181–190 of 221 posts
This sounds awesome, but I couldn't help but think that once they've built a fleet of robots capable of moving entire asteroids around, there's another viable backup business model to which they could easily 'pivot': 1. Assemble several dozen (hundred?) of the non-platinum-bearing asteroids with your robots and aim them on a slingshot-accelerated path towards Earth. 2. Threaten the entire world (or at least rich coun…
If we suddenly have large amounts of previously expensive (rare or difficult to extract) metals available, what will this do to commodity markets? Would prices be driven down? 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?
It's just a question of efficiency, if the cheapest way to get platinum is asteroid mining then once it starts it can out compete traditional platinum mining.(1) Generally speaking as the price for a commodity drops the market for that commodity increases more than the price drop. AKA, if gold costs X, and you can produce gold for 1/2 the price then expect to sell more than 2x as much gold. With Oil being a classic e…
Generally speaking as the price for a commodity drops the market for that commodity increases more than the price drop.
I know almost nothing about economics. Is there a general mechanism that explains this?
What is the math behind mining resources on asteroids? Assume it takes 50 billion to get to the point where you can mine your first asteroid, how much of what resource is in that asteroid that they can resell to terrestrial earth dwellers who need it for profit? Or does this not matter at this point? Further, what will the harvested resources be used to build? Military hardware? If so then I am very unimpressed with…
If we suddenly have large amounts of previously expensive (rare or difficult to extract) metals available, what will this do to commodity markets? Would prices be driven down? 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 by no means an expert on the topic, and I don't have any specific examples to cite, but it seems like an almost weekly occurrence to read about some cool new technology that will 'never' be economically viable, due to the cost of the 'unobtanium' required to mass produce it (holy long sentence batman...). It seems likely that the end result of a massive influx of rare materials would simply make 'never' happen a…
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This leads to scary thoughts on using this for military purposes
If you're going to bombard something for military purposes, the most effective technique involves using a very large number of nuclear weapons, which is well within the capabilities of anyone who would try to bombard the earth from space. Back during the Space Race, the idea that the Russians could put something into orbit wasn't just a wound to the national pride, it was a technical demonstration of the fact that th…
Only if you don't intend to occupy that land in the next 500 years, though. I'd imagine a tungsten telephone pole dropped from orbit has better deep-ground penetration than a nuke, too.
Blast off on an ego trip.
Can this really be the end?
Back to work you go again.
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If you're bringing an object that close to home, I don't know why you'd need someone up there just to teleoperate the equipment. At that distance, the lightspeed delay gets low enough that the person with the joystick could work from earth.
It might be worth having someone up there to fix the equipment when something goes wrong... unless by that time we've developed teleoperated robots with the flexibility and dexterity and sensitivity needed to make arbitrary on-site repairs. You might remember from the Hubble repair missions [1] that these relatively simple tasks you might expect to take a few hours in an Earth-based lab took /days/ of EVA time. Imagi…
One of the places I like to camp is Plumas-Eureka State Park [1] which is the site of an old gold mine. The stamping mill is kind of still there. One of the things the blacksmith docent talked about was that there was a competitive advantage at a mine to having a creative blacksmith, since they could build tools well suited to the kinds of rock and conditions rather than relying on 'off the shelf' sort of designs.
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If you're going to bombard something for military purposes, the most effective technique involves using a very large number of nuclear weapons, which is well within the capabilities of anyone who would try to bombard the earth from space. Back during the Space Race, the idea that the Russians could put something into orbit wasn't just a wound to the national pride, it was a technical demonstration of the fact that th…
> If you're going to bombard something for military purposes, the most effective technique involves using a very large number of nuclear weapons... Only if you don't intend to occupy that land in the next 500 years, though. I'd imagine a tungsten telephone pole dropped from orbit has better deep-ground penetration than a nuke, too.
The dangers of a large nuclear exchange are widespread climate change and economic disruptions brought about by entire supply chains being removed. Not 'wastelands' of bombed out cities too radioactive to visit.
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I can see perhaps the Chinese and maybe the Russians looking to own asteroids, but that would require they pull out of several international treaties (not that big of a deal). For the West, their model has always been government-backed private monopolies (Hudson's Bay Company, East India Company, United Fruit, modern oil companies, etc). The American government would be more than happy to let Planetary resources do t…
Two words : United Nations. Given the ever growing need for money I can bet a tax would be put in place to where it might not even be profitable after all the regulation and such got put into position. Think about it. They can lay levies for everything from managing the movement of objects in space to the environmental damage and insurance against such for returning materials gained in space. Then comes the whole "it…
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Wow! I can't believe we've only ever mined 25 cubic feet of plat. Reading your source I'm not sure it's right, "The annual supply of platinum is only about 130 tons" "one cubic foot weighs a little more than 1,330 pounds" 23*1330lb = 13,875kg ever 130tons = 117,934kg per year "basement of less than 25 cubic feet" Maybe them meant basement of 25 square feet or 250cuft which is still tiny basement.
It's definitely wrong. According to [1], 614,631 kg were mined in South Africa (which accounts for about 80% of world production) between 2002 and 2009. Density of platinum = 21.45g/cm^3 = 21.45 * 10^6 g/m^3 = 21.45 * 10^3 kg/m^3 => total volume mined 2002 - 2009 = 614631 / 21450 = 28.65 m^3 approx. So that's about 28.65 * 35.29 = 1011 cubic feet, JUST in South Africa and JUST between those years. Other estimates vis…