Synobun
Deity
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The "Does This Exist?" Thread
- Thread starter Monsterzuma
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I'm addressing this first because it's a key point in understanding where I'm coming from. I'm an engineer. I know there is a huge, HUGE gap between a few prototypes and scientific papers and a commercial device. When I say the technology isn't there, I don't mean 3D printers don't exist, for example. Show me a 3D printer that is capable of producing sturdy, durable mining equipment.
Well there are these key technologies:
Rockets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket
3D Printers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Printers
Radios http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radios http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Network
Mining Equipment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_equipment#Machinery
AI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
A place to live in while out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhab
Pretty far-fetched stuff, I know.
Much along the lines of above, prototypes in these fields do not equate to a system that could be used for asteroid mining, nor would earthbound mining equipment necessarily be optimized for use in space.
This is the article I found on Google, from 2002 I know, to verify my numbers. I'm well aware the shuttle was more expensive, I was giving the inexpensive Russian/Chinese numbers as a rough lower bound for what exists today.
So, that aside, how much does mining equipment weigh? And the necessary fuel to transport the equipment to the asteroid belt? And the return vehicles, which are presumably separate from the mine so you don't ship the mining equipment back and forth needlessly? What's the launch cost for all that?
Some of the criticism I had was already mentioned in the article, including the high cost of space travel, the economics is ridiculously not in favor of any sort of asteroid mining, and the market-crash effect (which I was going to write about, but since it's already in your source I assume you have seen it).
History_Buff
Deity
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Sweet telescope land I will give you, I completely forgot about that. Though I do not envy the guys who have to figure out how to deal with all that toxic moon dust.
Oh, construction in zero g and in orbit has huge advantages for sure. My point is that it's not much of a near term goal. We essentially need space-sourced materials if we're ever going to build a factory capable of producing useful stuff.
And as I read about the Hubble repair now, it seems it was quite a bit more complicated than I had thought, which I suppose speaks highly of our ability in such an area. However, if we ever intend to build a facility where we can produce even basic materials, let alone space craft, we're going to need a lot of mass to build a lot of facility.
Particularly space craft construction would require so much hands on work that I doubt it'll ever really be feasible in orbit. That's something much better suited to a martian environment.
hobbsyoyo
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I'd like to apologize for my overly-sarcastic tone before. I've gotten too acustomed to people talking about things they know nothing about. I'll have to admit I'm probably one of the worst at that....
A 3D printer would not have to produce sturdy, durable mining equipment in outer space. Take, for example, how you could build a smelter in outer space. I know a smelter isn't really 'mining' equipment, per se, but the example illustrates some principles.
You could construct a very efficient smelter in outer space consisting of aluminum or other metallic foils. It would just be a box that you float ore into and use the foil to direct and intensify sunlight onto the oar and melt it. It would need no structural supports as their is no gravity. It could literally be just a foil box without even a power source aside from the sun.
Similarly, magnetic rakes consisting of thin wires could be used to attract iron and iron-loving (there's a technical term for this that I can't remember) ores directly off the surface. Because asteroids do not have the gravity to differentiate into crust, mantle and core, the minerals are 'mixed in' with the regolith fairly evenly. Such magnetic rakes would not need to be massive structures as they would have to support a negligable weight in an asteroids gravity. They could also be powered by the sun, as the smelter I talked about. Or, you could concievably use a light weight nuclear weapon to crack the asteroid open. There is no good reason why this would be unnacceptable in outer space, far from the earth.
I posted the link to mining equipment as an obnoxious and sarcastic response. Obviously earth mining equipment would be very poorly suited to an asteroidal environment. It would also be overkill. You wouldn't need the kinds of heavy-duty stuff needed on earth. A 3D printer could easily (IMHO) be made to fabricate sheets of metal or metalic wires. It also could fabricate individual components for more complicated machines.
Proper design could create machines made of simple components, easily assembled by another robot. Again, none of the components have to be big, bulky or even that complicated because the environment of space negates much of that need. Certain materials (like computer chips) would need to be imported until 3D printing improves, but you would want to design your mining equipment in such a way as to minimize imported parts.
