots excavating out habitable complexes any time soon.
Use an Orion drive system to steer the Asteroids towards earth. Though I'm guessing most governments would have a serious problem allowing a private organization to build nuclear devices, even for propulsion in space.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
Unfortunately they are also really expensive and really slow,
The methods I listed are not very expensive. A solar sail in particular is basically just a bunch of foil attached to a body. You are being quite the contrarian here but I don't think you know very much about space travel.
Granted I'm not an aerospace engineering expert, but I do know basic physics. So my judements are based on physics rather than science fiction and libertarian/corporate propaganda. I particularly like this website as an overview of just how friggen' hard a task this would be. On the solar sail:
Big mass, small force per unit area. We’re going to need a big sail. Let’s try to make it the area of the Earth! I’m not kidding around here. 1014 square meters, baby! At a thickness of 25 microns, the mylar would have a mass of about 1012 kg. Hmmm. If we had a way to get this much mass off the Earth, we wouldn’t need to mess around with solar sails in the first place. So let’s tone it down a bit: I’ll go with an Egypt-size sail 1012 m² in size—which is still 10,000 times the launch mass of a fully-loaded Saturn V rocket, to humble us.
The acceleration of our 1013 kg asteroid, using Newton’s F = ma comes to about 50 nano-g (g ≈ 10 m/s²) It takes 350 years to reach 5 km/s. At least it can do it, given great patience. But there are big problems. Even if we could conceive of an Egypt-sized solar sail (difficult for me to swallow), orbital maneuvers don’t generally have the luxury of time. As the asteroid approaches Earth, it needs to be slowed down during the fly-by, otherwise it will just, well, fly by.
So basically you're still stuck trying to create a space-elevator. And notice that the Planetary Resources website doesn't say anything at all about how they plan to mine these asteroids- their plan now, as far as I can tell, is to just make a telescope and figure out everything else later.
Yeah, that website is about as useful as his opinion is imbiased. His numbers aren't precisely wrong, he's just picked the worst case for EVERYTHING. His asteroid mining one is the most gloriously ridiculous. Do you know how big a 10^13 kg asteroid is? I'll remind you that in his own numbers he states that all the accessible nickel on earth weighs 10^11 kg. So lets use an actually sensible asteroid 1e9 kg in size. That's a million tonnes of raw material. Well also use a sail 100 km to a side.
4.57 e -6 N/m^2 is our solar radiation pressure force
100 km * 100 km = (100e3)^2 = 1e10 m^2
Sail force = 45700 N
Acceleration = 45700 / 1e9 = 4.57e-5 m/s^2 (oh no, it's so small, but wait!)
Delta V per year = 1.4 km/s
So we have to wait a massive 3 years for our resources! The horror! Oh, and the sail is 100% re-useable and can just fly right back to the asteroid belt afterwards to grab another. We can also build the sail at the asteroid belt rather than lifting it out of earth orbit which would be incredibly stupid and even discussing it as an option makes it clear that the author is predisposed towards failure (since it is indeed pretty heavy if we use mylar sheet, about 3 aircraft carriers)
So, using our nearly fully automated fuel free system we can deliver probably a million tonnes of material to earth every 12 years or so with one sail (since we won't get 100% efficiency by any means, as the sail needs to decelerate to drop the rock in right orbit) but flying back will be much quicker. And you know what, we can build another damn sail! And another, and another, and then a way bigger one and so on.
edit - Oh, and even more hilariously his '25 micrometer of mylar' solar sail calculations are beaten by 2 orders of magnitude already. People have already deployed designs with 5 micrometer thickness, and there are good conceptual tests for materials 30 times as light as that. Every single one of the numbers he uses is the absolute worst case.
edit2 - And if only there was some use for the resources where they currently are... Oh yes, we can use them to build a massive bank of solar powered lasers which we will use to increase the light intensity on the sail by a factor of hundreds. Yet another victory for practical thinking.
edit3 - And we can do all the damn refining at the asteroid belt and only send back the resources themselves
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Um, no. Orbit was achieved by a simple satellite, and just over a decade later men were walking on the moon, with probes exploring the entire solar system. The space race was kinda over after that, but there was huge optimism about space travel back then, with moon bases being a pretty easy assumption given how quickly technology was improving. I can't say I know exactly why and how these treaties were put into place, but a lot of them were extremely practical and were meant to minimize tensions between the US and USSR. Space travel was anything but simple PR back in those days. It was the future, and it was arriving at breakneck speed.
Yeah, I read that it is based on the first person to establish a claim on a resource and to exploit it in a useful way. So if I see a lump of gold floating in space it's not mine, but if I land a digger robot on it and start shipping stuff home then it is.
