What will be the shovels of the future gold rush? Maybe it would be a good time to develop mining robots? Rockets are completely out of my reach...
tents...er I mean solar shielding.
Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
201–210 of 221 posts
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#202Now seriously, as a software developer, what would be the best skill set to help these guys... As soon as I can afford it I would knock at their door and work for them for free. What would be most usefull for them (or spaceX)... A lot of C, C++, knowing NASA's open source repos in and out, doing MIT online courses on robotics and astrophysics... ?
Why don't you write to SpaceX and ask them what skills they are looking for? Once you work for one kind of space company, you can probably get into another one quite easily.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#203Are 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.
If you need energy on earth, fission thorium.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Larry Page doesn't really strike me as someone that needs to do a lot of PR stunts.
Time will tell, my money is on PR stunt.
Do you want to bet? Your 99% certainty seems to imply that you offer 1:99 offers? At those rates I am more than happy to bet 100 GBP on the other side.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#205Has anyone considered that this may be PR for the upcoming Prometheus? They have a TED talk on youtube, so it wouldn't surprise me.
This seems unlikely as Prometheus is being directly by Ridley Scott, not James Cameron.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time will tell, my money is on PR stunt.
The calibre of the backers leaves me certain that this is not a PR stunt. Does the founder of one of the world's best known companies need any additional PR? How about the director of one of the all-time top grossing movies? Seriously, the chances of this being just a PR stunt are practically nil. If they did want to get some individual PR, there would be cheaper ways to do it - e.g. buying a popular TV network and b…
Safe to say that we agree. Best not feed the conspiracy trolls. :)
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#207Although this is very exciting I remain highly skeptical.If anything this smells like a pump and dump scheme more than a legit effort. I hope I'm wrong. I really want to see this succeed.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#208So what happened at the press conference at 1pm? Were more details released?
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#209 If this becomes commonplace in the future I wonder how much it will affect the Earth, wouldn't more mass cause changes in the Earth's rotation or orbit?
I know tonnes of crap from space falls to Earth each day or year, whatever the number is, but mining may bring more material back possibly denser metals rather than just rock dust and in a shorter period of time.
Interesting to ponder.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#210If this becomes commonplace in the future I wonder how much it will affect the Earth, wouldn't more mass cause changes in the Earth's rotation or orbit? I know tonnes of crap from space falls to Earth each day or year, whatever the number is, but mining may bring more material back possibly denser metals rather than just rock dust and in a shorter period of time. Interesting to ponder.
The mass of the entire asteroid belt is only about 0.05% of the Earth's, and the metallic (M-type) ones only 10% of that, so not much effect.
Interestingly, Ceres alone is 1/3 of the total mass, and the big four make up half.