I've talked about mining equipment. I've also mentioned that you need not necessarily bring all of your mining equipment to the asteroid belt. You bring only essential inputs and start up equipment and build the rest on site. Why send a space buldozer when you can build a simple space rake that could do the job?
Return vehicles need be nothing more than a rocket engine and a fuel tank. The rest of the structure to hold the mined ores could be forged from asteroid regolith and the fuel itself would come from ice on the asteroid. For the sake of argument, I'll just agree that you probably will have to send the engine and the fuel tank.
But you don't need a large engine or even a large fuel tank. You could get by with an ion engine that slowly pushes the cargo closer to Earth where it can be intercepted by astronauts based at the ISS, or one of Bigelows transhab modules. Alternatively, you could use small conventional rockets, which coupled with the high specific impulse of oxygen and hydrogen fuels could put a large cargo in a transfer orbit.
I actually did mention the market crash effect in an earlier post. If managed correctly, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It would be folly to just unload a megaton of gold you mined all at once. But a long term trend that pushes down the cost of precious metals would be a very good thing.
Aluminum used to be considered the most valuable element. Napoleon would have his most favored guests dine with aluminum forks. The rest of the nobles only got gold as it was less expensive and 'fancy'. Imagine all of the uses that precious metals and rare-earths have. We are currently forced to pay out of the wazzoo for products using them or are forced to use inferior substitutes. A market crash caused by an abundance of the resources would actually be good for both consumers and producers.
Eric Anderson of Planetary Resources talked in length about this in this very enlightening interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/27/151534933/mining-quarries-millions-of-miles-from-earth. If you ignore everything else I've said, I would still suggest you listen to this interview. It's very interesting and informative.
As for the economics of the venture in general, well it may not work out. A lot of businesses don't. But I don't think all of the billionaires backing the company would be doing so if there wasn't a strong business case. The technology of the aerospace industry is changing dramatically (even compared to 2002) as the free market kicks in, costs will come down through true competition. We have not head true competition before - this is duly reflected in current launch costs.
We are going to need a factory in space. But early ones do not necessarily have to be built with space sourced materials - though that will be preferrable long term. See the link to Bigelow Aerospace that I provided above. They are perfecting a NASA - derived transhab module to serve as basically a building for people to use as factories, research outposts, hotels or anything you want. They've put two test beds in orbit. Others will follow, and other companies are going to start competing with them in the short-term. All of the things we've been talking about seem super far-fetched, but it is literally around the corner. The free market is beginning to kick in in a big way when it comes to the exploitation of space.
I had much more to say but this is turning into a thesis, lol. My apologies if it's tl;dr
A 3D printer would not have to produce sturdy, durable mining equipment in outer space. Take, for example, how you could build a smelter in outer space. I know a smelter isn't really 'mining' equipment, per se, but the example illustrates some principles.
You could construct a very efficient smelter in outer space consisting of aluminum or other metallic foils. It would just be a box that you float ore into and use the foil to direct and intensify sunlight onto the oar and melt it. It would need no structural supports as their is no gravity. It could literally be just a foil box without even a power source aside from the sun.
Similarly, magnetic rakes consisting of thin wires could be used to attract iron and iron-loving (there's a technical term for this that I can't remember) ores directly off the surface. Because asteroids do not have the gravity to differentiate into crust, mantle and core, the minerals are 'mixed in' with the regolith fairly evenly. Such magnetic rakes would not need to be massive structures as they would have to support a negligable weight in an asteroids gravity. They could also be powered by the sun, as the smelter I talked about. Or, you could concievably use a light weight nuclear weapon to crack the asteroid open. There is no good reason why this would be unnacceptable in outer space, far from the earth.
I posted the link to mining equipment as an obnoxious and sarcastic response. Obviously earth mining equipment would be very poorly suited to an asteroidal environment. It would also be overkill. You wouldn't need the kinds of heavy-duty stuff needed on earth. A 3D printer could easily (IMHO) be made to fabricate sheets of metal or metalic wires. It also could fabricate individual components for more complicated machines.
Proper design could create machines made of simple components, easily assembled by another robot. Again, none of the components have to be big, bulky or even that complicated because the environment of space negates much of that need. Certain materials (like computer chips) would need to be imported until 3D printing improves, but you would want to design your mining equipment in such a way as to minimize imported parts.
