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 your dream career, it's great that this program exists.
School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
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Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#12Excluding 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.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#13Excluding 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.
We're great at mining but bad at putting things in space. The main virtue of mining things in space is that the materials are already in space, sparing the vast expense of launching them up there.
I guess I partially agree that having other things we want to do in space is prerequisite, but imagine the kinds of things we could do and build if we had unlimited raw materials already in orbit, or on the moon. Remember, mining water is a big part of this, not just what we tend to imagine with earth mining.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#14Excluding 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.
You could mine in space to build more spaceships! Or structures. Either way it’s wicked expensive to get things off the planet, like $25k/kg expensive. So as long as you can reliably mine/refine/manufacture in space, you could probably build things like space stations and colonies at a fraction of the price of building them on Earth and blasting them into space.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#15Excluding 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.
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.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#16Haha, they actually do have decent aerospace and mining engineering programs. Their CS program leaves a little to be desired though.
A lot of Googlers in Boulder went to school of mines so it can't be that bad.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#17I wish this was the School of Mimes wanting to launch the first Space Miming Program.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#18I clicked on this link hoping it was the French School of Mines ("Ecole des Mines").
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#19I went to South Dakota School of Mines and was sad to learn this wasn't my school doing this..
I could see SD doing it, but I expected it was Colorado because they always struck me as having a tinge of the “hold my beer” attitude. They ran a class in high speed filming of explosions not too long ago. I get the feeling that the faculty of that place has some stories to tell.
Re: School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program
#20Excluding 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.
IIRC there are a lot of period 5 transition metals in asteroids which are rare on Earth because they're heavy and sank into the core during the planet's formation. Specifically molybdenum, niobium, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, and silver. Some of these have very interesting properties but the supply of all of them is pretty limited on Earth.