The Space Mining Industry

[Quiet_]

Luxembourg has taken a stand as the first to enter the space mining industry. They began their R&D, in an attempt to "become the European center for asteroid mining". Investors from big companies have already came to a decision to back the project, with some believing that it will lead to further industrial work being done away from Earth. In theory, it is extremely possible due to the vast amount of resources existing beyond our own planet. The decision could easily lead to such an advancement.

 

One of the questions that holds is if extracting resources from asteroids, etc, could be justifiable economically.

Though, Luxembourg has already went as far as to change its laws in order to give private companies rights over their resources.

 

The original article by Eric Berger gives a far more in depth explanation.

[Guest]

btw i think we have enough problems to deal with at EARTH

[Rune]

Must have missed the part when Elon said he was interested in it a few years back.

[The Benjamins]

3 minutes ago, josephaltareb said:

btw i think we have enough problems to deal with at EARTH

what does that have to deal with wanting to collect valuable minerals in space? should we all stop innovating because earth has some problems.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

what does that have to deal with wanting to collect valuable minerals in space? should we all stop innovating because earth has some problems.

well lets see

developing tech

develop more tech

make more concepts

more tech

Improve process over and over

get to the destined area

manage to get it back without screwing it up

handle the substance

what are we going to do with it ? does it pay off for all that?

[vanished]

Interesting.  Coincidentally I just saw a talk on this very topic tonight.  One of the interesting things about it that is not instantly obvious is that it's not like we need to mine asteroids for gold or other precious materials to bring back to Earth.  Every asteroid (even "plain" ones made of nothing fancier than iron) has an immense value simply because it is already in space; consider what it would take to launch that material from Earth!  That is the true value of them, and as a result, basically every asteroid is valuable, no matter what it contains, because in space, all materials are in short supply

[Agosto]

5 minutes ago, josephaltareb said:

well lets see

developing tech

develop more tech

make more concepts

more tech

Improve process over and over

get to the destined area

manage to get it back without screwing it up

handle the substance

what are we going to do with it ? does it pay off for all that?

 

Do you even know how much resources asteroids hold? Think about a mountain mainly made of metal, and you can mine all of it.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Agost said:

 

Do you even know how much resources asteroids hold? Think about a mountain mainly made of metal, and you can mine all of it.

does it pay off to get metal after a ton of money gets put to reaserch? what if its radioactive when exposed to air?

[Quiet_]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Coincidentally I just saw a talk on this very topic tonight.

Would you happen to have a link?

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, Quiet_ said:

Would you happen to have a link?

there's no link, it was in person

[Quiet_]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

there's no link, it was in person

Ah, well thanks for the input.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

there's no link, it was in person

maybe the link was the person...

[MoonSpot]

10 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Interesting.  Coincidentally I just saw a talk on this very topic tonight.  One of the interesting things about it that is not instantly obvious is that it's not like we need to mine asteroids for gold or other precious materials to bring back to Earth.  Every asteroid (even "plain" ones made of nothing fancier than iron) has an immense value simply because it is already in space; consider what it would take to launch that material from Earth!  That is the true value of them, and as a result, basically every asteroid is valuable, no matter what it contains, because in space, all materials are in short supply

I would love to see that talk.  Would be quite interested if they spoke about how processing those materials in zero-g could pan out.  smelting, refining and separating components strikes me as a bit of a bitch without gravity to sift or layer out the different components.

 

:edit:

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

there's no link, it was in person

booo.  I was available for a bro date too man!

[vanished]

7 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

I would love to see that talk.  Would be quite interested if they spoke about how processing those materials in zero-g could pan out.  smelting, refining and separating components strikes me as a bit of a bitch without gravity to sift or layer out the different components.

 

:edit:

booo.  I was available for a bro date too man!

Yeah sadly for a variety of reasons it didn't get anywhere near that technical.  I would have loved if they had too but it was not so.  The main issue I foresee would be the lack of gravity and air.  Many chemical and physical processes on Earth rely on gravity to perform separations, or on air for various purposes, including combustion. I don't believe that the lack of pressure would cause any considerable difficulties however since many Earth-ly processes are already done at such high pressure that increasing the relative pressure by 1 more atmosphere is pretty insignificant.  In terms of safety, I believe setting up processing plants like this in space would be easier than they are on Earth*.  The ability to just harmlessly vent things without concern for human life or the environment, the fact fires would not burn since there is no oxygen, the fact that explosions would only be dangerous as a result of shrapnel since there is no air to propagate a shockwave, etc.

 

So as with anything there would be pros and cons

 

* Edit: Well, relatively speaking of course   Doing anything in space is way harder than doing it on Earth, but I believe that not having to worry about these usual considerations would help the process.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Ryan_Vickers

[The Benjamins]

32 minutes ago, josephaltareb said:

does it pay off to get metal after a ton of money gets put to reaserch? what if its radioactive when exposed to air?