I've talked about mining equipment. I've also mentioned that you need not necessarily bring all of your mining equipment to the asteroid belt. You bring only essential inputs and start up equipment and build the rest on site. Why send a space buldozer when you can build a simple space rake that could do the job?
Return vehicles need be nothing more than a rocket engine and a fuel tank. The rest of the structure to hold the mined ores could be forged from asteroid regolith and the fuel itself would come from ice on the asteroid. For the sake of argument, I'll just agree that you probably will have to send the engine and the fuel tank.
But you don't need a large engine or even a large fuel tank. You could get by with an ion engine that slowly pushes the cargo closer to Earth where it can be intercepted by astronauts based at the ISS, or one of Bigelows transhab modules. Alternatively, you could use small conventional rockets, which coupled with the high specific impulse of oxygen and hydrogen fuels could put a large cargo in a transfer orbit.
I actually did mention the market crash effect in an earlier post. If managed correctly, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It would be folly to just unload a megaton of gold you mined all at once. But a long term trend that pushes down the cost of precious metals would be a very good thing.
Aluminum used to be considered the most valuable element. Napoleon would have his most favored guests dine with aluminum forks. The rest of the nobles only got gold as it was less expensive and 'fancy'. Imagine all of the uses that precious metals and rare-earths have. We are currently forced to pay out of the wazzoo for products using them or are forced to use inferior substitutes. A market crash caused by an abundance of the resources would actually be good for both consumers and producers.
Eric Anderson of Planetary Resources talked in length about this in this very enlightening interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/27/151534933/mining-quarries-millions-of-miles-from-earth. If you ignore everything else I've said, I would still suggest you listen to this interview. It's very interesting and informative.
As for the economics of the venture in general, well it may not work out. A lot of businesses don't. But I don't think all of the billionaires backing the company would be doing so if there wasn't a strong business case. The technology of the aerospace industry is changing dramatically (even compared to 2002) as the free market kicks in, costs will come down through true competition. We have not head true competition before - this is duly reflected in current launch costs.
I second that. Lunar regolith is terrible, as is Martian regolith. We will have to figure out a good way of dealing with that stuff if we ever want to live there for sure.
We are going to need a factory in space. But early ones do not necessarily have to be built with space sourced materials - though that will be preferrable long term. See the link to Bigelow Aerospace that I provided above. They are perfecting a NASA - derived transhab module to serve as basically a building for people to use as factories, research outposts, hotels or anything you want. They've put two test beds in orbit. Others will follow, and other companies are going to start competing with them in the short-term. All of the things we've been talking about seem super far-fetched, but it is literally around the corner. The free market is beginning to kick in in a big way when it comes to the exploitation of space.
I had much more to say but this is turning into a thesis, lol. My apologies if it's tl;dr
GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
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I think it is harder to prove that #1 doesn't exist, assuming you are liberal about credentialing people as "philosophers".
There might be modifications of such that aren't fully materialist, however. E.g. theological understanding that promote wealth accumulation while stating that materialism is NOT greater than worship of a god.
#2? I think Arthur C. Clarke was one.
Edit: Do reverse mermaids exist in which the fish portion is a Remora?
There might be modifications of such that aren't fully materialist, however. E.g. theological understanding that promote wealth accumulation while stating that materialism is NOT greater than worship of a god.
#2? I think Arthur C. Clarke was one.
Edit: Do reverse mermaids exist in which the fish portion is a Remora?
hobbsyoyo
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About space travel - here's another article.
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/03/13103192-nasa-announces-11-billion-in-support-for-a-trio-of-spaceships?lite
Brief synopsis, NASA is giving out money to private companies to develop man-rated spacecraft. While this in and of itself does not directly lead to asteroid mining, it does set up the right conditions.
The main thing about these systems is that although they are government funded, they are not government owned. Once they have been developed, the companies can do whatever they wish with them - something they could not before.
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/03/13103192-nasa-announces-11-billion-in-support-for-a-trio-of-spaceships?lite
Brief synopsis, NASA is giving out money to private companies to develop man-rated spacecraft. While this in and of itself does not directly lead to asteroid mining, it does set up the right conditions.
