School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program • Hacker News Board

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#41

Post by Retric » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 11:41 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #36

Retric wrote: post #12

Excluding organic materials like oil/coal/etc the global economy does not spend a lot of resources on mining. Further, we have vast excess supply's of most of what we do mine making space based mining problematic. Sure, it sounds good but we need to be in space for some other reasons before mining becomes practical.

Certainly. However, spaceflight is getting cheaper by the year and is heading into a significant phase change related to costs. Soon the market will be dominated by partially reusable rockets. After a generation or two of improvements those reusable rockets will drive launch costs down by at least an order of magnitude if not two compared to today. That will make doing anything in space cheaper, and it's a fair bet t…

In zero g you don't need much is the way of scaffolding, so satiates are almost entirely highly manufactured things like CPU's, solar panels, batteries etc. Their is some need for propellant but ion drives minimize that need. So, to benifit from space mining you need space manufacturing which is a very large very unsolved problem.

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#42

Post by nkoren » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 11:51 AM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #31

kerryfalk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not great at mining. Fun fact: the manufacturing industry has been able to obtain machine utilization at nearly 100%. Mining is in the 40% range.

What's the utilization in the construction industry? I think that'd be a more fair analog for mining.

Oh, it's much, much, much worse than mining. Construction is famously the least-improved, in productivity terms, of all industries: https://www.economist.com/news/business/21726714-american-bu...

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#43

Post by hamilyon2 » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 12:43 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #22

true_tuna wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs $4k/lb to get something into orbit. Maybe mining for use in space is the way to go. I hear SpaceX might have some plans to build stuff in space in the coming years so there might be a ready buyer.

That makes anything you can “mine” out of orbit worth at least 4k/lb. pretty steep incentive for even the most basic resources.

With right delta v. I mean, if it is in wildely wrong orbit, than it is no more useful than same thing on earth.

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#44

Post by trentmb » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 1:31 PM UTC

arglebarnacle wrote: post #11

The courses are being offered online--it's a shame grad classes are too expensive to just take for fun! Looks like $6,800 or so to take one of the two they're offering next semester, or about $12,700 for both. The Masters degree would end up costing you about $58.7k plus $1,000/semester in fees. It's a hard sell for something that still looks relatively far in the future, but I suppose if space mining is truly is you…

It seems that most distance/online masters programs are money mills- there's an expectation that ones employer will pick up the tab.

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#45

Post by novalis78 » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 1:38 PM UTC

At this point a reference to the groundbreaking and utterly fascinating "Mining the Sky" book by John S. Lewis is in order which should be on everyone's "must read" list.

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#46

Post by nradov » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 1:45 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #36

Retric wrote: post #12

Excluding organic materials like oil/coal/etc the global economy does not spend a lot of resources on mining. Further, we have vast excess supply's of most of what we do mine making space based mining problematic. Sure, it sounds good but we need to be in space for some other reasons before mining becomes practical.

Certainly. However, spaceflight is getting cheaper by the year and is heading into a significant phase change related to costs. Soon the market will be dominated by partially reusable rockets. After a generation or two of improvements those reusable rockets will drive launch costs down by at least an order of magnitude if not two compared to today. That will make doing anything in space cheaper, and it's a fair bet t…

We're not going to see orbiting towns in 20 years. A town means a place where someone can spend their whole life. But living in zero-g for over a year causes serious health problems. We might be able to solve that with spinning habitats for artificial gravity but considering no one is making serious plans to build those it's going to take a lot longer than 20 years.

As robotics and AI technology improves I expect very few humans will be sent into space. We're too expensive to keep alive.

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#47

Post by twic » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 1:53 PM UTC

hamilyon2 wrote: post #43

ianai wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes anything you can “mine” out of orbit worth at least 4k/lb. pretty steep incentive for even the most basic resources.

With right delta v. I mean, if it is in wildely wrong orbit, than it is no more useful than same thing on earth.

Ooh, that's interesting. Commodities trading makes use of contract specifications which can include the physical location of delivery [1] - futures for delivery of aluminium to Singapore can be a different price to those for delivery to New Orleans. Perhaps the contract specifications for space commodities will name, not particular places, or even orbits, but delta-V zones. So, the asteroids and the earth-moon L2 point might be in the same band, because it doesn't take much energy to move between them, but the surface of the moon and low earth orbit would be different, because, despite having similar delta-Vs when coming from the asteroids, they are expensive to move between - at least, according to the map [2].

[1] https://www.lme.com/Metals/Non-ferrous/Aluminium-Premiums

[2] https://i.imgur.com/WGOy3qT.png

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#48

Post by AlanSE » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 2:09 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #42

jordanb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the utilization in the construction industry? I think that'd be a more fair analog for mining.

Oh, it's much, much, much worse than mining. Construction is famously the least-improved, in productivity terms, of all industries: https://www.economist.com/news/business/21726714-american-bu...

Fascinating, this is a well-formed argument. To be frank, it's borderline the best argument for space development that I have ever heard. There are many things that we do well on Earth, but there are some industries where the arc of progress has stalled. In a broad, long-term, theoretical sense we all understand that Earth has limited mineral resources, but this is a weak argument. We are not near the depletion limits of this planet for the resources that we need the most - at least nowhere close enough to justify the poor mass economies of space activities.

Space might be the only place we can make heavy industries start to behave similar to software.

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#49

Post by m-watson » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #23

>[T]he class covered the Outer Space Treaty, a creation of the United Nations that governs outer-space actions and (in some people's interpretations) makes the legality of space mining dubious. If this topic interests you, there's a whole category at your local library for Space Law (it's at the end, KZD1002-6715): https://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_...

The Outer Space Treaty may say that but back in 2015 the United States said it will allow US corporations to keep and sell what they mine in space. So it will be interesting to see how it actually plays out.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2262 [1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezp4yk/the-us-say... [2] https://www.planetaryresources.com/2015/11/president-obama-s...

Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

#50

Post by hexane360 » Fri, Dec 01, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #7

hexane360 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of their two intro programming classes uses C++.

Can you elaborate? I feel like depending on who you asked, that could be a point for or a point against.

The class was CSCI261. It used this curriculum: http://www.zybooks.com/catalog/programming-in-c-plus-plus/ It was mainly an elective for non-CS majors, so there was a lot of people with no experience and no future in programming.

I think it spent way too much time on syntax and minutiae to be a really good introduction. It spent a really brief time talking about compiled instructions, stacks, etc. but not really enough to justify C++, imo. It shoved pointers into a couple days at the end of the semester. A lot of final questions were things like std::string member functions or construct syntax (for, switch).