It could be profitable. if a space had a mass abundance of a very valuable material and a "easy/cheap" way to get it back to use the investment of creating and launching a mission to do so could in the long run could hold profit. also the technology done by "things" people think is worthless like F1, space exploration and stuff could benefit society in other ways. ABS,TCS, gas efficient engine designs all trickled down from trying to make a faster car for F1. space mining could reveal better mining techniques and/or processes and/or safer practices that could benefit mining on earth.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

It could be profitable.

thats the keyword we will highlight.

[Bouzoo]

They just need to establish the Liandri Mining Corporation and let the fun begin. 

 

 

 

[The Benjamins]

29 minutes ago, josephaltareb said:

thats the keyword we will highlight.

Ya but why shoot down the idea before even trying to see if it something reasonable to do. With that kind of mind set we would not have iPhones, internet, computers. All those things were considered a waste of money by many but now I can lay naked in my bed trying to show you why you shouldn't stifle innovation. 

[The Benjamins]

3 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

[RagnarokDel]

If you were to put the whole asteroid belt into a single mass, it would only be about 1/10th of Earth's. Ceres has about 1/3 of the mass of asteroid belt and it's diameter is only 950 km. compared to earth's 12742 km. all asteroids of the asteroid belt combined would increase Ceres's diameter by about 50% or a diameter of 1,425 km.

In comparison, our moon is 3474 km in diameter. In other words, there's more to gain from mining planets like Mars and moons then there is mining asteroids. The only advantage asteroid mining offers is the ability to target a specific mineral on a per asteroid basis. The dangers of mining asteroids is much greater.

 

We'd also be better off mining our dead trash surrounding the earth.

3 hours ago, josephaltareb said:

well lets see

developing tech

develop more tech

make more concepts

more tech

Improve process over and over

get to the destined area

manage to get it back without screwing it up

handle the substance

what are we going to do with it ? does it pay off for all that?

You say that like those factors are bad things, development of new tech will, unlike trickle down economics, eventually trickle down to customers. 

 

IE: GPS, better radio transmissions, etc.

3 hours ago, Agost said:

 

Do you even know how much resources asteroids hold? Think about a mountain mainly made of metal, and you can mine all of it.

The asteroid belt only represents about 4% of the Moon's mass. That's by no means a bad number but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

A good portion of the asteroid belt is water and that is incredibly valuable in space. In fact, Ceres possibly contains more water than earth does.

 

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a9982/why-it-matters-that-theres-so-much-water-in-the-asteroid-belt-16434422/

 

 

[Trik'Stari]

It's about time.

 

Now if only someone could convince the military industrial complex that there is oil in them thar asteroids, maybe we can get moving on this shit.

[D-Dos Dan]

17 minutes ago, RagnarokDel said:

In comparison, our moon is 3474 km in diameter. In other words, there's more to gain from mining planets like Mars and moons then there is mining asteroids. The only advantage asteroid mining offers is the ability to target a specific mineral on a per asteroid basis. The dangers of mining asteroids is much greater.

I don't think mining asteroids is more dangerous than other planets. They both have their extreme complexities, however due to the largely less gravitational pull on asteroids, landing and mining will take much less work than all the calculations that would need to go into landing on objects with much greater gravity without already landing on them previously and working out the gravity. Plus the asteroids aren't too far away, they are only 'down the road' from mars so getting to and from without the need to land on each asteroid separately and calculate its individual gravitational pull.

 

 

I think that resource targeting isn't as important as we think it is. With nano bots around the corner (10-30years) we'll be able to manipulate the actual atoms to become whatever we want them to be. So all that'll be necessary for that process is the raw material.

[zMeul]

the way I see it

if Luxemburg has the money, sure .. why not!?

 

strap rocket to robot's ass - fire rocket into space - land robot on space rock - break rock into small chunks - return robot back to earth - repeat

 

problem is that if they break apart large asteroids and become uncontrollable .. well .. hello Armageddon starring Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, Ben Affleck and the rest 

[Misanthrope]

4 hours ago, josephaltareb said:

manage to get it back without screwing it up

handle the substance

what are we going to do with it ? does it pay off for all that?

Do you know how much space travel has contributed to science and engineering in the last half century or so? We might find materials that could literally advance us in tech 1000s of years into the future vs just mining here on earth.

 

[RagnarokDel]

2 hours ago, D-Dos Dan said:

I don't think mining asteroids is more dangerous than other planets. They both have their extreme complexities, however due to the largely less gravitational pull on asteroids, landing and mining will take much less work than all the calculations that would need to go into landing on objects with much greater gravity without already landing on them previously and working out the gravity. Plus the asteroids aren't too far away, they are only 'down the road' from mars so getting to and from without the need to land on each asteroid separately and calculate its individual gravitational pull.

 

 

I think that resource targeting isn't as important as we think it is. With nano bots around the corner (10-30years) we'll be able to manipulate the actual atoms to become whatever we want them to be. So all that'll be necessary for that process is the raw material.

debris going at 40 000 km/h tend to be dangerous. You've got rocks moving about, hitting each other and what not.