The main thing about these systems is that although they are government funded, they are not government owned. Once they have been developed, the companies can do whatever they wish with them - something they could not before.
History_Buff
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I'm told the Martian regolith is more palatable to deal with though, as it's not completely devoid of moisture.
hobbsyoyo
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That's really weird you'd say that because I was just thinking exactly this the other day (been off the forum for a few days).
Of course, the Moon doesn't have wind to kick it up, and without that you don't have it flying around and picking up a static charge to make it stickier.
But this isn't my area of expertise
SouthernKing
crickety cricket
The problem with Lunar dust is that due it not having moisture, it's easy for things to sink into it. Also it's known to cause problems with equipment, more so than Mars.
Martian regolith doesn't do that.
Martian regolith doesn't do that.
hobbsyoyo
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Oh yes it does. Big time. Ask the spirit and opportunity mission controllers
. Also, I don't think you sink into lunar dust. That was a big, huge worry of the apollo planners and Aurthur C. Clarke even wrote a good short story about it that i've read. But they landed and didn't sink. Could there be places you might sink? Maybe, but I find it unlikely since the regolith lacks moisture to lubricate it and allow things to slide through it.
innonimatu
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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And how would those mined materials, even assuming that they can be mined and refined, be landed on earth? The atmosphere has a tendency to waste some portion of the stuff away, especially if it is small. And if what makes it through is too big the mining company would end up paying damages far in excess of the value of the metals.
There's nothing out of the ordinary for having a mine under the ocean if the entrance is on land and it's deep enough below the seabed. The hard part is mining the sea floor itself. A bunch of the Nova Scotia coal mines extend under the ocean as well.
hobbsyoyo
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You could make a heat shield from asteroidal regolith. It's cheap and you have to process the stuff to get at the goodies anyways. You could crush it into a powder (if it isn't already a powder), load it into a template and fuse it together with sunlight.
A small booster could deliver the payload to Earth orbit. Once there, you latch onto it and direct if for reentry over an area like a desert or an ocean (if you equip it with flotation devices) and send it on it's way. If you pick a wide, empty spot, you don't even necessarily care how accurate you are - because there isn't anything to hit in the desert or ocean.
If you are willing to spend more money, you could equip it with retrorockets and thrusters and/or aerodynamic lifting surfaces to steer it to a controlled landing. But with a load of processed ore (as opposed to sensitive equipment and people) and a big enough target area, this wouldn't be necessary.
Alternatively, once in Earth orbit, you could concievably send it down in cargo containers that are already going to be de-orbited. But this probably wouldn't be advisable as most ores are very dense and would require extensive re-engineering of current capsules to survive a reentry with the extra mass.
It's very unlikely you are going to hit something you aren't aiming at like a city or something. You don't deorbit on a trajectory that will result in a splashdown in populated areas...
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Does this thread exist, or is it just a figment of our imagination?
_random_
Jewel Runner
Are there any freeware programs comparable to Scrivener? I asked this a while ago in that other thread, but wasn't able to get much answer.
History_Buff
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We covered it earlier, but remember that you don't need to return all the material to Earth. You could easily haul it back to orbit, and then use it to build something in space. Simple materials, like water or iron, are worth thousands of times more in orbit than they are down here, simply because they are heavy.
hobbsyoyo
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I will point out that this assumes cheap surface-to-orbit transportation hasn't been figured out by the time all this is going on. It's a problem that's been tackled from different directions and may become a reality. At which point this statement may or may not be true any longer.
But I fundamentally agree with you. Just had to say that.
innonimatu
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But minerals are heavy, and flotation devices capable of resisting reentry are not going to be created from materials mined and transformed in space. Seems to me that they'd end up lost at sea, with the expense of searching and recovering them afterwards. We might as wellmine the seabed.
The return of materials to Earth is appearing to be as difficult (or even more) than sending away the equipment in the first place. It won't make economic sense unless those minerals on Earth are totally exhausted.
Remember, the only reason some minerals are rare is because they are expensive to mine in Earth. There are lots more around if we are willing to invest enough energy to separate them. Between something as costly as separating them from seawater (as the japanse were considering to get uranium), or going to the asteroid belt, my money will be on the seawater!
