@spaceflight yeah, although to be fair it isn't being used to fetch even that tiny % of the metals used on Earth from the asteroid belt, so let's just say I'm sceptical of the environmental benefits.
The #Canadian 🇨🇦 #Minerals and #Metals Plan 📆 2019 : #SpaceMining refers to the use of raw materials from #asteroids or #planetary bodies. Early action from #Canada regarding mining new frontiers would demonstrate leadership, signal that Canada welcomes innovation and investment, and support the transfer of technology between sectors. The #SpaceSector is one of Canada’s most R&D intensive.
Mining in northern, remote, and isolated communities and in #space 🌌 face common challenges related to exploration, infrastructure development, and operating in harsh and remote environments. The minerals sector is taking advantage of #SpaceSolutions such as #robotics, remote sensing, and aerial and earth #observation technologies to create safer, cleaner and more efficient operations. https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/nrcan/files/CMMP/CMMP_The_Plan-EN.pdf
@spaceflight
Sure. The numbers just aren't convincing.
Besides, we only need an endless supply of rare metals once we already have an endless supply of the things we need more: water, food, energy, utilised human potential.
We have hungry children and burning forests. No amount of cheap iridium is going to fix that, and I'm not convinced it'd ever be cheap.
What it looks most like is a scam for the rocket-owning class to extract a few billion in investment before the collapse.
@spaceflight ah well, thought that cast list was too good to be true! 😁
Although I haven't seen it yet, I would guess the showrunners behind Foundation could pull that off, and the team behind The Expanse of course.
Hopefully now this strike seems to be settled things might get rolling.
@spaceflight I have actually seen that link before: it in no way refutes what I said.
The biggest threat facing the planet today is excessive waste, of which CO2 is just the most prominent part.
None of this rocketeering is going to fix that problem; indeed, while rocket fuel is usually hydrogen, the energy used to make the fuel is mostly fossil fuels, so it makes the problem worse.
I have been reading articles about exploiting the asteroid belt for over fifty years now. During that time we have spent an astonishingly large amount of energy on rocketry, but haven't manufactured even one useful thing from off-world materials.
Also during that time, we went from threat to our climate being distant, to it being almost certain disaster looming in our faces.
@spaceflight@isecdotorg
Space travel is an excuse, so people can continue their compulsive consumption and compulsive waste, but tell themselves, "The magical space technology will fix everything!"
What we are doing is like a man not leaving his burning house because he is online, planning a retirement fund for his great-great-grandchildren.
@spaceflight This is not germane to the matter at hand.
Some huge, amorphous, poorly-defined concept like "progress" is not useful in dealing with this critical problem: "How do we not decimate the biosphere, and with it, humanity?"
We'll destroy most of our biosphere and all of our futures instead. We'll never give up our obsessive, exponential consumption until we are forced to by a degraded environment.
For 50 years, I've been expecting our society to gear up to fight climate catastrophe, the biggest threat in all history. To win, we'd have had to have started decades ago, but we have yet to do anything significant.
And our great dream of the stars will also die. Pity.
What does this have to do with the matter at hand?
Reading back, you seem pretty keen not to actually defend any of your ideas, and pretty quickly settled on "Go away, no one wants to hear you," as your argument: not so respectful.
Me, I'm a hard science guy.
I go with the consensus of climatologists, of the IPCC, and the sales predictions of the fossil fuel companies, which have so far been extremely accurate over the medium- and long-term.
As I said at the start, our problems on Earth are due to waste and pollution, not lack of resources, and this whole program you propose will only increase the CO2 level in atmosphere.
I went through this whole thread and you didn't come up with even one factual, scientific argument for your point of view. Indeed, your only argument seems to be "Go away, no one wants to hear that."
You seem very young. You will likely see for yourself. I'm so sorry.
@spaceflight Until we can quantify the massive costs of extracting, processing, and returning these metals (in an environment where most existing mining equipment and processes wouldn’t work), no economic analysis makes sense.
I’m very dubious that any resource obtained off-Earth will ever be economical to use on Earth. (We may see space resource extraction used off-Earth, once we have significant off-Earth infrastructure.)
@spaceflight I agree, and I’m generally a space proponent, but there are very concrete, specific issues with making asteroid mining physically and financially possible. One can’t overcome them with simple optimism — they need solutions, or at least some indication that there are possible solutions.
“A NASA study, which looks further afield, supports that the total value of minerals within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter could be worth an astronomical $700 quintillion”
That is simply not how economics works. “Worth” implies scarcity. Even accepting all the other valuable comments on this thread saying why this is a bad idea, if you were to make available that much nickel and iron and whatnot, what would happen is that nickel and iron become free. 🤷♂️
How long before Musk's companies can begin mining? SpaceX brings the Starship for equipment out, somewhat processed ore back, plus comms. Boring Co brings the mining. Tesla brings the robotics and on-NEA trucks. Still need ore processing and (solar? methane + LOX? Jupiter hydrogen + ???) generator to power it all. These remaining problems seem solvable.
What will the world look like with Musk being $trillions rich, and with space rock pushing / chucking ability?
I think the Musk-corps are far closer to doing asteroid mining than anyone else, governments included. For the low-hanging fruit of the NEAs, "mining" might mean no more than: drill holes; place explosives; capture (most of) the chunks that come off; put as many chunks into Starship as it has fuel to return to Earth and land with. Repeat. No generator or processor needed. Starship flies up empty, down w/ ore on 2nd ... missions.
This is a race, first to mine and return ore wins.
A. 2nd+ flight takes off empty because all the equipment is already on the NEA from the first flight. Starship is just an ore truck for 2nd+ flight. Flying up "empty" might mean flying up with extra methane and LOX tanks? Whatever combo makes the math work for bringing back max ore load. Enough ore to make a profit.
B. Is Mars really a thing? Or just cover for the original and as yet covert plan of asteroid mining? With Musk, who knows. Probably both.
(Tin foil hat time: USSF + 3-letter agencies realize the Musk threat: He's not US-patriotic at all, he has ever-increasing wealth and tech-leading corpos. USSF+ push for more than just "starlink.mil", but to "nationalize" SpaceX. Which we don't do in the US. So instead, from the outside, it could look something like Musk abruptly decides to sell his SpaceX stock to ... maybe ULA, or some other US-loyal corp(s). He gets more buckets of $$$, US owns space mining, rock chucking.)
Yes, exactly like that! (Starts to remove tin foil hat.)
Xitter could make a great cover. Ends up Musk has spent far more than $42B, keeps infusing cash (probably true), and now the bills are due. So, he sells a chunk of his SpaceX stock. And then another chunk. Still keeps enough SpaceX stock in the end to make him more insanely rich, just no longer in control. Win-win. Prigozhin option not needed.
ULA could be turned into something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aerospace_Corporation a quasi-corporation that is completely or mostly in the US pocket. Possibly with Boeing and LockMart still holding some shares.
Or maybe the whole ULA sell-off is a ploy to get the feds to give ULA more contracts. And if that doesn't play out, sell it.
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