151–160 of 221 posts
What are the property implications? Does a company "own" an asteroid simply by being the first to land on it, or do companies need to bid on asteroids to mine from (and who is in charge of that)?
If the price of $mineral goes down below a certain level, demand has to go up for continued asteroid mining to be viable. What future activities (apart from the obvious, like catalytic converters) might provide this demand?
I'm not in America. Does anyone know where I can see this live online?
Wow. Second the comments about feeling about ten years old again. I hope beyond all hope that this is actually happening in my lifetime. Questions for those in the know: 1. Is there any legal precedent on whether or not they're even allowed to mine the asteroids? From what I understand the Moon can't be exploited by any one country or corporation. Does any similar law apply to asteroids? 2. How are they going to get…
Who's going to stop you, the Space Police?
If mines are such ugly, destructive things, why is it that I find this development so beautiful?
Are they considering also sources of energy (gases for example) to mine? I mean, metals are good, but we will need more energy too. Also, what metals can they mine? Can they mine lithium (maybe we can ship 'batteries' to charge on the moon or asteroids?)? Cool stuff anyway.
Who do asteroids belong to? Can they just claim them and sell the material they extract? Don't get me wrong, I would love to have my own asteroid mining company. Just need a couple billion dollars first. But what happens once there are two or more competing corporations? Who has the power to say which part of space belongs to whom? Will there be space battles?
Corporations operating in space are still subject to the laws of whatever national flag they're flying under, so I presume that the court system can come to some decision if more than one company wants to grab the same hunk of rock and metal. It'll probably be based on who launches their mission first, or something like that.
I love the optimism I naturally want to jump on the band wagon and I doubt my comment will get a single up vote but here it goes: What about: 1) Biological issues (space viruses etc.) 2) Accidents (opps the orbit changed it's heading for Chicago) 3) More AI for robots, Skynet finally has a good resource base 4) "Today in the news global markets failed as PRI announced capturing a 1 billion metric ton astroid with 80%…
1) Any theoretical space viruses can already get to Earth just fine. We're pretty sure they don't exist though.
2) Yup, a real concern. I'm glad they're starting with a reasonably sized asteroid.
3) An AI rebellion probably won't look like what Hollywood says it will.
4) Awesome! There are so many cool things that you can do with gold and platinum that we don't because they're so damn expensive.I love the optimism I naturally want to jump on the band wagon and I doubt my comment will get a single up vote but here it goes: What about: 1) Biological issues (space viruses etc.) 2) Accidents (opps the orbit changed it's heading for Chicago) 3) More AI for robots, Skynet finally has a good resource base 4) "Today in the news global markets failed as PRI announced capturing a 1 billion metric ton astroid with 80%…
#2 The asteroid they are returning will weigh less than the ISS and be parked further away. Tackling the control/direction of asteroids is something we want to learn anyway.
#3 We are a long way from strong AI. If strong AI is created, asteroid mining would be the smallest footnote in its capabilities.
#4 There are abundant industrial uses for PGMs so there is a high floor price and continuing demand. Markets have established systems for dealing with periodic resource delivery (futures).