As for actually moving the asteroids, the best way to do this is to grab them as they swing close to earth by slightly altering their orbits using the gravity of the probes to sent out of meet them. A probe pulls the asteroid towards it by a minute amount and then uses its thrusters to get away from it, then it does that again, and again and again until its traveling in the right direction to get into earth orbit.
The thing is, conquering poverty requires us to also conquer space, because if we raise the standard of living of all humans out of poverty, then we are putting an enormous strain on our planet. Right?
Going in to space is an important step for our species because it opens up more territory, more resources, and potential scientific discoveries. Hell, maybe research in to how to live on Mars might teach us how to make really sustainable cities on Earth, and end up solving poverty accidentally. If there are people that are capable and passionate about solving problems in that area, I don't see why we need to nay-say or dissuade them from doing so.
Mostly because we were pissing in the Soviet's cheerios. The minute the Russians gave up on space we stopped going to the moon. NDT has a great speech on this somewhere on the youtubes.
Except the pirate will be robots. Imagine!
Space. Robot. Pirates.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
We better start memorizing how to say "parlay" in binary.
More likely:
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
also in his daily show appearance he talked about it.
A more cynical and realistic answer is that the air force only funded the space program because it gave them better missile technology to use for ICBMs. That technology was pretty much perfected in the 70s, and there was no point developing it further.
Firefly is good, I counter with this.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
No, this isn't it. This one is about the impact on our society, the one I'm thinking of was where he explained how to convince voters and politicians and the military to actually fund the things we want to do in space. It was part of a lecture somewhere, but I can't remember where.
Meatbags.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Is that the ship from Battletoads...?
It's from firefly I think ... Serenity?
Yes.
Also, learn to internet : p
Exciting times.
I'm waiting for some kind of reaction to this from India or China. Both of those have been tooting their space horns. I would have at least expected some kind of argument about who owns space metal.
Yeah, it's got nothing to do with fuel. Even if there was almost zero fuel in space the limiting factor would be the application of patience and incredibly precise orbital insertion and asteroid survey. You can just attach a robotic solar sail to an asteroid and tack it VERY slowly towards earth. Fuel just lets you use rockets and do everything much quicker. Solar sails are actually a better idea though because (although I hate to be the first one to mention this) we don't want to use up all the easily accessible volatiles too quickly. Space Explorers of 2150 won't thank us for using up all the good space fuel!
Nah man it's cool I'm sure our grandchildren's grandchildren will figure it out.
There is no need to use something as big and powerful and potentially dangerous as that to move an asteroid (unless, of course, it would otherwise hit something important). Convential thrusters, ion drives, solar sails and "gravity tugs" would all be way easier and way cheaper.
I'm the original Al Gore of space
Pi-r8, circa 100-200 years ago:
"hmmph! internal combustion engines you say? That could never work! Too expensive and dangerous!"
Pi-r8, circa whenever the internet was developed:
"hmmph! a huge network of computers spanning the globe you say? That could never work! Too expensive and no one would use it except highly trained engineers"
Pi-r8, circa whatever years the plane was invented:
"hmmph! a machine that can fly? That could never work! its too complicated and I'm sure there are physical laws preventing it! Its too expensive!"
thank god the development of mankind is not in the hands of Pi-r8
The methods I listed are not very expensive. A solar sail in particular is basically just a bunch of foil attached to a body. You are being quite the contrarian here but I don't think you know very much about space travel.
Just because I think one particular speculative venture is misguided and doomed to fail, does not mean that I'm against every single technology that has ever existed. Like, I think this thing is bullshit- guess I might as well go be a caveman then, huh?
Granted I'm not an aerospace engineering expert, but I do know basic physics. So my judements are based on physics rather than science fiction and libertarian/corporate propaganda. I particularly like this website as an overview of just how friggen' hard a task this would be. On the solar sail:
So basically you're still stuck trying to create a space-elevator. And notice that the Planetary Resources website doesn't say anything at all about how they plan to mine these asteroids- their plan now, as far as I can tell, is to just make a telescope and figure out everything else later.
lolwut
Mars is not remotely inhabitable by any terrestrial organism. There's not enough atmospheric pressure to keep water liquid and the soil is horrifically toxic (thanks to years of radiation bombardment), and because there's so little atmosphere respiration, even for extremely robust plants, is basically impossible.
There might be life on mars, but if there is it's robust in ways that defy any Earthly comparison and it's had time to adapt to the conditions of the planet.
We could probably terraform Mars, but it would be a multi-generational process and, frankly, we don't have the expertise at the moment to do it. It's not enough to just create an atmosphere, for example: you have to make an atmosphere with the appropriate chemical composition - and if you fuck it up, you'd have to shear it all off and start over again.
...I don't know physics, so I'm completely ignorant of whether the fellow's math is right or not, but:
Our current model of how gravity works is incomplete. In fact, some of it is probably outright wrong.
