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Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

daniel-suarez.com

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Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#21

Post by sacred_numbers »

IntemerateApe wrote: post #11

in Delta-V - one character goes on a rant about how Mars is pretty much a dead end. Does anyone know how true this is?

Mars will certainly be challenging to colonize, but it has some major advantages that I believe outweigh the disadvantages.

First, water is pretty abundant almost everywhere on Mars.

Second, carbon is abundant and nitrogen is abundant enough to make food and plastic production viable.

Third, Mars has an atmosphere which is thick enough to provide some protection from radiation and meteorites but thin enough that conductive heat loss isn't too big of a concern. Also, aerobraking massively decreases the amount of fuel required to get to Mars.

Fourth, Mars probably has enough gravity to prevent most of the health risks associated with low gravity.

I don't think either Mars, the Moon, or asteroids are dead ends for colonization. In the long, long run I think more people will live in rotating habitats in cis lunar space than on Mars, and more people will live on Mars than the Moon, but I think there are enough resources for millions or perhaps billions of people to live on Mars.

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#22

Post by AtlasBarfed »

giantrobot wrote: post #16
red2awn wrote: post #14

Not related to the novel, but what is the current biggest technological challenge to asteroid mining?

Physics followed closely by economics.

Have you seen the estimated values of ores in a decent asteroid?

I think it's technology and up front financing. Well, and there are probably space treaties that are problematic.

I'd drop an ion drive on the asteroid and nudge it towards the earth (but not AT it), and once it's in a stable near orbit, figure out what to do with a much faster communication loop with remotes/robots:

process in orbit, drop parts down to earth, or some combination.

100% chance SpaceX is considering this long-term.

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#23

Post by blkhawk »

elihu wrote: post #19
IntemerateApe wrote: post #11

in Delta-V - one character goes on a rant about how Mars is pretty much a dead end. Does anyone know how true this is?

I haven't read the book and maybe the argument is solid, but I'm inclined to disagree. For mining, maybe Mars isn't the best place (hoisting stuff out of the gravity well might not be worth it except for high-value metals), but on the other hand it has decent gravity and an atmosphere, which means it's more suitable for human habitation and fuel processing than the asteroids. And living on a planet has a certain appe…

Mars might not be worth the effort if you have good asteroid mining - you could say build a O'Neil type cylinders inside an asteroid from local resources and spin them up. Some of the Tech you need for mining might transfer directly into tech or building structures like this. For instance refining metals in zero-G via rotating smelters to separate materials might serve as system to spin up and control the cylinder rotation.

You might even get most of the stuff aside from metals as byproducts of the metal refining process (water, oxygen(from oxids) and carbon mostly). Nitrogen and Phosphor might need importing.

Most of the leftover asteroid serves as Protection against small collisions.

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#24

Post by grumpyoldman77 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #22
giantrobot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics followed closely by economics.

Have you seen the estimated values of ores in a decent asteroid? I think it's technology and up front financing. Well, and there are probably space treaties that are problematic. I'd drop an ion drive on the asteroid and nudge it towards the earth (but not AT it), and once it's in a stable near orbit, figure out what to do with a much faster communication loop with remotes/robots: process in orbit, drop parts down to…

Space treaties- means war, inevitably Nudge towards earth Stable near orbit Remotes/ robots Process in orbit Drop to earth Space X

Damn, you just outlined a horror novel in space

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#25

Post by rlt »

lettergram wrote: post #18
red2awn wrote: post #14

Not related to the novel, but what is the current biggest technological challenge to asteroid mining?

In some sense we have done it (taken a sample, returned to earth). The question is, would it be valuable to do so at scale? If we had a good reason to mine an asteroid, knew we could get to said asteroid, and the asteroid has a composition we predicted. It’s probably possible to mine it to some extent. However, in terms of economics... today, we haven’t proven we can mine an asteroid in a meaningful way. Assuming we…

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I find it interesting that one of Elon Musk’s companies (Tesla) has a huge demand for nickel and another one of Elon Musk’s companies (SpaceX) won a contract with NASA to explore 16 Psyche, an asteroid essentially made of nickel, and is working on a completely reusable rocket...