Saying "This is impossible. Look at the math!" is rather stupid when you're working with an incomplete model (somewhat akin to saying that aircraft will never be feasible before our understanding of aerodynamics was made current).
I don't know that asteroid mining will ever be a thing, but the engineer's logic is fallacious.
Step 1: Land robots and pitch a massive Air-tight tent structure. Large enough to drive buggies into
Step 2: Set the robots to digging. Dig an underground network of caves; build braces, set up basic structure. Set Airlocks at cave entrance.
Step 3: Pressurize cave.
All this talk about establishing a presence on the surface of ANY planet is folly; we should be aiming underground. If we can mine asteroid remotely, we can dig a mine remotely.
This mine can be turned into a habitat.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Hmm several possible responses I could make to this. I could remind you that General Relativity has been tested for almost 100 years now, and we still haven't found any flaws with it. But mainly it seems strange to use lack of scientific knowledge to justify faith in technology. Not knowing science doesn't make it easier to create a spaceship. Maybe there is a way to do it that we don't know of right now- but by the same token, since don't know about it we can't do it.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
How about General Relativity's current total incompatibility with Quantum Mechanics? How about General Relativity's inability to accurately predict the behavior of large celestial bodies & complex celestial structures (the movement of galaxies, for example)?
We have the ability to predict the motion of most objects within a gravitational field. We still have an incomplete understanding of how this works, and we still have to posit some ridiculous concepts like dark matter and dark energy because our math often simply doesn't work out.
You'll note that I said, "I don't know that mining asteroids will ever be a thing."
You're right - it's also stupid to claim that it will work because we don't have a complete picture of stellar mechanics yet.
But that doesn't change the fact that it's still stupid to claim "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! HERE'S THE MATH!" when we don't even have a good mathematical model yet.
The robot miners would need to be smart enough to navigate, prospect and then mine/dig. They'd need to be robust enough to survive temperature extremes, massive amounts of dirt and environmental hazards (like radiation) while remaining active. They'd need reliable power sources and be capable of their own maintenance (otherwise one robot gets stuck in a tunnel. This is, of course, assuming you solve line-of-sight problems with some sort of transmitter capable of being reliably routed through your underground complex so that people on Earth can control/update the process.
Actual asteriod open pit mining wouldn't be nearly as difficult. Then you can prospect via orbiting satellite, send the robots in and pick up everything you want. There are still environmental hazards, but you can (somewhat more reliably) use solar power and have more immediate contact with the controller on Earth.
So I wouldn't put my money on robots excavating out habitable complexes any time soon.
Yeah, that website is about as useful as his opinion is imbiased. His numbers aren't precisely wrong, he's just picked the worst case for EVERYTHING. His asteroid mining one is the most gloriously ridiculous. Do you know how big a 10^13 kg asteroid is? I'll remind you that in his own numbers he states that all the accessible nickel on earth weighs 10^11 kg. So lets use an actually sensible asteroid 1e9 kg in size. That's a million tonnes of raw material. Well also use a sail 100 km to a side.
4.57 e -6 N/m^2 is our solar radiation pressure force
100 km * 100 km = (100e3)^2 = 1e10 m^2
Sail force = 45700 N
Acceleration = 45700 / 1e9 = 4.57e-5 m/s^2 (oh no, it's so small, but wait!)
Delta V per year = 1.4 km/s
So we have to wait a massive 3 years for our resources! The horror! Oh, and the sail is 100% re-useable and can just fly right back to the asteroid belt afterwards to grab another. We can also build the sail at the asteroid belt rather than lifting it out of earth orbit which would be incredibly stupid and even discussing it as an option makes it clear that the author is predisposed towards failure (since it is indeed pretty heavy if we use mylar sheet, about 3 aircraft carriers)
So, using our nearly fully automated fuel free system we can deliver probably a million tonnes of material to earth every 12 years or so with one sail (since we won't get 100% efficiency by any means, as the sail needs to decelerate to drop the rock in right orbit) but flying back will be much quicker. And you know what, we can build another damn sail! And another, and another, and then a way bigger one and so on.
edit - Oh, and even more hilariously his '25 micrometer of mylar' solar sail calculations are beaten by 2 orders of magnitude already. People have already deployed designs with 5 micrometer thickness, and there are good conceptual tests for materials 30 times as light as that. Every single one of the numbers he uses is the absolute worst case.
edit2 - And if only there was some use for the resources where they currently are... Oh yes, we can use them to build a massive bank of solar powered lasers which we will use to increase the light intensity on the sail by a factor of hundreds. Yet another victory for practical thinking.
edit3 - And we can do all the damn refining at the asteroid belt and only send back the resources themselves