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#26

Post by elihu »

blkhawk wrote: post #23
elihu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the book and maybe the argument is solid, but I'm inclined to disagree. For mining, maybe Mars isn't the best place (hoisting stuff out of the gravity well might not be worth it except for high-value metals), but on the other hand it has decent gravity and an atmosphere, which means it's more suitable for human habitation and fuel processing than the asteroids. And living on a planet has a certain appe…

Mars might not be worth the effort if you have good asteroid mining - you could say build a O'Neil type cylinders inside an asteroid from local resources and spin them up. Some of the Tech you need for mining might transfer directly into tech or building structures like this. For instance refining metals in zero-G via rotating smelters to separate materials might serve as system to spin up and control the cylinder ro…

If water/oxygen/carbon are readily available, I guess that would go a long ways towards making asteroids self-sufficient. On the other hand, if they're available but one can only extract a small amount at a time as a byproduct of mining, then Mars might still be pretty attractive where those things are available in inexhaustible quantities with low effort.

I'm assuming that huge amounts of methane (or other suitable fuel) and oxygen will be wanted for propellant, though maybe ion propulsion makes that less essential.

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#27

Post by elihu »

rlt wrote: post #25
lettergram wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense we have done it (taken a sample, returned to earth). The question is, would it be valuable to do so at scale? If we had a good reason to mine an asteroid, knew we could get to said asteroid, and the asteroid has a composition we predicted. It’s probably possible to mine it to some extent. However, in terms of economics... today, we haven’t proven we can mine an asteroid in a meaningful way. Assuming we…

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I find it interesting that one of Elon Musk’s companies (Tesla) has a huge demand for nickel and another one of Elon Musk’s companies (SpaceX) won a contract with NASA to explore 16 Psyche, an asteroid essentially made of nickel, and is working on a completely reusable rocket...

I was just thinking about posting a comment about 16 psyche... I hadn't heard about the exploration mission, that should be pretty interesting. Iirc, 16 psyche is thought to possibly be a fragment of a planetary core and so it might contain a completely different proportion of metals than what you might find on the Earth's surface.

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#28

Post by nine_k »

lettergram wrote: post #18
red2awn wrote: post #14

Not related to the novel, but what is the current biggest technological challenge to asteroid mining?

In some sense we have done it (taken a sample, returned to earth). The question is, would it be valuable to do so at scale? If we had a good reason to mine an asteroid, knew we could get to said asteroid, and the asteroid has a composition we predicted. It’s probably possible to mine it to some extent. However, in terms of economics... today, we haven’t proven we can mine an asteroid in a meaningful way. Assuming we…

Mining an asteroid far away and then spend fuel to shuttle material from it to GEO or Moon seems rather uneconomical.

I would suggest finding a small enough (a few dozen kilotons) space rock made of a valuable / precious metal, and brought to it a large solar array and an ion gun. Metals make good ion gun fuel. Slowing the asteroid down to fall to an elliptic orbit around Earth, and then righting the orbit to put it on GEO or drop it to.the Moon seems doable with a rather limited use of mass. Technology permitting, a large enough solar sail could help slow down / steer the rock on its way towards Earth (or Moon, or Mars).

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#29

Post by evgen »

rlt wrote: post #25
lettergram wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense we have done it (taken a sample, returned to earth). The question is, would it be valuable to do so at scale? If we had a good reason to mine an asteroid, knew we could get to said asteroid, and the asteroid has a composition we predicted. It’s probably possible to mine it to some extent. However, in terms of economics... today, we haven’t proven we can mine an asteroid in a meaningful way. Assuming we…

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I find it interesting that one of Elon Musk’s companies (Tesla) has a huge demand for nickel and another one of Elon Musk’s companies (SpaceX) won a contract with NASA to explore 16 Psyche, an asteroid essentially made of nickel, and is working on a completely reusable rocket...

The problems with this theory (and with asteroid mining in general) is that it is extremely unlikely that anything you mine in space will be economical to get back down. Most people forget that it costs almost as much delta-V to get down as it does to get up in the first place -- if something was not worth the cost to launch it into space it is unlikely to be worth landing.

The problem with asteroid mining is that it faces one of the most expensive chicken-egg problems it is possible to imagine. Without industry in space there is no need for the bulk gathering of raw materials, but without the bulk raw materials it is not worth developing industrial processes for space and a zero-g environment.

Re: Delta-V: Designing the Asteroid Mining Ship 'Konstantin'

#30

Post by evgen »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #22
giantrobot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics followed closely by economics.

Have you seen the estimated values of ores in a decent asteroid? I think it's technology and up front financing. Well, and there are probably space treaties that are problematic. I'd drop an ion drive on the asteroid and nudge it towards the earth (but not AT it), and once it's in a stable near orbit, figure out what to do with a much faster communication loop with remotes/robots: process in orbit, drop parts down to…

I have seen people imagine what those ores are worth when they pretend that they are somehow magically transported to the surface of the earth, but I have never seen these same people budget the cost of the energy to retrieve, return, and land those same resources. If your value calculation did not go negative there then you are doing it wrong.
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